Regional Leadership: Challenges of the System

The paper investigates the dynamic of leadership in the transitional period of political system in comparison with the type of leadership in stable political regime. In this paper, the regional focus of post-Soviet Russia was used. Russia passed the stage of democratization in the 1990s. In the conditions of transformation, the rules of political game are fairly vague: the question as to who are the real holders of power is determined in the course of its spontaneous redistribution among different subjects, rather than in the prescribed and regulated order. In these conditions a personage with mighty and extensive connections acquired the status considerably exceeding the one to which his office corresponded formally; on the contrary, a weak personage would humble his position, belittling it in the eyes of the political élite. In conditions of transit, the role of the regional political elite and its leaders was increasing, what created a specific type of leader in Russia. In the period of stabilization of political regime in Russia the vertical system of governance was established. Does the political system of contemporary Russia create a new type of local leader? What is the difference between leader of transitive period and leader of contemporary political system? Today, regional leaders and current governors have found themselves in a rather complex system of inter-institutional relations. On the one hand, representatives of the regional elite must effectively solve the economic problems facing the region, ensure the implementation of federal programs, sometimes with substantially reduced funding, to participate in elections and be guided by the opinion of voters, but at the same time, the elite must show complete loyalty to the Center and should not exceed the permitted limits. Such situation leads to obvious political atrophy of leadership in regions. Possible strong candidates do not want to get involved in the elections. As a result, the specific type of the regional leader - “faceless-leader” was formed. The strategy of the study was the following: I. We studied the official biographies of all heads of administrations of the Siberian regions from 1991 to 2017, the Siberian leaders' memoirs and expert assessments. Periods from 1991 to 2017 were divided into stages. The electoral cycles (until 2005, 2013 - 2017) and the appointment cycles (from 2005 to 2012) were used as the basis for separating the stages. At each of these stages, we estimated such characteristics as age, education, career traffic, membership in parties , political beliefs, inclinations and preferences. II. Analyzed were the characteristic features of those political leaders who occupied the leading positions in the system of power both in the period of transition and retained those positions in the period of post-transitional development. The analysis of transformations of the main characteristics of the leader was carried out in order to establish the degree of dependence of the leader on the political surrounding and political situation.