Practices Zealously Pursued Become Habits: How Sharing Mental Models of Democracy Impacts Levels of Satisfaction with Democracy Among the First Post-Soviet Generation in Russia

This dissertation reports the results of an observational study to measure the effect of practicing democratic principles on beliefs in the legitimacy of democracy of university students in the Russian Far East (RFE). I hypothesize the more a young adult practices democratic-like processes the more she perceives democracy works well in Russia. This assumes practicing democracy (as opposed to only formal learning in the classroom) is critical for internalizing democratic principles and values. To test this assumption students actively participating in a non-governmental organization---Model United Nations of the Russian Far East (MUNRFE)---across five demographically different regions in the RFE were surveyed about their perceptions and perspectives of democracy in Russia. These responses were then compared to the responses of two different types of control groups---university students who expressed interest in the MUNRFE program by attending an informational-only session and a group of university students with no exposure (or demonstrated interest) to MUNRFE. From these responses data was generated to empirically test several different political culture theories. Results suggest that students exposed to the MUNRFE program were more likely to be tolerant for the shortcomings of democracy in Russia and more optimistic about its viability in the future than those students with little or no exposure to practicing democratic principles. Specifically, the results tend to demonstrate a pattern by which the more one is exposed to self-governance with democratically structured organization the higher the likelihood one will perceive democracy as "working well" as opposed to more pessimistic or optimistic opinions. Numerous demographic factors were controlled for to test the strength of this claim. The central implication is that democratic practices can become habits, without formal participation in an electoral process, and, thus, could foster democratic transformations at the society level in time.