Index Modeling of Protest: Approaches to Understanding and Results of Approbation | South-Russian Journal of Social Sciences
Index Modeling of Protest: Approaches to Understanding and Results of Approbation
Vol. 21 (2020) No. 1, Political Institutions and Processes
Vol. 21 (2020) No. 1
Political Institutions and Processes

Index Modeling of Protest: Approaches to Understanding and Results of Approbation

Sokolov A.V.
Demidov Yaroslavl’ State University
ORCID ID 0000-0002-7325-8374
PDF (Russian)
https://doi.org/10.31429/26190567-21-1-40-64
https://doi.org/10.31429/26190567-21-1-40-64

How to Cite Array

Sokolov A.V. (2020) Index Modeling of Protest: Approaches to Understanding and Results of Approbation. South-Russian Journal of Social Sciences, 21 (1), pp. 40-64. DOI: 10.31429/26190567-21-1-40-64 (In Russian)
Submission Date 2019-12-09
Accepted Date 2020-01-22
Published Date 2020-03-30

Copyright (c) 2020 Александр Владимирович Соколов

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Abstract

The paper is aimed at developing original methodology to assess the potential of protest activity. The current state of index analysis implementation in world science is reviewed. The characteristics of a number of indexes is given, which includes human development potential index, institutional democracy (Polity I, Polity II, Polity III and Polity IV) and public administration indexes. Russia is also developing its own tools of index analysis implementation, viz. the index of protest moods on the basis of VTSiOM and the Civil Initiatives Committee socio-­economic and political tension index). The article covers a number of approaches to understanding protest activity, as well as highlights conditions for its formation, describes its major characteristics and emphasizes the importance of effective communication. Further, on the basis of these characteristics, the author’s model and the index of protest potential are developed. To study the potential of protest moods, the author employed the methodology that presupposed two stages of the research. The first stage consisted in conducting two expert surveys aimed at assessing and ranking the factors, conditioned by the processes inside) the socio-­political sphere of influence on the potential of protest activity 94 experts were involved. The second stage embraced the assessment of the protest potential factors caused by the processes external to the socio-­political sphere. These factors were calculated on the basis of state and departmental statistics indicators. The instruments used in this study were selected on the assumption that the process of forming motives for choosing protest behavior in citizens is determined by a combination of objective and subjective factors, conditioned by both internal and external processes in the socio-­political. The presence of a large number of subjective and objective indicators in the index prevented us from singling out those of them that have profound effects. Experts estimate that the weight of each of them was roughly the same (as confirmed by repeated measurement procedures for the significance of the indicators). This index was tested in 2018 and 2019 on 4 subjects of the Russian Federation: Yaroslavl region, Voronezh region, Republic of Tatarstan and Republic of Adygeya.

Keywords

model, modeling, index, protest, protest potential

Acknowledgements

The study was carried out with the financial support of the Russian Foundation for Basic Research, grant No. 17-33-01022 (a2) (Modeling and Indexing of Protest Activity in the Constituent Entities of the Russian Federation).

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