NES Center for the Study of Diversity and Social Interactions and HSE International Center for the Study of Institutions and Development are happy to invite you to our joint meeting of the Research Seminar on Diversity and Development and HSE Seminar on Political Economy.
Kyle Marquardt (NRU HSE) will present the paper “When and why is language salient for sovereignty? Evidence from Russia”.
Abstract:
While identity-based cleavages have played a role in many important regional sovereignty movements, the conditions under which a particular form of identity becomes salient are poorly understood. In this article I develop and empirically examine a theoretical framework for understanding when a particular form of identity is likely to become salient for support for sovereignty, focusing on three conditions: 1) a territorial context conducive to regional sovereignty, 2) the presence of an identity difference, and 3) a plausible link between greater regional sovereignty and higher status for individuals who possess the relevant identity-based attributes.
I examine these conditions by analyzing the relationship between linguistic differences and support for regional sovereignty in Russia in the 1990s, using two sets of survey data. The first data set includes data from 30 regions, which vary across all three conditions, and find tentative evidence that indicates the importance of all of them: respondents in autonomous regions were more supportive of sovereignty, as were respondents in these regions who spoke a peripheral language, though the relationship between language and support for sovereignty varies across these regions. I use finer-grained survey data from 16 Russian autonomous republics to empirically analyze the third condition in greater detail. These regions fulfill the first two conditions and are thus likely cases in which language will be salient. However, their linguistic demographics vary widely, and thus the likelihood that regional sovereignty will increase the status of peripheral languages. I find that proficiency in a peripheral language tends to be more salient for separatism in regions with a relatively high proportion of peripheral language speakers, lending credence to the importance of the third condition.
Registration till noon of March 3