Social Identity, Procedural Justice and Political Outcomes: Testing of the Social Activists' Involvement in Anti-Authoritarianism Struggles in Belarus

Integration of social identity and social justice theories allows developing model for studies of social activists’ involvement into social struggles in the conditions of authoritarianism. It is possible to hypothesize that evaluation of decision-making procedures and political outcomes as unfair have impact on social activists’ involvement in the anti-authoritarianism struggles, while social identity mediates the effects of procedural justice and political outcomes judgments on social activists’ involvement into social struggles. Social identity not only determines activists’ involvement in social struggles (especially in the conditions of authoritarianism), but also enables explanation of the effects of procedural justice and political outcomes judgments that presumably have strong linkages with involvement into the social struggles.

The data for the study was collected in survey research of social activists’ sample (N=556). Formulations of questions were adapted from Tom R. Tyler elaborations (Tyler & Caine 1981; Tyler & Blader 2003) and modified to make them reliable to measurement of social activists’ judgments on social identity (identification, pride, respect), procedural fairness and outcomes (outcome level, outcomes fairness, outcome satisfaction) in Belarusian context. Besides of this, scale was elaborated to measure the degree of involvement into the social struggles.

Confirmatory factor analysis was conducted to verify whether the proposed model is a valid measure for relationships between observed variables and their constructs. Firstly, procedural justice, involvement into social struggles and three social identity measures (identification, pride, respect) were loaded on latent variable – social identity. Secondly, three outcome judgments (outcome level, outcome fairness, outcome satisfaction) were loaded on latent variable – political outcomes. Then regression analysis was conducted to test 1) the relationships between social identity and degree of involvement into the social struggles; 2) social identity mediation between procedural justice judgments and political outcomes; 3) social identity mediation between political outcomes and involvement into the social struggles.