Reluctant cooptation: The legislative recruitment of the private sector into Russia’s dominant party, 2015–2020

Abstract

Cooptation is one of the most efficient strategies employed by authoritarian regimes and their leaders in order to survive in power. In most of these regimes, dominant pro-government parties serve as important tools of cooptation in general and of legislative recruitment, as one of its forms, in particular. The main thesis of this study is that cooptation is selective. When contrasted to the social sectors that are directly linked to the state, the private sector will be at a relative disadvantage, resulting in a smaller scope of cooptation. To test this thesis empirically, we build several hypotheses based on our expectations regarding the effects of electoral rules on candidate selection, and then test these hypotheses against the data from 82 regional legislative elections held in Russia in 2015–2020. The analysis confirms our main thesis and clarifies several findings previously reported in the literature on business and politics in Russia.