Oligarchs, Political Ties and Nomenklatura Capitalism: Introducing a New Dataset

Ion Marandici

MPRA Paper from University Library of Munich, Germany

Abstract: This article examines the relationship between nomenklatura membership, wealth accumulation and political ties across the post-Soviet region from the 1990s up to the mid-2010s. It introduces the Post-Soviet Oligarchs (PSO) dataset, containing the sociodemographic characteristics of the super-rich across the former Soviet republics. While the article finds partial support in favour of the nomenklatura capitalism hypothesis, statistical analysis also points to distinct regional patterns of wealth and political inequality. Thus, the most extensive overlap of wealth and power is observed in the authoritarian regimes of Central Asia and the South Caucasus, where ties to the Soviet regime facilitated the exertion of political influence after 1991, enabling in turn wealth accumulation. By contrast, in democratising contexts, the connections between politicians and super-rich point to a mutually dependent relationship between the economic and political realms, with wealth featuring as a major power resource.

Keywords: oligarchs; nomenklatura capitalism; wealthy elites; post-Soviet region; democracy; wealth inequality; authoritarianism; economic transition; billionaires (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: N00 O1 P2 P20 P26 P31 P36 P48 P52 Y10 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cis, nep-his, nep-pol, nep-soc and nep-tra
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:pra:mprapa:120709

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