Paul
Goble
Staunton, September 3 – Scholars from
Switzerland’s St. Gallen University and Moscow’s Skolkovo School of Administration
surveyed elites in 32 countries in terms of 72 measures. On some measures, Russia’s elite was at the
top; on others, near the bottom; but overall, the elites in the Russian
Federation ranked 23rd on the new Elite Quality Survey.
The full report is available at alexandria.unisg.ch/260885/1/Elite_Report.pdf.
It is discussed at lenta.ru/news/2020/09/03/elite/
and sobkorr.org/news/5F50B70FD4D99.html.
Elites of high quality, the authors
of the study say, are those who act in ways which generate additional things of
value for society, while those of lower quality simply gather into their own
hands things of value produced by others.
At the top of the list were the elites in Singapore, Germany, the UK,
and the US.
Russia’s elites ranked alongside
those of Botswana and below those of China, Poland, Kazakhstan, Indonesia and
Mexico. At the same time, the authors of
the report said Russia’s elites were more varied on the 72 measures than many
others being very high on issues like combatting inflation and keeping public
debt low and very low on others.
Andrey Sharonov of Skolkovo and
Ruben Enikolopova of the Russian Economic School said on the release of the
report that one of the things holding
back Russian elites was the near universal lack of trust in Russian society: “the
government doesn’t trust citizens and business, and citizens and business don’t
trust one another or the government.”
“This increases the cost of doing
business, pushes private business into the embrace of the state for defense and
securing rents, reduces the effectiveness of institutions, replacing them with
personal decisions, and in the final analysis driving capital and brains out of
the country,” the two observed.
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