<abstract xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">

<p>Russia and Slovenia are in many aspects very dissimilar countries. The process of systemic change in the post-communist period was also usually assessed differently. Slovenia is an example of successful transformation that resulted in consolidated democracy and effective market economy, while Russia is an example of flawed democratisation, resulting in authoritarian reversal and an oligarchic economy with a combination of state interference and domination of ‘olygarchs’. However, the global crisis revealed some severe structural weaknesses of the Slovenian model of transition that led to the development of a rather dysfunctional democracy and ‘crony-capitalism’ characterised by entanglement of political and business elite that is—at least in some aspects—rather similar to the situation in Russia. We claim that these similarities between the two countries are predominantly determined by the type of elite formation and configuration, i.e. a high level of elite reproduction and ideological hegemony of one political faction that led to development of institutional setting with a number of ‘extractive’ characteristics.</p>
</abstract>

Russia and Slovenia are in many aspects very dissimilar countries. The process of systemic change in the post-communist period was also usually assessed differently. Slovenia is an example of successful transformation that resulted in consolidated democracy and effective market economy, while Russia is an example of flawed democratisation, resulting in authoritarian reversal and an oligarchic economy with a combination of state interference and domination of ‘olygarchs’. However, the global crisis revealed some severe structural weaknesses of the Slovenian model of transition that led to the development of a rather dysfunctional democracy and ‘crony-capitalism’ characterised by entanglement of political and business elite that is—at least in some aspects—rather similar to the situation in Russia. We claim that these similarities between the two countries are predominantly determined by the type of elite formation and configuration, i.e. a high level of elite reproduction and ideological hegemony of one political faction that led to development of institutional setting with a number of ‘extractive’ characteristics.

Elite Profile and Type of Institutional Transformation: Comparison of Russia and Slovenia

Research in Social Change

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Russia and Slovenia are in many aspects very dissimilar countries. The process of systemic change in the post-communist period was also usually assessed...

Elite Profile and Type of Institutional Transformation: Comparison of Russia and Slovenia

Article Category: Original Scientific Article

Published Online: Dec 31, 2021

Page range: 129 - 139

DOI: https://doi.org/10.2478/rsc-2021-0014

Keywords

© 2021 Lea Prijon et al., published by Sciendo

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.