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Abstract

This article focuses on the political participation of Russian capital owners during the period of post-Communist transformation. The author examines the forms and levels of political participation of the capital owners in correlation with the size and origin of the capital that the respondents own, controlling for age, education and past political participation. The purpose of this analysis is to establish if capital owners in a post-Communist country are likely to support the consolidation of a pro-democratic regime. The findings, based on the original data collected by the author in Russia in the late 1990s, show that only some capital owners are willing to support a liberal democratic cause, and that the capital owners who participated the most actively were those with anti-liberal views. A multi-dimensional theoretical model of participation is used to explain patterns of political participation observed within different age cohorts of Russian capital owners.

Keywords

capital democracy political participation post-Communist transition Russia transformation

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Political Participation in the Period of Post-Communist Transition

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