Research in challenging environments: the case of Russia’s ‘managed democracy’

Abstract

The extensive reflexive literature from many social science disciplines suggests that there are multiple factors that combine to affect the process of research. However, the relatively weak reflexive tradition in the field of political science often suggests some kind of exceptionalism in this regard, reinforcing the notion of problem-free research and the kind of sanitised research ideal depicted in most textbooks. This article draws on original fieldwork notes to highlight some of the problems of interviewing elites and experts in the Russian Federation, arguing that along with a number commonly identified problems of research in this challenging environment, the prevailing political backdrop is also a factor to contend with. In the Russian case, the pressured domestic politics of ‘managed democracy’, along with events occurring on the international stage, resulted in some largely unanticipated problems during fieldwork which, in turn, elicited a number of researcher strategies in response.