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

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.