Objective
The project aims at a systematic and comparative study of individual circumstances and attitudes and local conditions affecting religious, ethnic and national identifications and entailed forms of political mobilization among titular and Russian groups in (a) the Russian Federation, (b) in five Russian republics, (c) in the Ukraine and the Crimea. The aim is to determine the individual circumstances and attitudes as well as the characteristics of the inter-group situation and republic that contribute to negative and potentially aggressive, or conciliatory and potentially cooperative inter-group relations. The likelihood and conditions of potential Muslim fundamentalism will be assessed, as well as the way in which forms of local autonomy contribute to either negative or positive ethnic, national and religious inter-group relations and how group size affects the political mobilization and aggressive or cooperative behavioural intentions of groups. The innovative aspects of the project are that the salience of competing identifications is researched in a cross-republican design, that the (political) behavioural intentions resulting from group identifications are explicitly researched and that the beneficial or detrimental effects of forms of local autonomy are tested.
Data will be collected in the Russian Federation (N = 500 Russians and 500 titulars in Karelia, Bashkortostan, Komi, Tuva and Dagestan; N = 500 Russians and 500 titulars (100 from each of the titular groups) residing outside these republics; N = 500 Russians and 500 Ukrainians in the Ukraine and 500 Russians and 500 Crimean Tatars in the Crimea; total N = 8000) by the Russian partner in Moscow and the two Ukrainian partners. Data will be analysed by the Dutch and Italian partners in cooperation with the Russian and Ukrainian groups and reported in articles in leading international journals in the field of social psychology, sociology and political science.