Protest and the Politics of Blame: The Russian Response to Unpaid Wages

Chapter 1. Why Blame Attribution Matters for Protest

Chapter 1 Why Blame Attribution Matters for Protest Why do some individuals and groups address their grievances through collective action, while others endure their situation passively? One explanation rests on the complexity of the grievance. If a grievance is complicated, having numerous causes and numerous potential problem solvers, it is dif‹cult to single out any one cause or remedy and to channel demands accordingly. Simplifying becomes key. Those among the aggrieved who specify a source of blame for the problem are more likely to take action than those who attribute blame vaguely or broadly. Wage arrears in Russia is a case in point. The potential causes of unpaid wages are numerous, making it dif‹cult to identify a speci‹c source of blame. A minority of Russians nevertheless have done so, and this minority has been more likely to participate in strikes and protests to demand back payment of wages than the vast majority of Russians who are unspeci‹c in their attributions of blame. For the majority, collective action has been thwarted by uncertainty about whom to address. In this chapter, I elaborate on these points and present the major hypotheses to be tested in the rest of the book. I begin with a brief description of existing hypotheses for protest and passivity in Russia and of why an explanation focusing on blame attribution complements or performs better than these alternatives. I discuss how the costs of collective action can be affected by variation in both the complexity of a grievance and the attribution of blame, and I discuss how consideration of blame attribution can enhance the existing body of theoretical literature on collective action. I end with brief discussions of measurement, especially the slippery variables of protest and wage arrears, and methods for testing the hypotheses. 13 Explanations for Protest and Passivity in Russia This study’s major empirical ‹nding is that Russians who most clearly and speci‹cally attribute blame for their grievances have been more active in strikes, demonstrations, or other acts of protest than Russians who do not attribute blame speci‹cally. The vast majority of Russians fall in this latter category and therefore have not taken collective action. This explanation is not the one most commonly offered to explain Russian responses to the wage arrears crisis, and it is also not the one most commonly emphasized in broader theories about political mobilization. Most explanations instead focus on the economic, psychological, cultural, and organizational obstacles that have prevented Russian workers from acting collectively. These will be described and tested more fully in chapter 5 but deserve brief mention here. Perhaps the most common explanation offered is that many workers have lacked alternative job opportunities and have been too dependent on their current places of employment for nonwage bene‹ts such as housing, child care, and medical treatment to risk losing their jobs as a result of protest activity (Crowley 1997). Worker passivity is motivated by Russians ’ extreme poverty. Still other explanations propose the precise opposite and practically deny that wage delays have constituted a real crisis. Thanks to a shadow economy that is said to account from anywhere between a quarter and a half of Russia’s gross domestic product, workers have been living much better than of‹cial data suggest and have had little need for their wages. These explanations obviously contradict one another: on the one hand, Russians are assumed too desperate to protest; on the other, they are assumed too well-off to protest. The data presented to support either assumption have so far been unsystematic and weak. Each explanation also embodies its own paradox. If workers’ dependence on their enterprises causes passivity, then worker independence should cause protest, but it seems more plausible that workers who are independent—that is, workers who have not been getting nonwage bene‹ts from their enterprise and could land another job relatively easily —would just take that other job instead of protesting. Conversely, if workers’ ability to survive on alternative sources of income and food causes passivity, then why would these workers remain employed in their ‹rst jobs? By this logic, the only workers who should remain on enterprise payrolls are those who fare unsuccessfully in the informal economy and desperately need their wages, so the level of worker protest in Russia 14 Protest and the Politics of Blame should be much higher than it has been. Furthermore, there is no necessary...