The Role of Regional Compatriotship in Recruitment of Administrative Elites: The Potential of Network Analysis for Study of Elites in Russia

Abstract

The paper is devoted to presentation of the one aspect of the research project dedicated to study of political administrative elite in contemporary Russia. It is based on the network analysis methodology that is not widely used by Russian scholars of elites. The authors establish their approach on the mapping of the social networks within elite groups. Although the explanatory power of the network approach is still comparatively weak it is applied as exploratory method for structuring of empirical data, find the trends and set the research questions and hypotheses. The study of networks based on the birthplace is presented in the paper. The key research question is the following: are there cohesive subgroups based on birthplace compatriotship in federal executive branch of power? Federal ministers, deputy ministers and heads of departments are included into sample. The authors find that regional compatriotship is not the important factor of the recruitment of the federal political administrative elite. However, in some cases the cohesive groups based on compatriotship ties appear within one ministry. For example, when the authors reduce the sample to those who were born after 1970, several cohesive subgroups of regional compatriots are found.