Tev D.B. Business as a source of recruitment of the federal administrative and political elite of Russia. Power and Elites

Abstract

The article analyzes the role of business as a source of recruitment of the federal administrative and political elites of Russia. The empirical basis for the study is the database of the federal administrative elite, which includes 575 persons (the president, key figures in his administration, federal executive bodies and the government apparatus), and the database of the deputies of the State Duma of the sixth convocation (532 persons in total). People from business (persons who had post-Soviet experience in key positions in commercial structures) are significantly represented among federal politicians and administrators. Plutocratic recruitment is most characteristic of the political elite, which is more closely integrated with the economically dominant class than the legislative elites of most European countries. In turn, the administrative elite is more professionalized, more isolated and autonomous from business in terms of sources of recruitment; its plutocratization has a lower level and a more indirect character. In general, natives of business have much broader and direct access to a secondary and less influencing to state policy parliamentary elite than to the administrative elite, which concentrates the main power in its hands. At the same time, the differences between the intra-elite segments are significant: the level of plutocratization of the fractions of United Russia, Just Russia and the LDPR is higher than the CPRF, and the government is higher than the presidential administration. The study showed that only a small minority of federal politicians and administrators came out of the topmanagers of the largest companies and the richest businessmen of the country, that is, the economic elite of the all-Russian level. A significant presence in the political-administrative elite, above all, the deputy corps, people with the working experience in key positions in business, on the one hand, may be, in part, due to the “crony” character of Russian capitalism, in which political ties are the most important condition for the successful accumulation of capital. On the other hand, plutocratization of power groups can have a significant impact on the nature of their policies, making  it preferable to take into account the interests of business to the detriment of the interests of other socioeconomic groups that are poorly represented in the elite.

Content (in russ)