This paper aims to analyze the recruitment and the career duration of Russian regional Prime Ministers (i.e. Governors). Russian federal system consists of different types of regions which differ from each other because of their competencies and rights in economic and regional politics. Second, Russian regions differ from each other in proportion of ethnic minorities. Moreover, gubernatorial elections were abolished by Putin in 2004, and since 2005, governors are nominated and appointed by the President, after the regional parliament’s approval of the proposed candidate.
Using the institutional characteristics of Russian political system and systematic differences across regions, our main hypothesis is that regional Prime Ministers are primarily recruited from the executives. We also expect that there should be more governors from the presidential administration who have been nominated and later appointed to the regional high-ranking positions. The second hypothesis is that Prime Ministers in the economically powerful regions stay longer in their office; and that the career duration of Prime Ministers in the so-called ethnic regions last longer than in other Russian regions. We will test our hypotheses using individual data on all Post-Soviet governors.
