Abstract:

The recent wave of re-autocratization is particularly pronounced across the post-Soviet space. What are the factors contributing to the ongoing democratic erosion? This paper offers to bring the focus back to the analysis of legacies, in particular, the role of elite continuity with the old regime in the new post-Soviet republics. To do so, it compiles a unique comprehensive dataset of biographical information about post-Soviet elites in fifteen post-Soviet states across the three waves: 1995, 2002 and 2010. To operationalize the elites three alternative political elites samples are compiled under positional approach. The paper then tracks professional and educational backgrounds of top ruling elite members per given country-year to explore the relationship between the continuity of Soviet-era elites in power and re-autocratization indicators in a given polity. The results demonstrate that the old regime's elite continuity in power is significantly correlated with the indicators of patrimonial power dynamic and re-autocratization odds in a given polity even when controlling for other factors, like the size of GDP, population, number of years since the collapse of the Soviet system. The continuity of the elites with the old regime is therefore an oft-ignored characteristic that contributes to our understanding of the recent trends across the region and worldwide.