SBE-RCUK Lead Agency: The Geopolitical Orientations of Russia's Neighboring State Populations

This research project will produce a detailed portrait of the geopolitical orientations of the populations in the countries across the post-Soviet regions of Europe, the Caucasus, and Central Asia. The investigators will systematically explain the reasons for such orientations, including pro and anti-Russian and Western opinions, and they will consider the consistency of these orientations in the context of significant domestic political changes, regional economic disparities, sizable population movements and geopolitical shifts, and possible continuation or spreading of violent confrontations between Russian and Western-backed forces across the Eurasian region. The project will contribute to understanding the political dynamics of successor states of the former Soviet Union as they negotiate imperial legacies, economic interdependence, and dynamic geopolitical competition and change in the region. In contrast with standard international relations approaches, which tend to focus on elite politics within states and large state geopolitical competition over these states and contested separatist region, the project will focus on enhancing knowledge about the attitudes and beliefs of ordinary residents of these polities with respect to both domestic and foreign politics. The increased understanding of the geopolitical orientations of residents along Russia's borderland states will provide valuable new insights to inform the development and conduct of foreign policy in the United Kingdom, the United States, and and other nations. Project findings will help increase on-the-ground familiarity and domestic considerations of foreign-policy choices in regions at a time of polarization, suspicion, crisis, and uncertainty. Indeed, scholars, policy makers, and the public have increased their interest in Russia's exercise of "soft power," the expansion of its influence through persuasion and attraction rather than military or economic pressure. Yet the reaction to these efforts by the populations in non-Russian parts of the former Soviet Union has not been comprehensively or intensively measured, however. This project will examine how the geopolitical crisis that began with Russia's annexation of Crimea has reshaped the geopolitical outlook of the different populations in countries and disputed territories of the former Soviet Union that border Russia. Critical to the future of the region is competition for influence between Russian and its Western competitors for building and maintaining a sphere of influence. The project will focus on the political attitudes and identifications of ordinary people, not state elites. The investigators who are collaborating in the conduct of this project are political geographers and political scientists from the United States and the United Kingdom who are experts in post-Soviet affairs. They will conduct a simultaneous set of public opinion surveys of seven independent states, four existing de facto republics in separatist regions, and two contested territories within Ukraine. The investigators will examine the media output across the former Soviet Union and will conduct two waves of a large public opinion survey of 13,200 respondents to gauge and understand geopolitical attitudes and orientations. They will employ a mixed-methods approach that combines the examination of cultural and news broadcasts in all the study sites and quantitative analysis of data from a two-wave survey panel.

Considerable research in academic, policy, and national security communities has focused on recent Russian actions in its neighboring states. What has not been studied in a comprehensive and rigorously comparative manner, however, is how the geopolitical crisis that began with the annexation of Crimea by Russia is reflected in the geopolitical outlook of the different populations, in countries and disputed territories, across the post-Soviet regions of Europe, the Caucasus and Central Asia. The impact of the Russian government's actions, and Russian media coverage of these actions, on the diverse publics in neighboring states is not understood in depth as most security analysts tend to be drawn to "high politics" and "elite debate" rather than how ordinary people are making sense of the transformed geopolitical environment. Critical to the future of the region is competition for influence between Russian and its Western competitors for building and maintaining a sphere of influence. Deep on-the-ground knowledge and critical thinking about key geopolitical concepts like "sphere of influence" are crucial for understanding such developments. The post-Soviet space is splintering in many directions as some remain attracted to Russia, others are trying to attach to the Western alliances and others are coming within China's economic orbit.

The project is likely to generate research that can enhance the goals of on-the-ground familiarity and domestic considerations of foreign policy choices, thereby enrich our public sphere in a time of polarization, suspicion, crisis, and uncertainty. To facilitate impart beyond the academy, the research team--which has long experience working on and in the post-Soviet region--will draw on their existing networks in Washington DC and London to present their research findings via:
* Practitioner/policy workshops to disseminate findings and get feedback.
* Meetings with foreign policy makers.
* Presentation of findings to stakeholders in the region during fieldwork in the third year of the project.
* Writing public commentaries (for example, for the Washington Post's Monkey Cage blog and The Conversation).

The PI has experience in doing so from previous research projects--as has the US-based PI and Co-PI . In the UK, the location of the PI's home institution, UCL, facilitates access to policy-makers and think-tanks, both through her home department, the Department of Political Science, which is located in the School of Public Policy, and the Global Governance Institute.