 | Discourse, Dictators and Democrats: Russia's Place in a Global Process Subjects: Politics & International Relations; Social Sciences; Political Philosophy; Political Theory; European Politics; Politics & the Media; Public Administration & Management; Sociology & Social Policy; Eastern European Politics; Political Communication; Public Policy; Political Sociology; Voting hides a familiar puzzle. Many people take the trouble to vote even though each voter's prospect of deciding the election is nearly nil. Russians vote even when pervasive electoral fraud virtually eliminates even that slim chance. The right to vote has commonly been won by protesters who risked death or injury even though any one protester could have stayed home without lessening the protest's chance of success. Could people vote or protest because they stop considering their own chances and start to think about an identity shared with others? If what they hear or read affects political identity, a shift in political discourse might not just evoke protests and voting but also make the minority that has imposed the dictator's will suddenly lose heart. During the Soviet Union's final years the cues that set communist discourse apart from standard Russian sharply dwindled. A similar convergence of political discourse with local language has preceded expansion of the right to vote in many states around the globe. Richard D. Anderson, Jr., presents a groundbreaking theory of what language use does to politics. Richard D. Anderson, Jr., is a Professor of political science at the University of California, Los Angeles, where he has served on the faculty since 1989. Before earning the doctorate in political science from the University of California, Berkeley, he spent nine years in Washington, DC, as an intelligence analyst researching Soviet military capability and as a staff member of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence and later of the Budget Committee assigned to the office of Rep. Les Aspin. He also holds a Master's in International Affairs from the Woodrow Wilson School at Princeton University and is a graduate of Davidson College. |
