The State Duma of the sixth convocation: socio-professional characteristics of the recruiting pool of deputies

The article analyzes the socio-professional pool of recruitment of deputies of the sixth State Duma. The empirical basis of research is a database containing biographical information about the 532 parliamentarians. Th e author identifies a number of trends in recruitment. Russian political elite is essentially rooted in the structures of political and administrative power of the Soviet society: among the deputies of the State Duma, the nomenclature experience is common to a greater extent than in the administrative and economic elites of the country. The dominant trend in the post-soviet career of deputies is political professionalisation: the majority of MPs at the time of the election in the sixth convocation were professional politicians, primarily Duma incumbents. A noticeable trend is bureaucratization of deputy corps, many of whom worked in the post-Soviet period in the administrative structures. There have been dynamic interlocks between the administrative and political elites of the Russian Federation, particularly at the level of parliamentary leadership. Quite pronounced is militarization of the political elite: the proportion of people from the power structures in the Russian Parliament is much higher than in the legislatures of European countries, although lower than in the administrative elite of the country. Business is the most significant source of recruitment of members of Parliament outside the political and administrative structures. In terms of plutokratization State Duma substantially exceeds legislatures in most countries of the West. Although there are few representatives of large nationwide capital, interlocks of the economic and political elites of the country take place. At the same time, some professional categories, is widely represented in the legislatures of Western societies — lawyers (US Congress) and teachers and professors (the parliaments of European countries), rather weakly present in the State Duma. Finally, the direct descendants of the working class and, in general, a non-key positions in the economic structures are very poorly represented in the parliamentary elite, which is characterized by a fairly high degree of social closure.