Regional differences in the career trajectories of representatives of the regional political elite of the Russian Federation

The territorial “linking” of a career to a specific region sets a significant part of the structure of opportunities within which an individual implements his plans for building a career. Regional features of the political process, in particular, the established practice of forming a corps of regional politicians, the design of elections and the degree of their competitiveness, the practice of functioning of the legislative body, the conditions of activity of deputies and, of course, local legislative norms and rules determine the personal composition of regional politicians and the trajectories of their careers. The Russian Federation is a multinational, multi­religious country; in its political life there are various patterns of political behavior and types of political culture. The models of relationships within the corps of the regional elite are not identical — the practice of interaction between the executive and legislative branches of government within the borders of each subject of the Russian Federation. The level of autonomy of regional government institutions and regional leaders varies. The Soviet traditions of forming the ruling (political) class (nomenklatura) are perceived differently and have different consequences. Over the past three decades, there have been various models of interaction between the constituent entities of the Russian Federation and the federal center. We are talking about greater or lesser centralization/ decentralization of the structures of state power and management. The changes were caused by the needs to ensure controllability, as understood by the leadership at the level of the federal center of government. The strengthening of the role and influence of regional leaders was short­lived. It increased in the 1990s. But already in the early 2000s. the federal center has regained its leading role in relations with regional leaders. However, the specificity of the regions, embodied in the existence of various types of regional political regimes, remained. The processes of recentralization that have been going on in the country since the beginning of the 2000s are accompanied by the continued diversification of many characteristics that determine the structure of political opportunities. Recentralization, which brings with it obvious tendencies towards the unification of a number of parameters of the political process in each individual region, still leaves the possibility of organizing the political process according to familiar patterns (election design, interaction between the legislative and executive branches of government, recruitment, etc.). Therefore, from region to region we observe some peculiarities in the composition of the political elite and the career trajectories of politicians. The empirical basis of the study is an array of biographies of regional politicians, covering 2005­2020. In total, the biographical data of 1816 regional politicians were analyzed. In 2005 there were politicians in 4 regions, in 2010 — 6 regions, in 2014 and 2020 — 10 regions. During the analysis, comparisons were made using a number of indicators characterizing the career trajectories and recruitment pools of regional politicians. Among politicians in the studied regions, regional careers predominate. The pool for recruiting regional politicians consists of the economic and political­administrative spheres. However, the picture as a whole is motley; the movement of indicators characterizing the recruitment pool is chaotic.