IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/kap/pubcho/v130y2007i3p437-456.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Why party and how much? The Soviet State and the party finance

Author

Listed:
  • Eugenia Belova
  • Valery Lazarev

Abstract

Archival data on annual budgets of the Communist party shed light on how this cornerstone Soviet institution was maintained and on the party-state relationships in a one-party polity. The party depended on subsidies from the state budget until the mid-1950s and became largely self-financed afterwards. The costs of maintaining the party were significant compared to other branches of government. We consider three models of the party – “party-agent”, “party-ruler” and “party-political club” – to study the evolution of the party’s institutional role and find that by the 1950s, the party transforms from an economic agent of the state into an increasingly autonomous institution. Copyright Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2007

Suggested Citation

  • Eugenia Belova & Valery Lazarev, 2007. "Why party and how much? The Soviet State and the party finance," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 130(3), pages 437-456, March.
    • Handle: RePEc:kap:pubcho:v:130:y:2007:i:3:p:437-456
    DOI: 10.1007/s11127-006-9096-y
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1007/s11127-006-9096-y
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1007/s11127-006-9096-y?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Martin C. McGuire & Mancur Olson, 1998. "The Economics of Autocracy and Majority Rule: The Invisible Hand and the Use of Force," International Economic Association Series, in: Silvio Borner & Martin Paldam (ed.), The Political Dimension of Economic Growth, chapter 3, pages 38-73, Palgrave Macmillan.
    2. Ferrero, Mario, 2001. "Political exchange in mass party regimes and the transition from socialism," Economic Systems, Elsevier, vol. 25(4), pages 365-379, December.
    3. Valery Lazarev, 2005. "Economics of One-Party State: Promotion Incentives and Support for the Soviet Regime1," Comparative Economic Studies, Palgrave Macmillan;Association for Comparative Economic Studies, vol. 47(2), pages 346-363, June.
    4. Igor Birman, 1980. "The financial crisis in the USSR," Europe-Asia Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 32(1), pages 84-105.
    5. Anderson, Gary M & Boettke, Peter J, 1997. "Soviet Venality: A Rent-Seeking Model of the Communist State," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 93(1-2), pages 37-53, October.
    6. Lazarev, Valery & Gregory, Paul, 2003. "Commissars and cars: A case study in the political economy of dictatorship," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 31(1), pages 1-19, March.
    7. Dmitriy Gershenson & Herschel I. Grossman, 2001. "Cooption and Repression in the Soviet Union," Economics and Politics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 13(1), pages 31-47, March.
    8. Valery Lazarev & Paul R. Gregory, 2002. "The wheels of a command economy: allocating Soviet vehicles[Research f]," Economic History Review, Economic History Society, vol. 55(2), pages 324-348, May.
    9. Schnytzer, Adi & Sustersic, Janez, 1998. "Why Join the Party in a One-Party System?: Popularity versus Political Exchange," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 94(1-2), pages 117-134, January.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Lazarev, Valery, 2007. "Political labor market, government policy, and stability of a non-democratic regime," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 35(3), pages 546-563, September.
    2. John Bishop & Haiyong Liu, 2008. "Liberalization and rent-seeking in China’s labor market," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 135(3), pages 151-164, June.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Lazarev, Valery, 2007. "Political labor market, government policy, and stability of a non-democratic regime," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 35(3), pages 546-563, September.
    2. Petros Sekeris, 2011. "Endogenous elites: power structure and patron-client relationships," Economics of Governance, Springer, vol. 12(3), pages 237-258, September.
    3. Valery Lazarev, 2004. "Political Rents, Promotion Incentives, and Support for a Non-Democratic Regime," Working Papers 882, Economic Growth Center, Yale University.
    4. Georgy Egorov & Konstantin Sonin, 2011. "Dictators And Their Viziers: Endogenizing The Loyalty–Competence Trade‐Off," Journal of the European Economic Association, European Economic Association, vol. 9(5), pages 903-930, October.
    5. Markevich, Andrei, 2007. "The Dictator’s Dilemma : to Punish or to Assist? Plan Failures and Interventions under Stalin," The Warwick Economics Research Paper Series (TWERPS) 816, University of Warwick, Department of Economics.
    6. Jim Rose & Simon Hay, 2001. "Three Steps Towards More Effective Development Assistance," Treasury Working Paper Series 01/26, New Zealand Treasury.
    7. Libman, Alexander, 2009. "Essays on Asymmetric Federalism," MPRA Paper 21591, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    8. Peter J. Boettke & Rosolino A. Candela, 2020. "Productive specialization, peaceful cooperation and the problem of the predatory state: lessons from comparative historical political economy," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 182(3), pages 331-352, March.
    9. Georgy Egorov & Konstantin Sonin, 2024. "The Political Economics of Non-democracy," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 62(2), pages 594-636, June.
    10. Ladislava Grochova & Tomas Otahal, 2011. "Corruption, Rule of Law, and Economic Efficiency: Selected Anecdotic Evidence of Bureaucratic Corruption from the Czech and Slovak Republics," MENDELU Working Papers in Business and Economics 2011-13, Mendel University in Brno, Faculty of Business and Economics.
    11. Lotta Moberg & Vlad Tarko, 2021. "Special economic zones and liberalization avalanches," Journal of Entrepreneurship and Public Policy, Emerald Group Publishing Limited, vol. 10(1), pages 120-139, February.
    12. Congleton, Roger D. & Lee, Sanghack, 2009. "Efficient mercantilism? Revenue-maximizing monopoly policies as Ramsey taxation," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 25(1), pages 102-114, March.
    13. Mare Sarr & Erwin Bulte & Chris Meissner & Tim Swanson, 2011. "On the looting of nations," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 148(3), pages 353-380, September.
    14. Nahapetyan Yervand, 2019. "The benefits of the Velvet Revolution in Armenia: Estimation of the short-term economic gains using deep neural networks," Central European Economic Journal, Sciendo, vol. 6(53), pages 286-303, January.
    15. Pedro Naso & Erwin Bulte & Tim Swanson, 2017. "Can there be benefits from competing legal regimes? The impact of legal pluralism in post-conflict Sierra Leone," CIES Research Paper series 56-2017, Centre for International Environmental Studies, The Graduate Institute.
    16. Bethencourt, Carlos & Perera-Tallo, Fernando, 2020. "Human Capital, Economic Growth, and Public Expenditure," ADBI Working Papers 1066, Asian Development Bank Institute.
    17. Chan, Kenneth S. & Laffargue, Jean-Pierre, 2016. "Plunder and tribute in a Malthusian world," Mathematical Social Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 84(C), pages 138-150.
    18. Gregory, Paul R. & Schröder, Philipp J.H. & Sonin, Konstantin, 2011. "Rational dictators and the killing of innocents: Data from Stalin's archives," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 39(1), pages 34-42, March.
    19. Tonis Alexander, 2002. "Privileges for Enterprises: Efficient Discrimination or Room for Abuse?," EERC Working Paper Series 02-01e, EERC Research Network, Russia and CIS.
    20. Adamson, Jordan, 2020. "Political institutions, resources, and war: Theory and evidence from ancient Rome," Explorations in Economic History, Elsevier, vol. 76(C).

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:kap:pubcho:v:130:y:2007:i:3:p:437-456. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.