Political elites and economic performance in Russia

Participants from ICSID: Andrei Yakovlev, Israel Marques II, Noah Buckley, Alexander Libman, Anton Aisin

Further information on the project: Israel Marques II (imarques@hse.ru)

How do the social ties between federal and regional officials, as well as within regional administrations, shape economic development? The quality of government bureaucracies has long been thought to shape the incentives of government officials and the types of policies that they adopt, ultimately shaping the trajectory of economic development. While existing studies have made progress using coarse measures of education and other personal characteristics, little is known about the relationship between the density of social network ties within governments (and between different levels of government), the quality of the bureaucracy, and outcomes of interest. On the one hand, dense network ties might facilitate cross-level (within federal governments) or cross-departmental (with regional ones) coordination, making it easier for politicians to acquire resources and coordinate policy. This could be expected to have positive effects on development. On the other hand, dense network ties might also be signs of patronage politics at play, in which bureaucrats use networks to secure favors and rents for their partners. Using a unique dataset of Russian federal and regional elites, ICSID has begun to study this problem in a series of works about the quality of the Russian bureaucracy

As part of this subproject, we study personal characteristics of the Russian elites, as well as the factors influencing those characteristics and their effects on local and national political processes, as well as social and economic development. In particular, we inquire into the effects of selection procedures for regional regime types of individual and collective elite characteristics. A separate study looks personal connections among members of regional elites and between regional and federal elites to identify network effects on bureaucratic careers and government structure, as well as socio-economic outcomes of policies. A formal survey of elite networks helps to identify key players and to suggest policies for effective cadre selection. Finally, we study which regional elite teams have more chances of receiving federal support using the dominant party theories. Our research in this subproject is based on biographical databases which are created and updated by ICSID. One of the goals of this project is to collect and publish information about the career histories of Russia's regional and federal elites, as well as their past business affiliations. Along with the currently published database of regional governors' biographies, additional data on regional (including vice-governors and mayors) and federal elite biographies will be published for public access.

Ongoing projects:

• Elite Networks and Fiscal Transfers: Evidence from the Russian Federation (I. Marques)
• The logic of National Elite Networks in Hybrid regimes: Evidence from Russia (A. Aisin, I. Marques)

Publications:

Noah Buckley, Ora John Reuter, Alexandra Shubenkova, Garifullina G. Elections, “Appointments, and Human Capital: The Case of Russian Mayors”, Demokratizatsiya: The Journal of Post-Soviet Democratization. 2014. Vol. 22. No. 1. P. 87-116.

Buckley, Noah, Timothy Frye, Guzel Garifullina, and Ora John Reuter. 2014 "The Political Economy of Russian Gubernatorial Election and Appointment." Forthcoming at Europe-Asia Studies.

Reuter, Ora John and Graeme Robertson. 2012. "Sub-national Appointments in Authoritarian Regimes: Evidence from Russian Gubernatorial Appointments." Journal of Politics.

Conference and Workshop Presentations:

A Workshop on the Political Economy of Russia, Columbia University, New York (USA), September 18-19, 2014: “Performance Incentives and Economic Growth: Regional Officials in Russia and China”