Drivers and Impediments to Inter-ethnic Convergence of Political Values and Attitudes in Estonia

We explore drivers and impediments to inter-ethnic cultural convergence in Estonia, where nearly 30% of population are native Russian speakers. Using individual-level data from the European Social Survey (2004-2014), we present evidence of a persistent ethnic gap in political values and attitudes, with the Russian-speaking minority being less liberal, more paternalistic, less trusting of national institutions, less satisfied with the Estonian democracy, and sensing discrimination. There is no interaction between ethnicity and most of other factors affecting norms and values, which suggests that the impact of ethnicity remains largely uniform across income, education, age, etc. A notable exception is the intensity of day-to-day contacts of ethnic Russians with ethnic Estonians, proxied by the ethnic mix of population in Estonia’s municipalities. We show that such variable has a consistently strong impact on the ethnic gap, noticeably reducing the full marginal effect of ethnicity on values and attitudes. We conclude that day-to-day contact between ethnic groups is a powerful driver of cultural convergence in the Estonian case.