The Value of Values for Autocrats: Traditional Morality and Putin’s 2020 Term-Limit Contravention

Autocrats frequently appeal to socially conservative values, but little is known about how or even whether such strategies are actually paying political dividends. To address important issues of causality, this study exploits Russian president Vladimir Putin’s 2020 bid to gain a popular mandate for contravening presidential term limits in part by bundling this constitutional change with a raft of amendments that would enshrine traditional morality (including heteronormativity and anti-secularism) in Russia’s basic law. Drawing on an original experiment-bearing survey of the Russian population, it finds that Putin’s appeal to these values generated substantial new support for Putin’s reform package, primarily from social conservatives who did not support him politically. These findings expand our understanding of authoritarian practices and policy making by revealing one way in which core political values are leveraged to facilitate autocracy-enabling institutional changes and potentially other ends that autocrats might pursue.