Is Putin’s popularity real?

Vladimir Putin has managed to achieve strikingly high public approval ratings throughout his time as president and prime minister of Russia. But is his popularity real, or are respondents lying to pollsters? We conducted a series of list experiments in early 2015 to estimate support for Putin while allowing respondents to maintain ambiguity about whether they personally do so. Our estimates suggest support for Putin of approximately 80%, which is within 10 percentage points of that implied by direct questioning. We find little evidence that these estimates are positively biased due to the presence of floor effects. In contrast, our analysis of placebo experiments suggests that there may be a small negative bias due to artificial deflation. We conclude that Putin’s approval ratings largely reflect the attitudes of Russian citizens.     

Leadership or Policy? Explaining the 2015 Queensland Election Result

Australian electoral politics historically have been described as stable, with hung parliaments rare and changes of government infrequent. However, the 2015 Queensland election, where a government with the largest parliamentary majority in Australian history was defeated after a single term in office, seriously challenges assumptions of Australian electoral stability, and determining the causes behind this result is therefore of significant scholarly interest. While many journalistic analyses of the 2015 Queensland election argue that the distinctive leadership style of Liberal‐National Party leader Campbell Newman was wholly or principally responsible for the government's defeat, this article argues the result emerged from a confluence of factors, with two — a contentious LNP policy to lease major government‐owned assets, and Campbell Newman's “combative” leadership style — of relatively equal significance as principal determinants.     

Is It Race,Class, or Gender? The Sources of Perceived Discrimination in Brazil

Observers have long noted Brazil's distinctive racial politics: the coexistence of relatively integrated race relations and a national ideology of “racial democracy” with deep social inequalities along color lines. Those defending a vision of a nonracist Brazil attribute such inequalities to mechanisms perpetuating class distinctions. This article examines how members of disadvantaged groups perceive their disadvantage and what determines self‐reports of discriminatory experiences, using 2010 AmericasBarometer data. About a third of respondents reported experiencing discrimination. Consistent with Brazilian national myths, respondents were much more likely to report discrimination due to their class than to their race. Nonetheless, the respondent's skin color, as coded by the interviewer, was a strong determinant of reporting class as well as race and gender discrimination. Race is more strongly associated with perceived “class” discrimination than is household wealth, education, or region of residence; female gender intensifies the association between color and discrimination.     

Imperial nostalgia or prudent geopolitics? Russia's efforts to reintegrate the post-Soviet space in geopolitical perspective

After stagnating throughout most of the 1990s and 2000s, Russia's efforts to reintegrate the post-Soviet space are finally gathering momentum. According to President Vladimir Putin, Russia's goal is to establish a Eurasian Economic Union “capable of becoming one of the poles in a future multi-polar world.” Most existing studies see Russia's imperial and post-Soviet legacies as the driving forces behind these efforts. Although they offer valuable insights, these studies fail to explain the timing of Russia's push for deeper regional integration. This article examines these developments from a geopolitical perspective and compares Eurasian regionalism with the regional integration projects of other great powers (more specifically, Brazil and Mercosur/Unasur and China and ASEAN+1). All three efforts are occurring at a time when the international system is in flux and the ability of the USA and other Western powers to deliver key global collective goods is being called into question. Regional integration must ultimately be seen as a strategy by Russia and other great powers to respond to these challenges and prepare themselves for an unpredictable future.