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

Chapter 3. Whom Russians Blame for Wage Arrears

Chapter 3 Whom Russians Blame for Wage Arrears Given the complexities of the wage arrears crisis and the numerous parties who have allegedly contributed to it, how have Russians sorted through all this information and ‹gured out whom or what to blame? Can Russians sort through all this information and ‹gure out whom or what to blame? We may infer from the literatures on social psychology and economic voting that most Russians have probably been overwhelmed by the task of specifying blame for wage arrears, and many have ultimately failed to accomplish it. The survey results con‹rm this expectation and show that only a minority of Russians have attributed blame for wage arrears in a clear and consistent manner. Multicausality and Information Overload Works in psychology and voting behavior suggest that the ‹rst dimension of causal attribution involves the distinction between internal and external causes. Is the locus of responsibility for a problem thought to be within the person or within the environment (Heider 1958; Ickes and Kidd 1976)? Additional dimensions of causality have been identi‹ed that describe how individuals distinguish further among internal causes. For example, we evaluate whether the causes are constant (stable) characteristics of the individual or temporary (unstable) ones and whether they are subject to the individual’s volition (controllable) or prescribed elsewhere (uncontrollable ) (Weiner 1985). Few studies have examined how individuals distinguish further among external causes.1 The unstated assumption is that the attributor’s 97 1. This is especially true for the study of Russian politics. The closest analysis of blame attribution in the ‹eld comes from the vigorous debate between Finifter and Mickiewicz (Finifter and Mickiewicz 1992; Finifter 1996) and Miller, Hesli, and Reisinger (Miller, Hesli, and Reisinger 1994; Miller, Reisinger and Hesli 1996) on where Russians and other post- work is done once he or she decides that “the government” or “society” is to blame. In reality, however, the attributor’s work has just begun. Once the cause is determined to be external, the real task is to move from the general to the speci‹c, to sort through the multitude of external causes, weigh the role of each, and home in on the most important. Only then can there be an appropriate behavioral response. The task of narrowing the range of external causes can be daunting. Like scientists, aggrieved individuals discount the role of a given cause in producing a given effect if other plausible causes are also present (Kelley 1971, 8; Jones and McGillis 1976, 407), but at a certain level, this discounting can make all actors seem insuf‹ciently guilty of causing the problem at hand and therefore frustrate attempts to attribute blame more precisely . As Popkin (1991, 92) explains, “people have dif‹culty making choices when they must integrate data about several factors,” especially when “some indicators point to one choice and other indicators to a different choice” (see also Dawes 1979, 574). The dif‹culty is enhanced by the blame-avoiding strategies used by politicians and other actors discussed in chapter 2 and by the blame-avoiding institutions and circumstances in which the grievance arose. With so many mixed signals being sent from so many sources, “it is hard for potential dissidents to separate chaff from wheat, data from noise, information from disinformation. Thus, dissidents do not always fully understand their situation” (Lichbach 1995, 96). The greater the number of potential sources of blame, the greater chance that any aggrieved individual who tries to gather and analyze all the relevant data will suffer from informational overload or “cognitive strain” and be unable to attribute blame at all (Tversky and Kahneman 1971; Fischhoff 1976; Snyder and Wicklund 1981, 198). This assertion is not meant to condescend. Some matters are objectively very complicated, and even specialists have dif‹culty drawing causal connections. Consider, for example, the commentary of this prominent economist: After years of intensive study, [economists] still do not know whether an increase in the supply of money is the cause of in›ation or merely its passive accompaniment. We do not know whether wage increases lead in›ation or follow it. We do not know if falling productivity is the 98 Protest and the Politics of Blame Soviet citizens place the locus of responsibility for social well-being. The debate focuses on individual versus governmental responsibility. source of rising prices or a quite unconnected factor. We do not know whether in›ations are...