Political Culture and Participation in Russia and Kazakhstan: A New Civic Culture with Contestation?

ABSTRACT This article offers a critical examination of various scholarly works that attempt to study political cultures of Russia and Kazakhstan in order to explain the ways in which participatory trends are taking place. The existing literature on political cultures of these two countries is impressionistic and somehow contradictory. Reviewing recent insights into the new types of political participation both offline and online, I argue that Almond and Verba’s (1963) ‘civic culture’ lacks contestation, a fourth form of political culture. Contestation in the forms of various protests, central to less open and more autocratic societies such as Russia and Kazakhstan, have strengthened in the emerging era of Web 3.0 and globalisation. Drawing from different surveys and recent political events, the present study argues that in order to study political cultures and participation in Russia and Kazakhstan, one needs to consider contestation along with the ‘civic culture’ offered by Almond and Verba.