Political efficacy and its antecedents in contemporary Russia

In the wake of the break-up of the Soviet Union, a number of studies have investigated public attitudes towards democracy in East European countries and former Soviet Republics. Many of these works have concluded that Russians have much lower political efficacy and much higher distrust of new political institutions than the public in other post-communist countries. Despite these findings little attention has been paid to the nature of political efficacy and its antecedents in contemporary Russia. One reason for such lack of interest is the commonly held view that Russian political efficacy is generally impaired by the repressiveness of the tsarist and communist regimes. The results of this analysis show that, similar to the public in the United States and West European democracies, Russians possess feelings of internal efficacy and external efficacy that are affected by two different sets of variables. Internal efficacy is influenced by political awareness and demographic variables, whereas external efficacy is a function of attitudes towards the incumbent government and current economic conditions.