Governors in Russia: from Elected Leaders to Appointees

The main focus of the paper is the difference between elected governors and appointed heads of regional executives in Russia. From 1991 to the present day, the role of the regional leader in the system of power relations has changed. Heads of administrations (governors) have gone from popularly elected leaders to controlled functionaries. In fact, this was facilitated by a number of institutional changes and political reforms undertaken over the past 30 years. Liberalization and subsequent democratization of the political regime in the post-Soviet Russia of the early 1990s radically changed the basic principles of organization of power and functioning of the system of management, that is, the party state based on the merging of power and property, absorption of society by power, and rigid ideological doctrine of the mobilization type gave up their place to new power regime. Elections as a channel of incorporation into the regional elite became a reality as a result of political reforms. In 2004, direct elections of governors were abolished, which significantly affected the process of forming the political elite in the regions, and also changed the status of the governor in the political system. The governor was appointed directly by the president on the recommendation of the local parliaments of the subjects. As a result of changing the procedure for forming the governor's corps, there was a significant rotation of heads of subjects of the Siberian region. But the vertical alignment led to negative consequences - the system began to stagnate. Structural problems raised the question of changing the principles of forming the corps of heads of the subjects of the federation. In 2012 direct elections were returned. What is the difference between an elected leader and an appointed leader? Does the introduction of direct elections create a new type of Governor? Does the appointment of governors help to reduce the number of “unpredictable” risks in the regional management system? We studied the official biographies of all heads of administrations of the Siberian regions from 1991 to 2019, in the period of the electoral cycles (1991 - 2005, 2013 - 2019) and the appointment cycles (from 2005 to 2012) At each of these stages, we estimated such characteristics as  age (at the time of appointment and by the end of the period);  education (what kind of speciality was received, whether the training was received internally or in absentia, whether the person in question had a degree, whether they received additional education, whether they passed refresher courses (courses of professional development));  career traffic (from what sphere the person in question came, from what position he was appointed or elected to the post of the head of the region);  membership in parties (a member of which parties they were);  political beliefs, inclinations and preferences. The analysis of transformations of the main characteristics of the leader was carried out in order to establish the degree of dependence of the leader on the political surrounding and political situation.