Project “Russia’s current political agenda in inter-party discussion”: target setting

The article introduces the concept of an current political agenda, which includes a set of issues that generate the greatest debate and maximum polarization of positions among political actors. It is proposed to look for these issues in an inter-party discussion, since it is typical for parties to exploit the agenda in order to increase electoral capital.

The article describes the project “Current Political Agenda of Russia in InterParty Discussion”, which aims to monitor the current political agenda and is accompanied by the following tasks: identifying issues that polarize the political space and cover a significant part of the participants; thematic classification of these issues; assessment of actors’ positions; analysis of these positions using quantitative methods; building a dynamic model of the country’s political space based on identifying dominant confrontations. A methodology for selecting and analyzing issues is described, which involves using the tools of theories of issue dimensions, agenda setting and issue ownership, but filling these tools with original content.

The results of calculations for the summer and autumn of 2023 are summarized, from which, in particular, it follows that foreign policy issues dominate Russia’s current agenda, domestic policy is an outsider, and the socio-economic and ideological spheres are almost on a par with each other. It is also noted that of the parties participating in the Duma elections, the Communist Party of the Russian Federation is in first place in terms of activity level, with a large gap from the rest, followed by A Just Russia – For Truth, LDPR and United Russia.

A factor analysis of party positions on a set of issues on the current agenda identifies three main issue dimensions, the first of which is most associated with the confrontation between Westerners and originalists (worldview sphere) and “hawks” and “doves” (foreign policy), the second one – with the confrontation between loyalists and oppositionists in the internal political, socioeconomic and worldview spheres, the third one – with various sub-dimensions of the socio-economic field and the confrontation between soviet traditionalists and progressives.

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