Democracy, Size of Bureaucracy, and Economic Growth : Evidence from Russian Regions

The paper considers the impact of political institutions on economic growth applying the case of Russian regions in 2000-2004. First, it studies the influence of democracy on the economic performance, providing evidence for non-linear relation between democracy and economic growth. Regions with high level of democracy, as well as strong autocracies, perform better than hybrid regimes. Second, the paper considers the influence of the size of bureaucracy on economic outcomes and rather confirms the "grabbing hand" view on bureaucracy than the Weberian ideas: in Russia increase of the size of bureaucracy is associated with a decline of economic performance. Moreover, it analyzes the potential interaction between political regime and the size of bureaucracy as factors of economic growth, but does not establish any robust results