Civic Activism as a Novel Component of Armenian Civil Society

Appendix 6 Qualitative Data Indexing Scheme for the indexing scheme.
Thus, the study is a mix of methods, intended to capture various, dynamic aspects of
contemporary Armenian civil society and placing them in the broader context of political culture.
The remainder of the manuscript presents our findings, starting with a general discussion of the
overall political culture, focusing particularly on aspects of political participation and
information-gathering patterns.
IV. Armenian Public Attitudes and Political Culture: Setting the Stage
Armenian civic and political life has gone through several phases: from the dramatic and
unprecedented levels of mobilisation of the late 1980s and early 1990s to widespread cynicism
and disengagement around the turn of the century. Some argue that civic and political
participation is slowly recovering from a recession, citing the 2008 presidential elections as a
sign of relatively successful social mobilisation (albeit an unsuccessful attempt at changing
political leadership).
As discussed in Chapter II, the landscape of Armenian civil society also seems to be
changing: civic initiatives have been re-energising it since circa 2008. These youth-driven, social
media-powered, issue-specific, loosely organised miniature social movements are the new form
of protest and political participation, in addition to ‘traditional’ electoral mobilisation. There
have been more than 30 such initiatives in Armenia since 2007, with roughly one-quarter of
those resulting in a victory for the activists. It remains to be seen whether and to what extent
these movements will grow in scope.
The new forms of social participation take place against the general backdrop of
Armenian political culture, which suffers from a post-communist syndrome of disengagement
and cynicism towards the public sphere. These values and opinions, however, are not static and
not necessarily shared by the various socio-economic and demographic groups present in
Armenian society. To accurately assess the odds of increased participation in social movements
and other forms of non-conventional political participation, a more detailed analysis of the trends
and patterns of Armenian political culture is necessary. This chapter examines public opinion
survey data (World Values Survey 1997 and 2011, Caucasus Barometer 2008-2013 and other
nationwide representative surveys) to examine social and political participation (both actual and
potential) among the Armenian population, with a focus on age cohorts, gender differences, and
other socio-demographic variables. It also highlights the use of social media by various groups.
The aim of the chapter is to place Armenian civic initiatives in the context of the political culture
in which they operate.
The chapter examines secondary data on various types of political and civic participation
in Armenia and contrasts those data with data on Internet and social media use. The aim is to
23