Putin has Increasingly Appointed Outsiders as Governors, Setting Stage for More Regional Amalgamation

Paul Goble

            Staunton, October 16 – Over the past five years, Vladimir Putin has increasingly named outsiders from the federal center and other regions as governors, according to a new RBC analysis. Under Dmitry Medvedev between 2008 and 2012, the share of such people was 48 percent; in the years since, under Putin, it has risen to 64 percent.

            To reach that conclusion, Vladimir Dergachev and Alena Makhukova, two RBC analysts, analyzed the 183 governors who have come to office since 2000. Under Medvedev, more governors emerged from among local cadres (40 percent), but under Putin, federal officials made up half (rbc.ru/politics/16/10/2017/59e36d7e9a7947e546a5ba9c?from=main).

                They also found that while in 2000, there was not a single outsider from another region named governor, over the last five years, the share of such people has risen to 13 percent. 

            According to Petr Bystrov of the Russian Association of Political Consultants, the increase in the number of outsiders reflects the declining importance of federalism and the prospect of the amalgamation of regions, a trend that others including Federation Council speaker Valentina Matviyenko has ponted to as well.

            Nikolay Mironov, the director of the Center for Economic and Political Reforms, adds that the Kremlin has selected outsiders in order to improve its control over the region, to exclude the degeneration of governors into local princelings.

            Other RBC findings include a decline in the share of people from business from 15 percent to eight percent, a roller coaster figure for governors from the force structures (15 percent in Putin’s first term, zero in his second, and three in his third), and a slight uptick of less than a year of the average age of appointees from last year to this.