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ABSTRACT
How does inclusion in social policy programs strengthen individuals’ support for redistribution, and lead to spillovers in support for future social policy programs? We study a unique dataset of 1,300 Moscow residents to estimate the effect of participating in a government-sponsored redevelopment program on preferences for redistributive social policy. Our design exploits features of the program designed to foster institutional trust by engaging citizens in the policy design process. We report a positive effect: individuals in buildings slated for redevelopment are more likely to agree that the government should reduce income differences between rich and poor, provide for the unemployed, and provide public housing. Our findings suggest that increased trust in the government is a channel through which program participation affects redistribution preferences, show how programs can be used strategically to promote a redistributive agenda, and suggest a pathway for the co-persistence of redistribution preferences and redistributive state policies.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Supplementary data
Supplemental data for this article can be accessed online at https://doi.org/10.1080/1060586X.2024.2315002
Notes
1. Data for this project can be shared on request.
2. It is important to note that buildings excluded from initial voting could still participate in the renovation program if they petitioned to hold a vote. The process required to petition to vote was extremely bureaucratic, and required substantial levels of self-organization and collective action, however.
3. Due to historical settlement patterns and how initial residency was allocated under the Soviet Union, such buildings tend to have residents with roughly similar socio-economic characteristics and life experiences even in the present day.
4. The program would not be usable for clientelistic exchange, in any case. Clientelism is generally regarded as the use of individual incentives to acquire votes (Mares and Young Citation2016). Such exchanges are premised on the ability of politicians to monitor and sanction non-compliance with the terms of clientelistic exchange at the individual level (Kitschelt and Wilkinson Citation2007). Because entire buildings are relocated (or not) under the Moscow program, it is not plausible to hold individual voters accountable for their behavior. More broadly, service-based clientelism via programs such as this one in Russia are generally rare (Frye, Reuter, and Szakonyi Citation2019).
5. Indeed, existing work on micro-level preferences for social policy is largely motivated by the implicit understanding that such preferences shape the range of feasible policy and, when aggregated, shape the ultimate policies adopted (Cusack, Iversen, and Rehm Citation2008; Estevez-Abe, Iversen, and Soskice Citation2001; Rueda and Stegmueller Citation2019).
6. Poor-quality institutions and low levels of institutional trust are likely highly correlated. For example, low-quality institutions are generally correlated with high levels of corruption. Beliefs about corruption and honesty are in turn closely connected with trust in public officials. Empirically, lower trust is correlated with perceptions that officials are corrupt (Chang and Chu Citation2006).
7. Formally, the majority of five-story buildings are maintained by the state-owned district GBU Zhilischnik companies, with the residents paying a rate that is fixed at the city level. In the event of shortfalls or unforeseen repair projects, the city must subsidize these companies out of its own budget.
8. A 2017 survey showed that Moscow residents of khruschevki considered their buildings to be in a worse shape compared with residents of the neighboring buildings (Renovatsiya Citation2017). The same survey showed that khruschevki residents were less likely to have expensive improvements made to their apartments (even controlling for income levels), indicating that, on average, that they were more likely to expect to relocate sooner or later.
9. The program was meant to be redistributive in nature. First, the value of the replacement housing was higher: the average value of property in the buildings slated for demolition and whose residents at the time of the program’s implementation would receive new housing appreciated by 28% between the start of 2017 and August 2019 according to one estimate, compared to an average of only 10% elsewhere in Moscow (Renovatsiya Citation2019). This is explained by the fact that the housing slated for demolition could later be exchanged for the more valuable replacement housing. Second, the construction of new buildings would be financed by the city budget, where income and corporate profit taxes make up over 80% of revenue. While individual incomes are taxed at a flat 13% rate, the corporate tax burden is disproportionately borne by individuals with above-average incomes. Third, at the same time, the residents of five-story apartment buildings are likely to have lower than average income. Not only are property values of such apartments substantially lower than average, but the problems noted above create strong incentives for higher-income individuals who can afford to move to do so. According to a recent estimate, the average price per square meter in a brick khruschevka is 7% lower than the city average, and is 14% lower in a prefabricated concrete khruschevka (Obzor Citation2020).
10. We discuss the process of forming this list in the following section, as it is central to our identification strategy.
11. By August 2020, only some 18 thousand people had received new apartments – a small minority of program participants. The bulk of the relocations is expected to take place in 2020–2032 (mos.ru Citation2020).
12. According to a Levada Center poll of khruschevki residents carried out in June 2017, the fear of having a new home in a remote neighborhood was one of the most important reasons for opposing the program (https://www.rbc.ru/politics/24/07/2017/596c9fe39a794728c26eeec4).
13. It is quite possible that the specific mechanism had to do with motivating residents to seek out knowledge of prior redevelopment programs and compare them to what the government was offering in the present program; 1,722 buildings were resettled under an earlier program that was started in 1999 and peaked in 2006–2007. That program was largely successful and conformed to popular expectations; thus, the goodwill gained during the older program may have contributed to the positive effect of 2017 program on trust in the authorities. The conditions under the earlier program may have been more generous, as the size of the new apartment was tied to the number of registered residents, so an overcrowded apartment was replaced by one with a larger number of rooms – something that was not possible under the 2017 program.
14. In the robustness checks section, we relax this assumption and allow for the possibility that individuals in included buildings were not all actually subjected to consultations (i.e. inclusion implies intention-to-treat rather than treatment) shapes our results.
15. This exclusion is largely due to the fact that such buildings are typically considered higher quality and generally had larger apartments. As a consequence, they generally have higher value than apartments built using standard plans and introduce more unobservables related to property values into any comparison.
16. Changes we documented in our qualitative analysis of media reports included the appearance and layout of new apartments, building amenities and locations, how mortgages would be handled, and the principle of equivalency (value versus space) used for assessing new apartments.
17. A Moscow electoral district has some 2,000–2,500 eligible voters, which corresponds to approximately 10 four-section khruschevki.
18. Real estate prices were gathered for a different project in August and December 2016 from the cian.ru website (an online portal for real estate transactions). Data for the shares of retirees, car owners, children, as well as the people working in different professions was gathered in February 2017 from the atlas.mos.ru website (an online map run by Moscow city government).
19. In our questionnaire, we included a question about the material from which the window frames in the apartment were made. When the buildings were originally constructed, wooden frames were installed. During the past 20 years, plastic frames were often used to replace the deteriorating originals; installation of new frames is often the first step in making improvements to one’s apartment.
20. Similar questions can be found on the International Social Survey Program, European Social Survey, American National Electoral Survey, World Values Survey, and General Social Survey. For other examples of usage, see Iversen and Soskice (Citation2001); Rehm (Citation2009, Citation2011); Rueda and Stegmueller (Citation2019); Alesina and Paola (Citation2011).
21. As noted above, replacing wooden window frames is often the first step individuals take in renovating their apartment, making it a proxy for investment into their housing.
22. We conducted a parallel street survey of 600 Muscovites, which we discuss in more detail below. In this survey, we found that 86%, 88%, and 89% of respondents strongly agreed that the state should provide healthcare, benefits for the elderly, and education, respectively. This contrasts with 46%, 50%, and 65% of respondents that strongly agreed that the government should provide unemployment benefits, housing, and decrease the gap between the rich and poor (respectively).
23. Data from our survey suggests that 61.4% of respondents believed that Mayor Sobyanin was responsible for the program, while 34.3% believed the same for President Putin. These numbers eclipse other government actors. For a typical example of Mayor Sobyanin’s activity, see Sozdan (Citation2017) and for one related to President Putin, see Voronov (Citation2017).
24. Generalized trust levels in Russia are also similar to other electoral autocracies such as Cameroon, Kazakhstan, and Malaysia (Afrobarometer Citation2022; EVS/WVS Citation2022).