Citizens’ perceptions of local government under centralized rule

• Department of Political and Social Sciences

This session of the Political Behaviour Colloquium features a presentation by Eleonora Minaeva, PhD researcher at EUI

Authoritarian rulers often weaken or abolish local elections while reframing municipal governance as a technocratic problem of efficiency rather than politics. But how do citizens evaluate local executives when the same reforms also reshape who governs—replacing locally rooted politicians with appointed bureaucrats whose careers run through the administrative vertical? Do citizens accept the managerial bargain, or do they continue to value signals of local autonomy? I address this puzzle in Russia using a nationally representative survey vignette experiment. Respondents evaluate fictional mayors whose profiles randomly vary institutional and biographical cues: selection, embeddedness, professional background, and interaction style with other elites. I argue that citizens read the same cues through different political orientations and prior political experience: trust in the regime leader, beliefs about elite motivation, and exposure to contentious political mobilization. Among citizens who distrust the president and view elites as self-serving, elections and confrontational behavior carry a clear autonomy premium, boosting evaluations and strengthening resident-oriented interpretations. Those who trust Putin and perceive authorities as acting in the public interest are more receptive to technocratic profiles: electoral cues add little, while compromise is rewarded and confrontation penalized. Embeddedness is broadly valued, but prior protest experience can reshape its meaning, sometimes turning local ties into a signal of elite capture rather than community accountability. Centralization therefore does not simply raise or lower support — it polarizes the meaning of local authority and reshapes the criteria citizens use to judge it.

The Zoom link will be sent upon registration.