The dynamics of regional and national contentious politics in Russia: evidence from a new dataset

The paper analyzes the regional dimension of Russia’s protests and its links to recent nationwide contentious politics based on an analysis of an author-constructed protest dataset for the period 2007-2012. The data indicate high levels of civic activism and a growing trend of the politicization of the Russian citizenry. Nevertheless, the analysis also points to the spatially and temporally uneven nature of protests. Drawing on scholarship on political opportunity structures, I argue that these variations mirror political-institutional closures and openings at local, regional and federal levels of authority.