Governors in Multilevel States: from Leaders to Functionaries

The paper investigates the specificity of regional leadership in political system of Russia. Regional leaders and current governors have found themselves in a rather complex system of inter-institutional relations. On the one hand, representatives of the regional elite must effectively solve the economic problems facing the region, ensure the implementation of federal programs, sometimes with substantially reduced funding, to participate in elections and be guided by the opinion of voters, but at the same time, the elite must show complete loyalty to the Center and should not exceed the permitted limits. Such situation leads to obvious political atrophy of leadership in regions. Possible strong candidates do not want to get involved in the elections. As a result, the specific type of the regional leader - “faceless-leader” was formed. 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. We studied the official biographies of all heads of administrations of the Siberian regions from 1991 to 2021, in the period of the electoral cycles (1991 - 2005, 2013 - 2021) and the appointment cycles (from 2005 to 2012). At each of these stages, we estimated such characteristics as age, education, career traffic, membership in parties, political beliefs, inclinations and preferences. 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? 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. 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.