The Inﬂuence of Power Interest Groups(Siloviki) on Economic Productivity in Non-Democratic Regimes
This article examines the problem of the relationship between the importance of power interest groups in non-democratic regimes and the productivity of said regimes’ economies. The authors propose an original theoretical model using the advancements made by securitization theory to trace the mechanism of the inﬂuence of the “siloviki” (highly-placed security service personnel) on the economic development of states in the absence of institutional and social restrictions. Based on the theoretical model, a quantitative index of the inﬂuence of the siloviki is proposed that combines a set of institutional and political variables. In order to identify the relationship between the index of the siloviki’s inﬂuence and economic development, a set of statistical methods is used: ﬁxed-eﬀect panel regressions and discontinuous regressions. The results of these calculations show a stable negative impact of power interest groups on the productivity of an economy.