Tev D. Business as a source of the recruitment of high-ranking officials of Russian federal economic ministries. Russian Sociological Review. 2022. Vol. 21. No. 3. Pp. 104-126.

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Abstract

The article analyzes the role of business as a source of recruitment of high-ranking officials of the economic ministries of the Russian government. The empirical basis of the study is a biographical database of 225 deputy ministers and directors of departments in eight ministries. The study showed that although administrative professionalization is the most pronounced characteristic of officials' careers, economic ministries are quite dependent on business as a channel for recruitment of their top executives, which, in this sense, has the features of a new public management bureaucracy. Business serves as the main supplier of senior staff for economic ministries outside the administrative realm. And large state-owned companies belonging to sectors supervised by ministries play a particularly significant role. Experience in business is found more often at the highest level of the administrative hierarchy, among deputy ministers. Interdepartmental differences are also significant: there are ministries with the most pronounced presence of people from business, for example, the Ministry of Agriculture. In some ministries, the presence of intersections between ministers and their subordinates in the course of a business career preceding the current position is noticeable, which may indicate the importance of patrimonial recruitment based on personal loyalty, patron-client relations. The plutocratic recruitment of executives, especially pronounced in a number of ministries, probably puts overrepresented companies and industries in a privileged position in the policy making and implementation process, and forms the bias of administrative bodies in their favor.