Political Rents, Promotion Incentives, and Support for a Non-Democratic Regime

The number of bosses and average boss salaries by republic are the functions of the
number of territorial units in every hierarchical level. Changes in administrative (territorial)
structure translate automatically into creation and destruction of party bodies and,
consequently, changes in the number of paid positions for party officials, i.e. the number of
bosses in terms of the theoretical model. Territorial structure was subject to frequent
reshuffling. Districts were split and merged every year; independent status could be given to a
city and withdrawn a year after. This implies that changes in territorial structure provide for
substantial cross-sectional and intertemporal variation in the number of bosses and salaries.

Party membership. The rules of the Soviet Communist party (as in other communist
countries) specified a trial period for new members. During this time, new party recruits were
titled candidates. Upon passing the candidate review successfully, they became full party
members. Although the probability of promotion into the full membership exceeded 90%,
only a small share of the latter actually remained on party career tracks and was able to reach
a position in the party bureaucracy. The latter constituted around one percent of total party so
that the probability of promotion into the “bosses” (in terms of the model developed in this
paper) was of the order of 0.01. The remaining majority of rank-and-file full party members
enjoyed minor non-pecuniary benefits of membership (such as softer punishment in case of
criminal prosecution, preferential right to occupy certain types of jobs, etc.) and typically
remained in the party until death.

The proportion of candidates in the total party membership declined from about eight
to five percent over the period of 1956-69 on average. There was, however, a substantial
variation in the rate and even the direction of change across republics. The reduction was

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