Strategic Appointments in Russia’s Procuracy

This article examines the patterns of outsider appointments in Russia’s Procuracy. Outsider appointments are a common way to insulate bureaucrats from local influences and thus reduce corruption. Using original biographical data on regional prosecutors from 1990 to 2012, I investigate whether the appointment of outsiders—officials without local ties—was driven by genuine state-building goals to reduce corruption and improve the institutional integrity of the federal state, or by authoritarian motives aimed at consolidating Putin’s grip on power. I find that outsider appointments were not driven by higher crime rates, corruption levels, or local authoritarian practices. Instead, quantitative evidence demonstrates that outsider appointments strategically targeted regions governed by Putin’s political opponents or with weaker electoral support for the authoritarian United Russia party. Furthermore, outsider prosecutors were not more active than prosecutors with regional ties in prosecuting local elites, suggesting that the primary objective was to establish centralized control over the “stick” of corruption prosecution, rather than to combat corruption effectively. Thus, while outwardly framed as an anti-corruption policy to improve state integrity, the appointments in Russia’s Procuracy were strategic and ultimately contributed to illiberalism by curbing regional autonomy, weakening the opposition, and reinforcing Putin’s political dominance.