Dividing the spoils

pensions, privatization, and reform in Russia's transition

Edición de la obra Dividing the spoils

The gains from the transition in post-communist Russia were captured by the new managerial class, which won rents from the state in the form of privatized enterprises, state subsidies, credits, and opportunities for tax evasion. Those rents reduced state revenues that could have supported social policy - including pension reform, which in turn could have fueled industrial restructuring. With neither pension reform nor industrial restructuring, Russia's economy has continued to shrink. Kapstein and Milanovic present a political economy model in which policy is the outcome of an interaction between three actors: government (G), managers and workers (W), and transfer recipients (P). The government's objective is to stay in power, for which it needs the support of either P or W. It can choose slow privatization with little asset stripping and significant taxation, thus protecting the fiscal base out of which it pays pensioners relatively well (as in Poland). Or it can give away assets and tax exemptions to managers and workers, who then bankroll it and deliver the vote, but it thereby loses taxes and pays little to pensioners (as in Russia).The authors apply this model to Russia for the period 1992-96. An empirical analysis of electoral behavior in the 1996 presidential election shows that the likelihood of someone voting for Yeltsin did not depend on that person's socioeconomic group per se. Those who tended to vote for Yeltsin were richer, younger, and better educated and had more favorable expectations of the future. Entrepreneurs, who had more of these characteristics, tended to vote for Yeltsin as a result, while pensioners, who had almost none, tended to vote against Yeltsin. </FONT><BR> <FONT FACE="Arial">Unlike Poland, Russia failed to create pluralist politics in the early years of the transition, so no effective counterbalance emerged to offset managerial rent-seeking and the state was easily captured by well-organized industrial interests. The political elite were reelected because industrial interests bankrolled their campaign in return for promises that government largesse would continue to flow.</FONT><BR> <FONT FACE="Arial">Russia shows vividly how political economy affects policymaking, because of how openly and flagrantly government granted favors in return for electoral support. But special interests, venal bureaucrats, and the exchange of favors tend to be the rule, not the exception, elsewhere as well.</FONT><BR> <I><FONT FACE="Arial">This paper - a product of Poverty and Human Resources, Development Research Group - is part of a larger effort in the group to study the political economy of reform in transition countries. This study was funded by the Bank's Research Support Budget under the research project "The Political Economy of Fiscal Policy in Transition Countries" (RPO 682-52). The authors may be contacted at </FONT></I><A HREF="mailto:[email protected]"><B><I><U><FONT COLOR="0000ff" FACE="Arial">[email protected]</FONT></U></I></B></A><I><FONT FACE="Arial"> and </FONT></I><A HREF="mailto:[email protected]"><B><I><U><FONT COLOR="0000ff" FACE="Arial">[email protected]</FONT></U></I></B></A><I><FONT FACE="Arial">"--World Bank web site.