Sub-legislatures across Russia often resemble a “who's who” of local notables connected to prominent enterprises in their regions. David Szakonyi's excellent new book explains why and how this occurs, and what effects it has.
Around two-fifths of the candidates in Russian regional legislative elections come directly from the ranks of private-sector company owners, directors, or senior officials (92). Many of them overtly “double-hat” in their deputy and private-sector roles once elected. Though Russia is the main focus, this book is embedded in the wider comparative literature about business-legislature relations. Szakonyi shows in the initial chapters that Russia is by no means unique in having a high degree of cross-pollination between business and politics.
The book is theoretically grounded in comparative literature. It begins with a broad-ranging discussion that sketches out the motives and expected behaviors of businessperson politicians. Szakonyi develops a series of hypotheses rooted in neo-institutional theories about payoffs and costs of political candidacy, and contextual factors such as the electoral system and party system. Testing these is the main task of the rest of the book.
Private sector actors have long tried to influence politicians through indirect means such as campaign donations or lobbying. But such paths offer no guarantees against politicians “shirking” once they have taken their donors’ cash. For private companies, having a seat at the table in the form of an elected deputy who works for them can have advantages. It can protect them from arbitrary political interference and allow them to pressure rival companies in the same sector. However, there may be costs—both financial and opportunity—for prominent businessmen active in the frontline of politics.
Szakonyi's study is an empirically-rich examination of how private sector actors balance these calculi. He has a twin focus on the strategies businesspeople use for obtaining office, and what they do for their companies and their constituents once they get there. Chapters 3 and 4 focus on candidacy decisions, and the “marketplace” of political parties and ballot options. Should business candidates fight to win single-member districts (which give a direct voter mandate but are expensive to campaign for), or opt for the cheaper but less autonomous route of bidding for a place on a party list? Do companies put all their eggs in one party basket, or split their allegiances and funding across several political actors? Is there a trade-off between a lower-ranking candidacy for a party of power, or a more prominent position in an opposition party? What sort of companies put forward candidates for election? These are amongst the questions he addresses.
The second part focuses on outcomes. Private-sector actors often promise to bring improvement to governance from the application of their business acumen, but Chapters 5 and 6 suggest that the converse may be the case: social spending is downgraded compared to expenditures that benefit business infrastructure, and the companies of winning candidates benefit disproportionately from having their representatives in office. The book ends with a concluding analysis and policy recommendations about how politics and vested interests could better be separated.
The depth of empirical research in the book is highly impressive. Szakonyi has constructed a database that cross-references the candidacy information on over 41,000 candidates with data on private-sector business affiliations, across 159 regional election campaigns. He complements this with a survey of 654 businesses about their electoral involvement, as well as in-depth interviews with firms, candidates and other experts in several Russian regions. The result is an empirically rich and methodologically robust study that is also eminently readable and well-illustrated with concrete examples. It is grounded in a good understanding of the dynamics of regional politics in Russia. Szakonyi avoids the fashionable dismissal of Russian electoral politics as top-down and predictable, demonstrating that the regional sphere remains an arena with real competition for power with autonomous actors. But he is also able to show that such competition—though nominally between different political parties in formal election campaigns—is often in reality for control of resources and influence by local businesses, with party structures as their proxies. As the author puts it, “when it comes to selecting candidates, parties in Russia act more like auctioneers than democratic filters” (156).
Though occasionally rather technical, the author at no point loses sight of the central narrative. The rich empirical materials are woven into a convincing analytical narrative that reflects the reality of regional politics in Russia and is a worthy addition to the canon of recent literature on Russian politics and regional affairs.
