Tuesday, February 17, 20264:00 PM - 5:30 PM
Bunche Hall, Rm 10383
The Center for European and Russian Studies is hosting a talk by Visiting Graduate Researcher, Kirill Melnikov, on Tuesday, February 17, 2026 at 4PM. This talk will be hosted in person in Bunche Hall Room 10383. Register here.
About the Talk
What career incentives do key political appointees face under autocratic rule? Who gets promoted or demoted, and why? The presentation puts these questions to an empirical test by examining the world’s largest personalist autocracy — Russia — and its subnational leaders, regional governors. It focuses on the logic guiding decisions by Russia’s central authorities to promote or dismiss governors. In particular, it examines how formal, Weberian-style criteria such as competence and performance interact with informal factors, including patronage ties, positions in elite networks, and the ability to deliver politically desirable electoral outcomes for the regime in federal elections. Drawing on newly collected data on gubernatorial careers, political connections, and performance assessments by the federal government, the presentation evaluates the relative importance of formal rules versus informal practices in shaping political careers under autocratic rule.
About the Speaker
Kirill Melnikov is a doctoral researcher at the European University Institute (Florence, Italy). His research focuses on the formal and informal institutions shaping public governance and elite interactions in Russia and the broader post-Soviet space. In his work, he employs predominantly quantitative methods, including network analysis, survival analysis, and causal inference techniques. Kirill received his MA in Political Analysis from University College London (School of Slavonic and East European Studies). He is currently a visiting scholar at UCLA’s Center for European and Russian Studies, where he is developing the research project “Determinants of Elite Mobility in Personalist Autocracies: The Case of Russia’s Governors.”
Sponsor(s): Center for European and Russian Studies