Elite networks and worldviews during the Yel'tsin years

Abstract

Conflict characterised Russian elite politics during the Yel'tsin years. This article adopts a network approach to understand the sources of elite contention in one Russian locality between 1994 and 2000. The findings suggest that elite conflict during the Yel'tsin years had its roots in structural and cultural forces deeper than control over official positions and differences in socio-demographic characteristics. The article reveals that elites fragmented over time into factions. Rather than having a unifying culture, elites from different factions held distinct worldviews that were patterned by their networks. The characteristics of their worldviews matched the structural properties of elite factions and reinforced differences between them.

Notes

¹For a persuasive account of the lack of elite accountability in the party system, see Rose and Munro (2002, pp. 101 – 140).

²For a good summary of this model and its relation to post-socialist transitions, see Higley and Lengyel (2000, pp. 1 – 21).

³For the breakthrough on the significance of networks for action in complex situations, see especially the work of social anthropologists such as Mayer (1966).

⁴For a discussion of homophily and networks, see Degenne and Forse (1999, pp. 32 – 35).

⁵For variation in economic and political developments among Russia's regions, see Stoner-Weiss (1997), and for variation among sub-regions, see Matsuzato (1999).

⁶Research in this line of inquiry is voluminous. The present research follows a synthesis of methods from elite studies constructed by Laumann and Pappi (1976). Laumann and Pappi draw on structural insights from Hunter (1956). The pluralist view of Dahl (1961) is also represented in their synthesis.

⁷Other studies on Russian elites show similar educational attainments and demographic profiles; see, for example, Golovachev and Kosova (1996).

⁸The large number of respondents with non-white collar backgrounds makes sense because nearly two-thirds of them were former members of the CPSU. Under state socialism, the party-state had favourable recruitment quotas for persons from peasant and blue-collar backgrounds, allowing them to gain a specialised education. Some of these favoured individuals rose to leadership roles in the nomenklatura system of the party-state. For a concise discussion of stratification in the Soviet Union, see Brown et al. (1994, pp. 444 – 447).

⁹Gender discrimination is also widespread in the ranks of Western European and North American elites. Note, for example, the very few women in a recent list of British business elites compiled by The Times (‘The Power 100’, Special Supplement, The Times, 2 November 2004).

¹⁰Persons in power are defined by occupying top positions from federal, regional and city levels in the legislative or executive branches. A list of those positions is available from the author upon request.

¹¹I used a computer application by Borgatti et al. (2002) to perform the network analyses.

¹²For a discussion of the CONCOR algorithm used to cluster the factions, see Breiger et al. (1975). The CONCOR technique is a divisive procedure that iteratively splits groups according to a correlation of actors' relations. Partitioning was stopped before the densities of the blocks were above the 0.01 significance level.

¹³The one caveat here is elite members without civic memberships or isolates. They are members of the elite, but lack coalitions with other elites.

¹⁴This conception of elite mobility is a variation on White (1970).

¹⁵E. Yakovleva, ‘Tambovskaya militsiya planiruet “otkrutit' golovy posledniem demokratam”’, Izvestiya[online], 24 March 1998, available at: http://dlib.eastview.com/sources/article.jsp?id=3182735, accessed 22 October 2006.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Andrew D. Buck

Research for this article was supported in part by a grant from the International Research & Exchanges Board (IREX). Data collection was done in collaboration with the Moscow State University of Culture and Arts on a joint research project.