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ABSTRACT
The instrumental use of patronage for political appointments and career advancement can be found across all regime types and historical periods. Despite a pronounced academic interest in the political and economic effects of patron-client relationships, little is known about the nature of interplay between informal networks and formal hierarchies. How are formal powers distributed in personalized bureaucracies? The article addresses this question through a cross-temporal case study of subnational government in one of Russia’s regions – Sverdlovsk Oblast. Based on network analysis and negative binomial regression, the article shows that subnational leaders and their clienteles seek to monopolize those formal powers that allow administrative control over other executive agencies, while other coercive, financial, and normative powers are distributed relatively evenly. This pattern persists regardless of institutional context, degree of subnational autonomy, or the shape of informal networks, which signifies the importance of controlling functions that the core of informal networks in personalized bureaucracies performs.
Acknowledgment
The author thanks Henry Hale, Madeline Hall, Sean Hanley, Ella Paneyakh, Andrei Semenov, Aleksandr Sherstobitov, Yaroslav Startsev, Yulia Taranova, Alexey Titkov, Victor Vakhshtayn, Olga Zeveleva as well as two anonymous journal reviewers for their valuable feedback at various stages of the project. All remaining errors are the author's alone.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1 For the purposes of the presented analysis, I am using concepts of “patronage,” “clientelism,” and “patron-client relationships” interchangeably.
2 Baturo and Elkink, “Dynamics of Regime Personalization”; Keller, “Moving Beyond Factions”; Shih and Liu, “Getting Ahead”.
3 Hollibaugh and Lewis, “Presidents and Patronage”; Gallo and Lewis, “The Consequences of Presidential Patronage”; Kopecký, Mair, and Spirova, Party Patronage and Party Government. In American political jargon, the agencies with a high proportion of patronage appointees earned a sobriquet “turkey farms.”
4 Asako et al., “Dynastic Politicians”; Smith and Martin, “Political Dynasties”; Fiva and Smith, “Political Dynasties”.
5 Médard, “Le rapport de clientele”; Eisenstadt and Roniger, Patrons, Clients and Friends.
6 Keller, “Moving Beyond Factions.”
7 Naidu, Robinson, and Young, “Social Origins of Dictatorships.”
8 Padgett and Ansell, “Robust Action.”
9 Hale, Patronal Politics. See also: Way, “The Party of Power”.
10 Scott, “Patron-Client Politics.”
11 Rose-Ackerman and Palifka, Corruption and Government.
12 Colonnelli, Prem, and Teso, “Patronage and Selection.”
13 Magyar, Post-Communist Mafia State.
14 Geddes, Politician's dilemma.
15 Dahlström, Lapuente, and Teorell, “The Merit of Meritocratization.”
16 Bargués-Pedreny and Morillas, “From Democratization.”
17 Jiang, “Making Bureaucracy Work.”
18 Kang, Crony Capitalism.
19 Easter, Reconstructing the state.
20 Reisinger and Willerton, “Elite mobility in the locales.”
21 Choi, “Patronage and Performance”, and Jia, Kudamatsu, and Seim, “Political Selection in China.”
22 Shih, Adolph and Liu, “Getting Ahead”, and Zhang, “Testing Social Ties.”
23 Keller, “Networks of Power.”
24 Van Gunten, “Brokers, Clients and Elite Political Networks.”
25 Hale, Patronal Politics, and Afanasiev, Klientelizm i rossiiskaia gosudarstvennost’.
26 Ledyaev, “Domination, Power and Authority”.
27 Shevtsova and Eckert, “The Problem of Executive Power”, and Golosov and Konstantinova, “Gubernatorial Powers in Russia.”
28 Ivanov, Melnikov, and Petrov, “Informal Structure”, and Gimpelson, Magun, and Brym. “Hiring and promoting.”
29 Noble, “Authoritarian Amendments.”
30 Gel’man and Ryzhenkov, “Local Regimes.”
31 Chuman, “The Rise and Fall.”
32 Golosov and Konstantinova, “Gubernatorial Powers in Russia.”
33 Although several studies examine elite networks at the federal and municipal levels. See, e.g.: Ivanov, Melnikov, and Petrov, “Informal Structure”, and Buck, “Elite networks.”
34 Garifullina, Kazantcev, and Yakovlev, “United We Stand.”
35 Easter, “Redefining Centre-regional Relations”, and Carter, “Networks and regional leadership.”
36 An interested reader can find more details on the Sverdlovsk political context in Easter, “Redefining Centre-regional Relations”, Startsev, “Gubernatorial Politics”, and Carter, “Networks and Regional Leadership.”
37 Meier, “Measuring Organizational Power.”
38 Druckman and Warwick, “The Missing Piece.”
39 Poggi, The State.
40 Mann proposes a four-fold typology adding military power as a distinct form. For the present analysis, the differentiation between political and military power in Mann’s terms is not necessary since a) both are principally based on the same power resource – coercion; b) regional officials are usually deprived of military power in its pure form since it is usually monopolized by the central authorities. See: Mann, The Sources of Social Power.
41 Keller, “Networks of Power.”
42 Naidu, Robinson, and Young, “Social Origins of Dictatorships.”
43 Keller, “Networks of Power.”
44 Baturo and Elkink, “Dynamics of Regime Personalization.”
45 Nedel’skii, V. Itogi gosudarstvennoi sluzhbi. LifeJournal (2012, July 31). https://nedelskiy1970.livejournal.com/4012.html?fbclid=IwAR0WRZeJ40Ij-KXgFVhMpLjYhX_MQ-yC57o-yEHg-gH43m-583U0Ywo8sm4.
46 Reisinger and Willerton, “Elite mobility in the locales”; Easter, Reconstructing the state, and Garifullina, Kazantcev, and Yakovlev, “United We Stand.”
47 “Svobodnaia Entsiklopediia Urala,” n.d. http://xn----8sbanercnjfnpns8bzb7hyb.xn--p1ai/index.php/%D0%A1%D0%B2%D0%BE%D0%B1%D0%BE%D0%B4%D0%BD%D0%B0%D1%8F_%D1%8D%D0%BD%D1%86%D0%B8%D0%BA%D0%BB%D0%BE%D0%BF%D0%B5%D0%B4%D0%B8%D1%8F_%D0%A3%D1%80%D0%B0%D0%BB%D0%B0.
48 Online appendix C5 presents the results without expert amendments as a robustness check.
49 Keller, “Moving Beyond Factions.”
50 Padgett and Ansell, “Robust Action.”
51 Note that the distance to the governor can be defined only for the largest connected component (LCC). For further analysis, this distance for isolates is equated to that of the most remote nodes in LCC.
52 The correlation matrix for all continuous variables is reported in Online Appendix B.
53 Hilbe, Negative Binomial Regression, 141.
54 Kock and Lynn, “Lateral Collinearity.”
55 Kynev, “The Membership.”
56 Including healthcare ministers in Crimea and Sevastopol, not recognized as subjects of Russia by the United Nations (United Nations General Assembly Resolution 68/262).
57 Panizza and Larraburu, “Roles, Trust and Skills.”
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Kirill Melnikov
Kirill Melnikov is a researcher at the Institute of Philosophy and Law, Ural Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences (Yekaterinburg, Russia) and a non-resident fellow at the Institute for European, Russian and Eurasian Studies, George Washington University (Washington, DC).