Measuring Rally Effects Under Authoritarianism: Evidence from Russia’s War in Ukraine

Sinikka Parviainen and William Pyle

No 12898, CESifo Working Paper Series from CESifo

Abstract: Measuring politically sensitive attitudes in authoritarian settings is difficult because expressions of political support may reflect repression and social pressure as much as genuine belief. We propose a complementary approach: using responses to questions that are not themselves politically sensitive to provide indirect evidence about politically sensitive attitudes. Using subjective well-being (SWB), we ask whether within-person changes in life satisfaction, after accounting for changes in material and personal circumstances, can provide evidence of incorporation into a wartime national project. Drawing on more than a decade of panel data from the Russian Longitudinal Monitoring Survey (2013--2024), we find that life satisfaction rises significantly following Russia's 2022 invasion of Ukraine. Gains are initially larger among ethnic Russians and smaller in Moscow and St. Petersburg, consistently larger in military-industrial regions, and sharply lower among those nearest the front. This theoretically patterned heterogeneity is difficult to reconcile with generalized social-desirability bias and is consistent with differentiated wartime incorporation. By 2024, rising non-response and attenuating subgroup differences suggest that the informational value of SWB may deteriorate over time.

Keywords: subjective well-being; rally-round-the-flag; Russia-Ukraine war; preference falsification; authoritarian public opinion; social desirability bias (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C8 D7 F5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ces:ceswps:_12898

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