Pathways to Partisanship: Evidence from Russia

Newly competitive party systems provide an opportunity to observe individuals as they first acquire partisan orientations. The development of partisanship shortly after the advent of multiparty competition in Russia is investigated. Expectations from existing scholarship are grouped into potential "pathways" to partisanship: political motivation and ability, voting experience, exposure to politics, civic motivations, group pressures, and immersion in social networks. The contributions of these pathways to partisan stability, consistency, and self-identification are assessed. This study examines the origins of party identification in democracies and helps to clarify a discrepancy between theories of partisanship as a crutch for the unaware and evidence that partisans are more sophisticated than their fellow citizens.