Sociological Portrait of the Russian Political Administrative Elite

Abstract

The paper presents the results of a sociological study of managers of the Russian federal government bodies - ministers, their deputies and directors of departments that make up the highest and most "closed” layer of the political and administrative elite. We propose to call this group as the Senior Civil Servants (SCS). The study of biographies made it possible to form a sociological portrait of the Russian SCSs and to identify the prevailing factors in building their career. We found out that among the SCS are predominant career bureaucrats and experts-technocrats, but in the ministerial corps the share of political appointees is high. SCS by their characteristics may be attributed to the elite: they are mostly natives of large cities, have a high level of education, academic degrees and state awards. At the same time, we did not revealed the prevalence of the command principle of SCS recruitment. We also tested the hypothesis about a relationship between the type of SCS career and the effectiveness of the ministries headed by them, and found out that ministries headed by career bureaucrats tend to be more successful in implementing public programs, and the dynamics of development in the spheres they manage are higher, and in ministries, whose heads are political appointees, these indicators are lower. The author proposed to establish a Senior Civil Service in Russia, modeled on a number of developed countries. A legal prerequisite for this measure should be the rapprochement of the status of persons replacing public positions (high politicians) and civil servants of the higher group. Subsequently, it is necessary to proceed to the formation of a personnel reserve of the SCS on the basis of the existing Federal reserve of management personnel. The assessment and remuneration of the work of the SCS should be based on key performance indicators. These indicators should take into account the effectiveness of the implementation of public programs and the dynamics of macroeconomic indicators, and people's satisfaction.