C OMPARATIVE SOCIOLOGY

Comparative Sociology 10 (2011) 908927

brill.nl/coso

Ministerial and Parliamentary Elites in an Executive-Dominated System: Post-Soviet Russia 19912009

Elena Semenova
Institute of Sociology /GSBC, University of Jena, Elena.Semenova@uni-jena.de

Abstract This article analyzes the recruitment and circulation of ministerial and parliamentary elites in Russia from the Soviet Unions collapse in 1991 until 2009. The social backgrounds and careers of all ministers in 13 cabinets (19912009) and all members of the State Duma during its ve terms after 1993 are studied. Especially during Vladimr Putins presidency (20002008), a shift toward super-presidentialism altered the circulation and composition of ministerial and parliamentary elites. Cabinets in Moscow consisted increasingly of ministers recruited from state bureaucracies, while the State Duma more and more contained businessmen, party politicians, and celebrities who appeared to treat MP service as simply an episode in their wider careers. Keywords State Duma, cabinet, professional politicians, elite circulation, super-presidentialism

Collapse of the Soviet state socialist regime at the end of 1991 triggered a unique process of Russian modernization that was in many ways a gigantic social experiment (Levada and Golov 1993). A circulation of elites was central to this experiment. As a consequence of regime change, new positions and position-holders emerged in dierent elite sectors. But at the same time, signicant numbers of Soviet-era elite persons who possessed sorely needed competencies, or whose opponents were tainted by Sovietera activities, survived the regime change.
Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2011 DOI: 10.1163/156913311X607629

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During and after the transition to a post-Soviet order, Russias parliament, whose composition can be viewed as the nal balance of positive and negative factors working in the selective process (see Best and Cotta 2000:11), acquired considerable importance. Functioning as lawmakers, MPs oversaw the transition to parliamentary democracy and tried to make parliament more responsive and accountable to voters. Meanwhile, cabinet ministers, who can be characterized as the most visible representatives of the ruling class (Dogan 1989:2), became dependent on Russias president and his entourage in the Kremlin. Despite considerable circulation during the 1990s, the overall composition of Russian elites displayed substantial continuity with the late Soviet period. A large proportion of post-Soviet elite persons who had been highranking members of the Soviet nomenklatura evidenced this continuity (Kullberg, Higley and Pakulski 1998; White and Kryschtanovskaya 1998). In post-Soviet Russia, elite continuity and relatively closed processes of elite recruitment did much to limit the structure of opportunities for persons aspiring to elite positions. By prescribing a powerful presidency, moreover, the Russian constitution that was adopted in December 1993 limited a owering of parliamentary democracy (Huskey 1999; Remington 2001; von Steinsdor 2002). Unlike most European parliamentary democracies (Dowding and Dumont 2009), Russian cabinet ministers are not drawn from parliament, an arrangement that creates important dierences between ministerial and parliamentary elite recruitment (see Blondel and Mller-Rommel 2007). This article examines the two components of Russias political elite as regards their social backgrounds, political career paths from rst career positions until entries into parliaments or cabinets, aliations with the former Soviet regime, and positions to which MPs and ministers moved after leaving parliaments and cabinets. The analysis covers the ve terms of the State Duma of the Russian Federation from 1993 until the present. It also covers the thirteen cabinets (Government of the Russian Federation) that began with the cabinet headed by Boris Yeltsin and Yegor Gaidar in 1991 until the cabinet headed by Prime Minister and former President Vladimr Putin in 2009 (see Appendix).1 Two data sets are employed, both
1)

The fth cabinet under interim Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin in 1993 is

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compiled by the present author. One set consists of biographical data for all 2,305 parliamentary positions of the 450-seat State Duma between 1993 and 2007; the other consists of biographical data for all 485 cabinet appointments between 1991 and 2009.

The Constitutional Setting The structure of opportunities for political careers in post-Soviet Russia is shaped by numerous elements, among which are constitutional rules for electing parliaments and forming cabinets; the electoral system; restrictions on positions MPs and ministers may hold outside parliament and cabinet. Of overriding importance is the constitutions specication of a semi-presidential political system, which morphed into a super-presidential system after Boris Yeltsins presidency (19911999). Formally speaking, the prime minister and cabinet are accountable to both the president and the parliament, but the parliament has no constitutional right to dismiss a prime minister and his or her cabinet. The president is assigned responsibility for securing the states foundations, defending its sovereignty, and ensuring its territorial integrity. Practically speaking, the Russian president has super-ordinate power over the executive, legislative, and judicial branches of government. The bicameral Federal Assembly, which consists of the State Duma and Council of Federation, is the formal locus of parliamentary power. According to the Constitution and an electoral law enacted in 2005, Duma elections are held every four years, with the president deciding the exact dates of Duma elections. The Constitution also stipulates that governments must consist of a prime minister, deputy prime minister, and cabinet ministers, whose numbers have varied from 20 to 40 during the post-Soviet period. Article 111.1 of the Constitution and a 1997 law governing cabinet formation empower the president to appoint the prime minister after securing the State Dumas approval of the appointment. The prime minister is in turn empowered to appoint cabinet ministers, though the president may dismiss a prime minister and cabinet, providing notication of
excluded because it lasted less than a month and consisted only of Chernomyrdin and one appointed minister.

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the dismissal is given to the State Duma on the day it happens. If a prime minister resigns or is incapacitated, the entire cabinet must resign, and a cabinet must also resign when a new president is elected, though the new president is free to accept or reject the cabinets resignation. The president has the constitutional right to dissolve parliament and call new elections if parliament declines his or her nominee for prime minister three times. The president may also dissolve parliament if the State Duma twice refuses, within a three-month period, to vote condence in a prime minister and cabinet. If this happens, the president has the option of dismissing the prime minister and cabinet and seeking State Duma approval of replacements, rather than dissolve parliament and call new elections. The electoral system is another important aspect of Russias political opportunity structure. Until 2005, the electoral system combined proportional and pluralistic elections. One half of the State Duma was elected in single member districts (SMDs) and the other half via party lists with a ve percent threshold for party representation. For SMD elections to be valid, at least 25 percent of all eligible voters had to participate. In what political scientists term a segmented electoral system, SMD and party list votes were counted independent of each other. In 2005, however, all SMDs were abolished and State Duma members have since been elected proportionately via party lists, with the threshold for party representation increased to seven percent. The changed electoral system was in eect for election of the fth State Duma in 2007. It is also important to mention rules that prohibit MPs and ministers from holding paid positions outside parliament and cabinet, other than some scientic, artistic, and teaching positions. Moreover, cabinet members are prohibited from sitting in parliament and from holding political positions at lower levels of the federal political system. These prohibitions distinguish Russia from many East European parliamentary systems, in which the holding of additional positions by MPs and ministers is allowed. It is a commonplace that elites in various sectors of society political, economic, military, etc. dier from each other. Studies of elite recruitment focus on these dierences, attempting to comprehend and measure them (see Norris 1997). In general, recruitment paths can be seen as good indicators of the values determining selection to specic elite positions (see Dogan 2003). This study of Russian cabinet and parliamentary recruitment

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patterns consists of two parts the socio-demographic characteristics of elites and their political experience and careers.

Social Contours of the Political Elite Political elites in all European democracies display levels of education much higher than those of adult publics (Best and Cotta 2000:497499; Fettelschoss and Nikolenyi 2009:220). But the average education levels of Russian parliamentary and ministerial elites are exceptionally high: 97 percent of MPs between 19932007 held university degrees, and all cabinet ministers between 19912009 had at least some university education. More striking still, 50 percent of all MPs and more than 60 percent of all ministers held doctoral degrees, and some MPs and ministers held two doctoral degrees. Even more than elsewhere in Europe (see Gaxie and Godmer 2007:115), in Russia a university education appears to be a prerequisite for political elite status. Persons holding law degrees comprised relatively small parts of both elites roughly 13 percent in each. Nearly one third of all ministers studied economics or another social science. Approximately the same proportion of ministers studied engineering or a natural science, including medicine, and roughly one eighth held both engineering and social science degrees. Whereas majorities of West European MPs have studied economics, other social sciences, and the humanities (Gaxie and Godmer 2007:119 123), more than half of all Russian MPs studied engineering or a natural science, with only a third trained in economics, other social sciences, or the humanities. The large proportions of ministers and MPs trained in engineering and natural sciences are legacies of Soviet educational policies that strongly favored education in those non-ideological elds. Before and after Stalins rule, the Soviet political elite also contained numerous gures drawn from the intelligentsia (Hough and Fainsod 1979:169170). From at least the 1970s, many high-ranking Communist Party (CPSU) ocials held academic degrees, especially engineering degrees that served as qualications for administrative positions in Soviet state bureaucracies. It is not surprising, therefore, that the educational prole of post-Soviet elites, many of whose members were university students before 1991, displayed continu-

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ities with the Soviet elites educational prole (see Hanley, Yershova, and Anderson 1995:655). Half or more of West European cabinet ministers are drawn from three occupations: the law, teaching, and the civil service (Blondel and Thibault 1991). But in post-Soviet Russia, only 10 percent of all ministers were former teachers, a proportion that was as high as 17 percent in early cabinets, but declined steadily in later ones. Virtually no post-Soviet minister previously worked as a lawyer. The bulk of ministers were drawn from state administrative positions. Approximately one half of all ministers had been junior ministers before entering cabinets, a proportion that reached 70 percent in Prime Minister Putins cabinet in 19992000. By contrast, only 42 percent of ministers in Prime Minister Yevgeni Primakovs cabinet (September 1998 to May 1999) had been junior ministers the smallest proportion in all post-Soviet cabinets. In addition to former junior ministers, 17 percent of cabinet members were former civil servants who had headed government departments in Moscow or Russias regions. In all cabinets there were at least three, and in some cabinets as many as nine, former lower-level civil servants. Ministers recruited from parliament comprised 18 percent of ministers during the rst six cabinets, but in the seven subsequent cabinets this proportion declined to as little as four percent. Ministers who had been former businessmen were not conspicuous, either. During the early 1990s, when Russian elites faced the task of instituting a market economy, there was a tendency to favor businessmen for ministerial posts, but overall, the presence of former businessmen in cabinets was modest and displayed no clear trend. Their maximum numbers occurred in the second, and ninth cabinets. In Prime Minister Putins cabinet after 2008, ex-businessmen comprised 12 percent of the ministers. During Putins presidency (20002008), cabinets consisted mostly of former managers of state-owned enterprises, rather than business leaders recruited from the private sector. Public opinion polls have shown that Russian voters prefer economists, lawyers, scientists, and experienced politicians in that order as their parliamentary representatives (e.g. WCIOM 2007). But the parliamentary elites occupational composition has been at odds with this public preference ordering. Unlike cabinets, post-Soviet parliaments contained a large complement of MPs with backgrounds in private business and stateowned enterprises an average of 35 percent during the ve parliaments.

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The proportion of MPs with business backgrounds increased from one third in the rst parliament to almost one half in the fourth parliament, though it decreased to one third in 2007. MPs with occupational backgrounds in parties, teaching, or the civil service were not numerous. On average during the ve parliaments, eight percent of MPs had been professors, and 15 percent had been civil servants. Among MPs the proportion of professional politicians (i.e. who previously held full-time, paid political positions in parties or other politically salient organizations) uctuated between eight and 19 per cent in the ve parliaments. Although celebrities of one or another kind do not constitute an occupational category, their relative prominence among MPs requires notice. In cabinets, where most ministers had earlier worked in government departments, there was hardly any chance for celebrities to gain admittance. During the ve terms of parliament, however, the number of MPs who were celebrities increased steadily. In the fth parliament (elected in 2007), there were many well-known singers and athletes (especially female athletes), and even one MP who had been a dancer in the Bolshoi Ballet. Celebrity MPs tended to serve only one or two parliamentary terms, though there were important exceptions. Interestingly, a majority of Russian voters have perceived celebrity MPs as a positive aspect of parliament (WCIOM 2007). To summarize, the ministerial and parliamentary elites were recruited from dierent occupational pools. Cabinet recruitment privileged administrative experience and civil service backgrounds much more than parliamentary recruitment did. Because of their proximity and loyalty to presidents and their administrative expertise, former civil servants dominated cabinets, with previous administrative service as a junior minister being an especially important springboard to cabinet posts. By contrast, the presence of former civil servants in parliament rather attenuated. These features distinguished political elite recruitment in post-Soviet Russia from recruitment in other European countries, where former civil servants constitute large proportions of both ministerial and parliamentary elites (Cotta and Tavares de Almeida 2007:5759). The large proportion of former businessmen in Russias State Duma (35 percent of MPs on average) requires comment. This proportion was relatively high in the rst parliament and it only increased in subsequent parliaments. The increasing presence of ex-business MPs reected three

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important aspects of politics in post-Soviet Russia. The rst was the absence of an institutionalized business lobby, together with a proclivity inherited from the Soviet era to link political and economic power. The second was the immense power of business oligarchs during the Yeltsin presidency, which enabled them to found and nance political parties across the political spectrum (Kryschtanovskaja 2004:210215). MPs recruited from business reected the need of parties for commercial nancial support. Third, holding a seat in the State Duma carried parliamentary immunity from civil prosecution and was a shield for businessmen whose private sector successes often involved undertakings of dubious legality. Previous research has highlighted another distinctive feature of Russias parliamentary elite, namely, the sizable proportion of MPs with backgrounds in the military. Public opinion surveys show that military ocers are widely perceived as patriotic, honest, and responsible persons who, the public believes, should gure prominently in Russias leadership (Kryschtanovskaja 2004:152). It is perhaps not surprising, then, that the proportion of MPs with military backgrounds increased from four percent in the rst State Duma to 12 percent in the fourth Duma, decreasing to four percent in the 2007 parliament. It is important to note that proportions of ex-military MPs in regional parliaments increased as well. This trend distinguished the post-Soviet parliamentary elite from counterpart elites in other European countries, where proportions of MPs who were former military ocers exhibited dramatic declines during the twentieth century (Cotta and Tavares de Almeida 2007:60). On the other hand, Russian ministers with military backgrounds were conspicuous by their nearly complete absence. Only four percent of all ministers between 2001 2009 had backgrounds in the military, though during his presidency Boris Yeltsin appointed three prime ministers with military or national security backgrounds Yuvgeni Primakov, Sergei Stepashin, and Vladimir Putin. As president, Putin appointed a former prime minister, Mikhail Fradkov, to head the Foreign Intelligence Service (FSB), the descendant of the KGB, in which Putin had served. Women were massively under-represented in both components of the political elite. The proportion of female MPs averaged only 12 percent across the ve parliaments. In the fth parliament, their proportion was only marginally higher, 14 percent, than in the rst parliament. According to comparative data on female MPs compiled by the Inter-Parliamentary

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Union (IPU 2010), the Russian parliament ranked 81st of 133 parliaments in this respect, situated between Chile and Ireland. In Russian cabinets, women held only 15 of 485 ministerial posts between 19912009, with just eight women accounting for all 15 posts. The parliamentary under-representation of women was not peculiar to post-Soviet Russia. It is true that in 1984 a third of the 11th Supreme Soviets members were women, but this proportion declined rapidly to 16 percent in 1989 and to only six percent in 1990 after a Supreme Soviet quota for women members was abolished. The under-representation of women in the post-Soviet State Duma can be attributed to the attitudes of political parties toward female candidates (Golosov 2001). Parties often refused to place female candidates in prominent positions on their electoral lists. Women who sought election to parliament had better chances of success when they stood in single-member districts (Moser 2001). An absence of women in ministerial positions was pronounced throughout the Soviet period. There was only one female minister in the rst Soviet government (19171922), only two were appointed between 1923 and 1991, and women totaled only three percent of the Politburo and CPSU Central Committee during the entire Soviet period (Kochkina 1999). In Russia after 1991, only one woman held a high government executive position: Valentina Matvienko, who was Deputy Prime Minister in four cabinets. When appointed to cabinet posts, women almost always received health, culture, or social aairs portfolios. In 2007, however, Elvira Nabiullina was appointed as Minister of Economic Development, the rst female minister to lead such an important government department since 1991. A background in the civil service was the route followed by the ve women who became ministers. A civil service background was less important for female MPs, an observation that was also true of male MPs. On average, only one in thirteen female MPs and one in eleven male MPs were former civil servants. However, the proportion of female MPs with a civil service background increased, while that of male MPs decreased. The occupational background most frequently displayed by female MPs was managing a private or state-owned business enterprise. But the proportion of women MPs with business backgrounds remained stable at roughly 30 percent during the ve parliaments, while the proportion of male MPs with business backgrounds increased from one third to nearly one half.

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Communist Party (CPSU) organizations functioned in the Soviet Union as channels through which under-represented groups, such as women and ethnic minorities, could move up in society. In post-Soviet Russia, however, parties have seldom functioned in this way. On average, only 17 percent of female MPs have been party functionaries, though the proportion increased somewhat during the ve parliaments. There were virtually no female MPs with occupational backgrounds in the law, the military, or journalism.

A Professionalized Political Elite? By comparison with the Soviet period, when activity in the CPSU was a virtual sine qua non for elite recruitment, party activity has been much less important in post-Soviet political elite recruitment. The proportion of MPs who held any kind of party position before entering parliament was a modest 30 percent, and this proportion has been stable throughout the post-Soviet period. Considering the large number of parties, especially at regional level, as well as the need of prospective MPs to obtain places on party lists, it could be expected that a larger proportion of MPs would have been party leaders or functionaries and that the proportion would have increased as some parties became more entrenched. In 2007, when all MPs were elected via party lists, the proportion who had held party positions did increase from 30 to 36 percent, but it was still very low compared with Soviet times. The proportion of cabinet ministers who previously held party oces declined from 43 percent in the 1991 cabinet headed by Yeltsin and Gaidar to 19 percent in Fradkovs second cabinet during 20042007. This suggested that party connections were of diminishing importance for cabinet appointments. The maximum proportions of ministers with party connections occurred during the 1990s when many party leaders, especially of the more liberal parties, were appointed as ministers. During Putins two presidential terms, a quarter of cabinet ministers were connected to the pro-Putin parties. Proportions of MPs and ministers with prior local political experience displayed no large changes during the post-Soviet period. Given the emphasis on policy expertise and administrative experience in cabinet

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appointments, it is not surprising that only six percent of ministers had previously been engaged in local politics. More surprising was the fact that only a quarter of MPs had some local political experience and only a sliver had no more than local experience before entering parliament. In contrast to most other European democracies where political careers wind at length from local to regional to national positions (Borchert and Zeiss 2003; see also the articles by Narud and Teruel in this journal issue), Russias parliamentary elite had few local political roots during the post-Soviet period. Ministers with experience in regional governments increased in number, however. Such ministers existed in all cabinets, but their numbers were especially large in cabinets during Putins ascendancy. In the cabinet Putin formed when he again becoming prime minister in 2008, for example, 40 percent of the ministers had previously held positions in regional governments. The increasing tendency to recruit ministers from regional governments manifested a growing eort to consolidate executive power in Moscow by co-opting regional leaders. During Boris Yeltsins presidency, governors of regions were powerful and relatively autonomous leaders elected by their regions voters. But in 2004 President Putin cited a terrorist massacre in Beslan as illustrating the need for greater control of regional aairs by Moscow. He engineered the abolition of regional gubernatorial elections and instituted presidential appointments of governors, subject to the approval of regional parliaments. A more centralized federalism took shape and it increased the frequency of movements from regional to national executive posts (and vice versa). It is interesting to examine the respective proportions of ministers and MPs with experience in regional parliaments during the post-Soviet period. Overall, the proportions were slight: 11 percent of ministers and 16 percent of MPs. The proportion of ministers who had been members of regional parliaments increased somewhat until the end of the 1990s, but it declined during the 2000s. The declining presence of former regional MPs in the State Duma and national cabinets accorded with eorts to centralize Russias federal system. During the 1990s, conicts between Moscow and the regions weakened regional parliaments and parties (Gelman, Ryzhenkov, and Brie 2000), and this made regional parliamentary experience a less important aspect of careers leading to national political positions.

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Political Elite Circulation in Post-Soviet Russia Besides the recruitment of political personnel, their circulation is an important aspect of elite studies. In seminal writings about elites, Vilfredo Pareto concentrated on the processes of elite circulation (1901/1984, 1916/1966). Although elites are inescapable in all societies, he argued, their compositions dier between societies and historical eras. Elites are always strongly motivated to retain their privileged positions, yet they are unable to avoid internal degeneration and increasing alienation from society (see the article by Higley and Pakulski in this journal issue). This means that the longevities of elites are limited; there are always challengers who will displace them sooner or later. An examination of ministerial and parliamentary turnover, aliations of MPs and ministers with the Soviet state, and destinations of ministers and MPs after leaving cabinets and parliaments provides a fairly comprehensive picture of political elite circulation in post-Soviet Russia. The parliamentary elites turnover has been subject to much volatility. The average duration of MP tenures was only slightly more than one parliamentary term: 5.6 years.2 In the fth State Duma, elected in 2007, every second MP was a newcomer and only 19 of the 450 MPs were serving a fth parliamentary term. Adding to this volatility was a spreading practice among elected MPs to refuse to serve in the State Duma. Such refusals were quite exceptional during the rst three Dumas, but following the parliamentary elections in 2003, some 38 elected MPs, almost all of whom belonged to the pro-Putin United Russia Party, refused their elected mandates, and after the Duma election in 2007 an astonishing 132 elected MPs refused to take up their mandates. Although elected MPs aliated with United Russia were by far the most numerous of those who refused to serve after the 2007 election (116 elected MPs, including a number of regional governors and members of the Council of Federation, plus Putin himself ), refusals by MPs associated with all other parties that obtained Duma representation occurred. The practice of nominating party list locomotives candidates attractive to voters who help ensure electoral success but who then refuse to serve in the Duma became widespread, and it was a practice that also occurred at the regional level.
MPs elected to the fth State Duma in 2007 were excluded from this calculation because the Dumas term was not yet completed.
2)

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Cabinet volatility was also noticeable. Among all ministers in the thirteen post-Soviet cabinets, 27 had three appointments, 20 had four appointments, another 21 had ve or more appointments, and one minister, Sergey Shojgu, who headed the Ministry for Emergencies, was a member of all cabinets after 1991. Cabinet volatility was also manifested by durations of ministerial tenures. Only three of the thirteen cabinets lasted more than two and a half years, and in the late 1990s, amid a severe economic crisis, cabinets were constantly re-shued. On average, ministerial appointments lasted only 1.3 years. Generally, Ministers and MPs have had less prior political experience than their counterparts in most European countries, and they have held elite positions for comparatively shorter periods (for European MPs, see Ilonszki and Edinger 2007:155157; for European ministers, see Blondel and Mller-Rommel 2001:196197). Cabinets and parliaments have displayed high turnover rates throughout the post-Soviet period. Cabinet turnover resulted from specic events such as the 1998 nancial crisis, as well as Yeltsins attempts to nd an ideal successor before he settled on Vladimr Putin. After Putin was chosen as prime minister and then elected to the presidency, the rate of cabinet turnover decreased. MP turnover also decreased during the ve parliaments. It remained high compared with other European countries, but not greatly higher than in most other post-communist countries in Eastern Europe (see Edinger 2010:144145). Despite the frequent creation and disappearance of parties during the 1990s, as well as the presence of independent MPs, approximately ten percent of MPs sat in either four or ve of the parliaments. But these lengthy incumbencies were accomplished most often by switching parties or parliamentary party groups. Three MPs retained their aliation with the extreme right-wing Liberal Democratic Party throughout, and other long-incumbent MPs belonged to either the Russian Communist or pro-presidential parties. Few Communist MPs changed their party aliation, but the majority of MPs aliated with the pro-Putin parties had earlier been aliated with other parties, including a few who had been aliated with the Communists. Switching to pro-presidential parties became widespread, and it underscored the weakness of the party system in post-Soviet Russia. Another important feature of post-Soviet ministerial and parliamentary elites were their roots in the former Soviet regime. There were hardly any

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post-Soviet MPs or ministers who had been open opponents of the Soviet regime. Indeed, one third of MPs, on average over the ve parliaments, had held a high position in the CPSU, and another quarter had held a political position at the regional level or been active politically at the national level during the Soviet Unions nal years. As the post-Soviet period lengthened, the proportion of MPs who had been politically active at the Soviet Unions national level decreased, but the proportion of those who had been active at Soviet local and regional levels increased. Approximately 40 percent of post-Soviet ministers had held a nationallevel rank in the Soviet Unions nomenklatura, and more than half had played some regional political role during the Soviet period. But starting with the ninth cabinet formed by Mikhail Kasjanov in 2000, the proportion of ministers with Soviet nomenklatura backgrounds decreased steadily, and there were only three such ministers in the cabinet formed by Putin when he became prime minister in 2008. Post-Soviet elite members with experience in local or regional Soviet-era politics were numerous. The new Russian elites elaborate practice of patronage was a main reason. As president, Boris Yeltsin appointed a large number of ministers with whom he had been personally familiar as a CPSU leader before 1989. As president, likewise, Vladimir Putin appointed a number of ministers with whom he had been personally familiar while holding political positions in St. Petersburg during the 1990s. Indeed, veterans of the St. Petersburg regional government were actively recruited to cabinets throughout the post-Soviet period: 50 of 485 cabinet positions were given to 19 persons who had worked in St. Petersburg governments in the late 1980s and during the 1990s, including Dimitri Medvedev, who became president in 2008, and Viktor Zubkov, who was appointed as prime minister by Putin in 2007. All in all, a trend toward professional politicians has been comparatively weak in post-Soviet Russia. This is evident in the career destinations of ministers and MPs upon leaving cabinets and parliaments. More than a third of former ministers took no political position after their cabinet tenures; roughly a fth moved to other government administrative positions in Moscow; 13 percent took some national party or other political position there; and 10 percent returned to a regional government or parliament. When their parliamentary tenures ended, MPs left politics with still greater frequency: approximately 20 percent returned to civil service positions in

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national or regional governments; another 20 percent retained or took positions in national or regional parties; and a tiny proportion returned to professorial and research positions. But the bulk of departing MPs ventured into private or state-owned business enterprises. These post-cabinet and post-parliament destinations conrm that professional politicians have been a limited species in post-Soviet Russia. The pronounced tendency among departing MPs to enter another sphere, most often business, underscored the parliamentary elites high volatility. For many MPs, election to parliament was an opportunity to obtain social capital and access to networks that would later be useful. Considering the modest amount of political experience most MPs had before entering parliament, this was not surprising. More surprising was the relative infrequency with which departing cabinet ministers moved to political positions: a third of all ex-ministers played no further political role. Considering that many had been junior ministers before their cabinet service, it might have been expected that they would remain in politics. But the bulk of ex-ministers, like departing MPs, moved to business positions or returned to the state-owned enterprises from which they had originally come. A tiny proportion moved from cabinet to teaching and research positions, usually in economics or administrative studies.

Conclusions Previous studies have examined the social composition of Russias parliamentary elite (von Steinsdor 2003; Gaman-Golutvina 2006), as well as aspects of Russian cabinets such as ministerial turnover (Shevchenko 2005). The present study has sought to advance this research with data about ministerial and parliamentary elite recruitment and circulation during the post-Soviet period down to 2009. There are ve principal ndings: 1. The post-Soviet Russian political elite had a signicantly closed, or at least exclusive, composition. The elite contained virtually no members who did not have a university education, and many of its members held postgraduate degrees. The elite was grossly imbalanced in its gender composition, with men far outnumbering women. This imbalance remained largely unchanged until the 2007 parliamentary elections, in advance of

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which the president, Putin, and his aides expressed an interest in recruiting more women to parliament. 2. The elite became somewhat more professionalized politically in the sense that a modest but increasing proportion of its members had followed full-time political careers, though this was more apparent among the ministerial than the parliamentary elite. But predominantly, both elite segments possessed relatively little previous political experience, especially little party experience, before entering parliament or being appointed to a cabinet post. 3. Considered separately, parliamentary recruitment and ministerial recruitment patterns became somewhat more homogeneous. Cabinet ministers were recruited increasingly from the ranks of junior ministers and high civil servants. Parliamentary recruitment centered increasingly in the business sector, parties, and the military. Signicant continuities with the former Soviet elite also contributed to the homogeneity of parliamentary elite recruitment. Parliament contained substantial numbers of MPs who had held important positions in the CPSU and Soviet nomenklatura. Cabinets, by contrast, contained hardly any former CPSU leaders, though many cabinet members had been active at the Soviet Unions local and regional levels. 4. Elite circulation was relatively high during the several years following the Soviet collapse in 1991, but turnover among MPs tended to stabilize during and after the third parliament (19992003), and ministerial turnover was more stable after Russia surmounted wrenching political and economic crises during the 1990s. 5. MPs who exited parliament most often moved to positions in business; only a minority moved to other political positions. Ministers exiting cabinets were more likely to continue in politics, whether as leaders of parties they had in some cases only recently joined, or as political leaders in regions from which they originally came. Only a minority of ministers moved to business positions. What do these Russian political elite patterns reveal more generally? Compared with Western and also most Central and East European countries, political elite recruitment in post-Soviet Russia has involved quite distinctive selectorates and selection criteria. Whereas political parties function as gatekeepers for parliamentary and ministerial positions in all West

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European and most East European countries (Norris 1997; Blondel and Mller-Rommel 2001), in Russia the role of parties in parliamentary recruitment has been quite limited. Instead, the president and his administration have become key keepers of the gate to political elite status. In other words, Russias presidentialism has had a profound impact on elite recruitment. So-called pro-presidential parties with little, if any, programmatic content emerged early in the transition to a mixed presidentialparliamentary system and they became steadily more prominent. After the State Dumas election in 2003, it was utterly dominated by propresidential parties. However, those parties have not played an important role in cabinet recruitment, where administrative experience and, not infrequently, a regional background have tended to be decisive. Overall, the mechanisms and processes of Russian political elite recruitment have centered increasingly on what the president and his entourage desire. What do these ndings imply about the Russian political system? The patterns of cabinet and parliamentary recruitment and circulation make it clear that both elite segments, despite having the same presidency-centered selectorates, are quite dierent with respect to their socio-demographic characteristics and administrative-political experience. But the cabinet and parliamentary elites are similar in being quite limited in diversity and closed to persons representing many societal segments, most notably women. The two political elite components have became more professionalized and slightly less volatile in membership. All of these patterns and trends became more pronounced after a super-presidential regime emerged at the end of the 1990s, and we expect they will persist until and if a marked change in super-presidentialism occurs. Decreasing fragmentation of the parliamentary party system (after the 2007 election the eective number of parliamentary parties reached its lowest level in post-Soviet Russia, with only 1.9 eective parties) accompanied by steady centralization of the federal system make this persistence all the more likely. During 2009 a major revision of the Constitution took eect and increased the length of presidential and parliamentary terms. In this changed constitutional context, the tendencies in elite recruitment and circulation examined here are likely to consolidate, and with their consolidation Russias quasi-autocratic political regime is likely to stabilize.

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Acknowledgements I am grateful to John Higley, Ursula Homann-Lange, Michael Edinger, Jan Pakulski, as well as two anonymous reviewers for helpful suggestions. My research was supported by the Erasmus Mundus Program TRIPLE I (Grant: TRIPLEI2009743) and Jena Graduate School Human Behavior in Social and Economic Change (GSBC).

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Appendix. Cabinets in Post-Soviet Russia

Cabinet number 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13
Source: Our calculations

Prime Minister Boris Yeltsin / Yegor Gaidar Viktor Chernomyrdin Viktor Chernomyrdin Sergey Kiriyenko Viktor Chernomyrdin Yevgeny Primakov Sergei Stepashin Vladimir Putin Mikhail Kasyanov Mikhail Fradkov Mikhail Fradkov Viktor Zubkov Vladimr Putin

Duration 1991-11-061992-12-09 1992-12-231996-08-09 1996-08-141998-03-23 1998-04-241998-08-23 1998-08-231998-09-11 1998-09-111999-05-12 1999-05-191999-08-09 1999-08-162000-05-07 2000-05-172004-02-24 2004-03-052004-05-07 2004-05-122007-09-12 2007-09-142008-05-07 2008-05-08until now