Most research on the complex linkage between foreign policy and public opinion has focused on liberal democracies, including the United States and European countries. In recent years, however, an increasing number of studies have begun to look into the role of public opinion in non-liberal contexts, and more specifically, how public opinion legitimizes the authority of non-liberal regimes as well as how it enables their foreign policy ambitions. The Crimean crisis in 2014 is a most notable example in this regard, where Vladimir Putin’s regime supporters, the general Russian public, and even the liberal oppositions (including Mikhail Gorbachev) strongly backed the government’s foreign policy choice. Against this backdrop, Russian presidential ratings have been, arguably, one of the most widely discussed yet least empirically explored topics. To address this research gap, this paper presents a latest time-series dataset on Putin’s approval ratings during 1999 and 2016. Building on this data, it employs a VARX modeling approach to analyze the effects of foreign policy stances on his ratings, along with other important factors such as media nationalization, energy prices, and economic performance. This statistical analysis reveals that, controlling for other factors, foreign policy choice acts as a key driver of his popularity, while media nationalization and other exogenous shocks also have boosted his ratings to some extent. The influence of economic factors such as energy prices and growth rates is rather minor, which is consistent with the findings of various cross-sectional studies. Taking into account the peculiarity of non-liberal political setting in Russia, a VARX simulation analysis is conducted to counter the effect of media control. Based on these analyses, the paper confirms the statistical significance of foreign policy choice in explaining Putin’s approval ratings.
