Political Institutions and Governance in Russia: Historical Perspectives on Elite Control, Property Rights, and Democratic Values

Session Submission Type: Panel

Brief Description

This panel examines the historical evolution of political institutions and governance in Russia and its borderlands from the nineteenth century to the present day. The papers collectively investigate how institutional arrangements shape political behavior, property rights, and democratic values across different eras and regimes. The first paper reveals how the economic shock of the early 1990s created lasting regional disparities in democratic values, with areas most vulnerable to market liberalization showing persistent declines in liberal political values. The second paper analyzes how the zemstvo reform of 1864 strategically targeted powerful landowners to incentivize information sharing and tax compliance, demonstrating a novel understanding of local representation as a state-building mechanism. The third paper provides quantitative evidence that Stalin's purges of the Red Army high command in 1937-38 preemptively targeted competent officers, particularly younger cadres, offering systematic evidence of how these purges directly impacted Soviet military performance in the early stages of WWII. The final paper examines how parliamentary procedures affect property rights protection through comparative case studies across Eastern Europe, revealing how specific decision-making rules either facilitated or hindered property rights development. Together, these papers illuminate the complex interplay between institutional design, elite control, and political values across Russia's tumultuous political history.

Sub Unit

• Economic History/Economics/Business

Chair

• Otto Kienitz, Johns Hopkins U

Papers

• Russian Society, Democratic Values, and the Legacy of the Early-1990s Economic Shock - William Henszey Pyle, Middlebury College; Michael V. Alexeev, Indiana U Bloomington

• Local Self-Government and State-Building in the Russian Empire - Otto Kienitz, Johns Hopkins U

• The Anatomy of the Great Terror: A Quantitative Analysis of the 1937-38 Purges in the Red Army - Konstantin Sonin, U of Chicago; Alexei Zakharov

Discussants

• Scott Gehlbach, U of Chicago

• Elena Sergeevna Korchmina, U of Bologna (Italy)