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The Size, Composition, and Dynamics of the Russian State Bureaucracy in the 1990s

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 January 2017

Robert J. Brym  and
Vladimir Gimpelson
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Abstract

In this paper Robert J. Brym and Vladimir Gimpelson analyze changes in the size and social composition of the Russian state bureaucracy in the 1990s based on official data. Although the Russian state bureaucracy grew somewhat at the regional level in the 1990s, it actually shrank at the federal level. Comparing the Russian state bureaucracy to the Weberian ideal type of bureaucratic efficiency, the authors also demonstrate the existence of strong gender and age segregation, with women and young people concentrated at lower levels and men and older people concentrated at higher levels. Furthermore, because many public officials were formally educated in the pre-perestroika era, they are poorly adapted to the needs of a modern state. Finally, circulation of new personnel through the bureaucracy, or bureaucratic “renewal,” is slow and occurs mainly at low-status levels. Circulation of personnel at high-status levels is practically nonexistent. Consequentiy, young recruits have little incentive to remain in state service and older officials confront little competition from either below or outside the state bureaucracy. Much of the inefficiency of the Russian state bureaucracy stems from these realities.

Type
Articles
Information
Slavic Review , Volume 63 , Issue 1 , Spring 2004 , pp. 90 - 112
Copyright
Copyright © Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies. 2004

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References

This article was written within the framework of the project “Young Experts in the Russian Civil Service,” whose principal investigators were Vladimir Magun (Institute of Sociology, Russian Academy of Science) and Robert J. Brym (Department of Sociology, University of Toronto). The project is funded by the University of Calgary-Gorbachev Fund, Calgary, Canada. We are grateful to Vladimir Magun, whose focused and detailed comments did much to improve this paper. We also wish to thank T. Gorbacheva, R. Kapeliushnikov, L. Kosals, and G. Monusova, who offered many useful comments on and criticisms of our work. All errors, of course, remain ours alone.

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