Intergovernmental bargaining in multilevel autocracies: the case of the 2018 FIFA World Cup Russia

ABSTRACT

This paper studies intergovernmental bargaining in multilevel electoral autocracies, focusing on the case of the 2018 FIFA World Cup held in Russia. Qualitative Comparative Analysis of 14 cases reveals that well-connected political elites were able to secure the right for their regions to host the championship and, as a result, to receive additional transfers from the centre. While previous studies find that intergovernmental bargaining in multilevel electoral autocracies is determined by the ability of sub-national elites to mobilize voters, this study shows that regional elites’ political connections shape the distribution of politically sensitive transfers. However, as control over the electoral arena remains vital for national regime survival, it is politically connected elites who are also able to deliver electoral support that render the best service to the regime. These results capture the complexity in the functioning of multilevel authoritarian systems and suggest that intergovernmental bargaining may contribute to the longevity of the national regime.

KEYWORDS:

• federalism
• territorial politics
• multilevel governance
• authoritarianism
• Russia
• Qualitative Comparative Analysis

INTRODUCTION

In multilevel territorial systems the national political regime largely shapes intergovernmental bargaining. In democracies, bargaining between the governments at different levels tends to take place within formal state structures as sub-national elites are embedded into a system of formal power-sharing institutions (Filippov et al., 2004; Tafel, 2011). By contrast, power-sharing mechanisms in autocracies are much more informal. Since autocracies have no independent authority that can enforce agreements among the key political actors, it is the strength and unity of elite networks supporting the autocrat that are crucial for the stability of the regime (Bueno de Mesquita et al., 2003; Magaloni, 2008). These informal elite networks, however, undermine the efficiency and legitimacy of formal institutions in general and, more specifically, institutional linkages between the centre and the regions. Furthermore, in multilevel electoral autocracies, the autocrat faces the challenge of winning elections on a regular basis. Since winning elections and winning them well is vital for regime survival, the national autocrat largely depends on sub-national elites who mobilize voters on behalf of the regime (Reuter & Robertson, 2012). As a result, a multilevel territorial structure in electoral authoritarian regimes generates informal bargaining that national and sub-national elites fully exploit, which often concerns the allocation of federal resources (Kropp, 2019). On the one hand, taking into account the importance of informal elite networks, we may expect the most connected elites to receive more funds from the centre. On the other hand, since the autocrat is dependent on sub-national elites during national elections, we may expect the autocrat to reward politically loyal elites.

The present paper evaluates these two logics of intergovernmental bargaining studying the case of Russia, a multilevel autocracy that regularly holds national elections (Golosov, 2011). Their outcome is largely dependant on the ability of regional elites to mobilize voters of behalf of the regime (Reuter & Robertson, 2012). At the same time, the system of intergovernmental grants in Russia is sufficiently discretionary and, therefore, the distribution of federal transfers is often subjected to political bargaining (Frye et al., 2015; Sharafutdinova & Turovsky, 2017). In addition to formal intergovernmental transfers, the Russian government regularly allocates funds through direct governmental spending to finance the construction of large infrastructural projects (Libman & Rochlitz, 2019, p. 25). These funds benefit the regional elites where the projects are located and provide vast opportunities for rent-seeking (Orttung & Zhemukhov, 2014; Turovsky & Gaivoronsky, 2017). For example, the 2014 Sochi Olympics became the most costly Olympic Games ever (Golubchikov, 2016). They were largely financed from the federal budget. In 2013, almost a quarter of all federal investments targeted Krasnodar Krai that hosted the Olympics (Zubarevich, 2018b, p. 375). In 2018, the FIFA World Cup took place in Russia. It has been similarly recognized as the most expensive in the championship’s history (RBK, 2018b). Following Russia’s selection as its venue, some regional governors started competing for obtaining the right for their region to host the FIFA World Cup games (Kosinov, 2011). Out of fourteen initially nominated venues, eleven were selected to host the championship. The results of the selection process, however, came as a surprise for many observers as the city of Krasnodar, with two football clubs playing in the Russian Premier League, was not selected, while two other cities, Saransk and Volgograd, which have none, were selected (Popov & Protsenko, 2012). Given that the chosen localities received a large amount of transfers that are sensitive to intergovernmental bargaining, this paper raises the following research question: What are the factors accounting for the choice of venues for the 2018 FIFA World Cup in Russia?

The study employs Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA), which represents a novel procedure for ‘identifying and generalizing about the causes of outcomes in individual cases and sets of comparable cases’ (Mahoney, 2010, p. 133; Ragin, 1987). In addition, it is appropriate for the structural comparison of a medium number of cases and can reveal multiple paths leading to the same outcome. Qualitative Comparative Analysis of 14 cases yields strong evidence supporting the political connections logic of intergovernmental bargaining in Russia and suggesting that well-connected political elites were able to secure the right for their regions to host the championship and, as a result, to receive additional transfers from the centre. In addition, the case of Saransk in the Republic of Mordovia suggests that the delivery of high voting results at national elections enhanced the lobbying power of its executive. Therefore, by allocating funds in favour of those politically connected elites who can also deliver electoral support to the regime, the centre creates an effective mechanism for the stability of the regime. On the other hand, the case of Kaliningrad Oblast indicates that its politically connected governor was able to secure for the region the right to host the World Cup, despite his failure to deliver votes to the regime. As control over the electoral arena remains essential for national regime survival, the reward of politically connected elites who are not able to mobilize voters is a trade-off that may compromise the stability of the regime in the long run. The centre seems to be well aware of this challenge, as the governor of Kaliningrad Oblast was replaced after serving in office only one term. While previous accounts pointed out that intergovernmental bargaining and territorial politics in Russia is connected to the ability of sub-national elites to provide political support to the regime (Golosov, 2011; Libman & Rochlitz, 2019; Reisinger & Moraski, 2017; Reuter, 2013), this study finds that political connections of sub-national elites have also shaped informal bargaining regarding the distribution of politically sensitive transfers. Overall, these results shed light on the logic of intergovernmental bargaining in multilevel electoral autocracies in general and territorial politics in Russia more specifically.

Additionally, this analysis contributes to the scholarship on the methodology of studying multilevel politics. Set-theoretic reasoning has been present in the literature on federalism and multilevel governance since Riker (1964).¹ Today, with the analytical leverage of Qualitative Comparative Analysis (Ragin, 1987) and the development of specialized software (Dusa, 2019; Oana & Schneider, 2018), researchers studying territorial politics are able to assess the hypotheses of necessity and sufficiency. This paper represents one of the first attempts to utilize QCA for the study of centre-region relations in Russia. Its findings suggest that this methodology is able to reveal hidden complexities in the functioning of multilevel territorial systems.

The paper is structured as follows. The next section outlines two logics of elite bargaining in multilevel authoritarian systems. The second section provides some background about bargaining over federal transfers in Russia. The third section theorizes the conditions of intergovernmental bargaining in Russia. The fourth section describes the methodology and data. The fifth section presents and discusses the results. The final section concludes.

INTERGOVERNMENTAL BARGAINING IN MULTILEVEL AUTHORITARIAN SYSTEMS

In multilevel territorial systems, the distribution of competencies, powers, and responsibilities, as well as resources between the centre and lower-level governments, is traditionally perceived as a result of bargaining between them (Falleti, 2005; Riker, 1964). Different institutional arenas accommodate the debates over the allocation of intergovernmental authority among central and sub-national politicians (Filippov et al., 2004; Tafel, 2011). These institutional arenas represent policy-making sites with certain functions, actor configurations, and rules of interaction (Behnke et al., 2019). Being shaped by individual interactions, they are not always congruent with formal institutions (Benz, 2019). The territorial regime that refers to how politics is organized across territory (Agnew, 2013) is largely embedded into the national political regime, which determines the power-sharing mechanisms between the national and sub-national actors (Gibson, 2012).

Federal bargains in democracies represent an agreement between national and sub-national politicians regarding their competencies and the rules that will structure their interactions in the future. The debates over the allocation of intergovernmental authority among federal and sub-national politicians in democracies tend to take place within formally established institutions.² Institutionalized bargaining concerns the distribution of the costs and benefits of specific policies and reforms, as well as the definition of jurisdictional boundaries (Filippov et al., 2004, p. 77). Federal bargains are generally reflected in national constitutions, which protect the autonomy of the constituent units. The credibility of constitutional provisions requires the presence of a strong, independent constitutional court that can resolve disputes between the centre and regions (Obydenkova & Swenden, 2013; Rodden, 2004). Additionally, a multilevel party system, where political parties represent the platforms binding together political candidates, complements these institutional ‘safeguards’ (Bednar, 2008; Filippov & Shvetsova, 2013; Riker, 1964). Being embedded into a system of formal power-sharing institutions, sub-national politicians have a motivation to maintain the federal bargain.

Conventional theories of federalism question the possibility to conceptualize authoritarian settings as federal. Some argue that autocracies undermine the principle of vertical separation of powers, making the federal structure a mere formality (Benz & Sonnicksen, 2017; Livingston, 1956). On the one hand, the case of the Soviet Union indeed suggests that a vertically integrated party structure maintains a hierarchical concentration of power and resources and does not permit any territorial dispersion of power (Burgess & Gagnon, 2010). However, on the other hand, in his study of federalism in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Keil (2014, pp. 23–24) defining a ‘Socialist Tradition of Federalism’ highlights that ‘the application of federalism in the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia … took place outside of a democratic framework since it was undermined by one-party rule.’ According to Keil (2014, pp. 23–24), the key element of self-rule and shared-rule was not enforced in these countries because the regional and national executives ‘did not have opposite interests.’ The main implication of this ‘tradition’ was that the party secretaries had the possibility to champion greater autonomy for their regions via informal channels. As a result, some regions in the Soviet Union could enjoy ‘more rights, more funds and resources, and more independent ethnic policies’ (Filippov & Shvetsova, 1999, p. 67; Goff, 2021). The centralized power structure left extensive space for informal power-sharing, though it was not reflected in the Soviet constitution.

Intergovernmental bargaining helps to resolve the conflict of power-sharing in authoritarian multilevel systems, which ultimately shapes authoritarian politics (Svolik, 2012). In regimes with low transparency of decision-making, the role of personal connections is important. Personal connections may define who is promoted to higher positions. For example, Shih et al. (2012) find that the Chinese elites with political connections tend to take a higher rank in the Chinese Communist Party than elites without such connections. Personal connections in autocracies also constitute an informal channel for the exchange of information and the allocation of resources (Abramson & Rivera, 2016; Geddes et al., 2018). Furthermore, as there is no independent authority that can enforce agreements among the key players, it is the strength of elite networks supporting the autocrat that is crucial for national regime survival (Bueno de Mesquita et al., 2003; Magaloni, 2008). It is plausible that the autocrat may favour sub-national elites with extensive connections at the federal level. By distributing funds in favour of well-connected regional elites, the centre creates a mechanism for regime stability, making sub-national elites interested in the preservation of a system that enables them to receive additional resources from the centre.

Authoritarian regimes today are quite sophisticated in their organization. They often combine an authoritarian distribution of power with the institutions that are normally associated with democracy: elections, legislatures, and political parties (Levitsky & Way, 2002; Schedler, 2006). A multilevel territorial structure in electoral autocracies generates additional opportunities for intergovernmental bargaining that both regional and sub-national politicians can exploit. In electoral autocracies, regime longevity is dependent upon comfortably winning regular elections. Therefore, the national autocrat depends on sub-national elites who mobilize voters on behalf of the regime (Reuter & Robertson, 2012, p. 1026). Consequently, sub-national elites can use elections as a bargaining tool with the centre to get access to resources in return for voter mobilization. In this case, intergovernmental bargaining is informally connected to the political loyalty of sub-national elites and their ability to mobilize voters on behalf of the regime. As a result, intergovernmental bargaining in multilevel electoral autocracies may eventually contribute to national regime survival.

BARGAINING OVER INTERGOVERNMENTAL TRANSFERS IN RUSSIA

The Russian Federation is an appropriate case to evaluate these two logics of intergovernmental bargaining because it is a multilevel electoral autocracy with a sufficiently discretionary system of the distribution of federal transfers (Golosov, 2011; Sharafutdinova & Turovsky, 2017). Despite centralization of fiscal flows in the early 2000s and the subsequent increased dependence of regional governments on federal transfers, elites in some regions have developed various lobbying strategies and mechanisms for attracting additional resources from the centre (Sharafutdinova & Turovsky, 2017). As a result, intergovernmental bargaining has influenced the distribution of a portion of discretionary grants³ and subsidies,⁴ often in a non-transparent manner (Obydenkova & Swenden, 2013; Zubarevich, 2018a). According to Turovsky and Gaivoronsky (2017, pp. 538–539), between 2006 and 2015, such Russian regions as the republics of Chechnya, Tatarstan, Bashkortostan as well as Krasnodar Krai, Moscow Oblast, Krasnoyarsk Krai, Moscow, Primorsky Krai, along with Rostov and Belgorod oblasts were among the top recipients of such transfers.

In addition to formal federal transfers, the central government in Russia allocates funds to finance large infrastructural projects. Such funds, in fact, represent ‘hidden transfers’ as they benefit the regions where the projects are located (Libman & Rochlitz, 2019, p. 25). Over the last decade, the federal government in Russia had been committed to the implementation of ‘megaprojects’ such as the 2012 APEC summit in Vladivostok, the 2014 Sochi Olympics, and the 2018 FIFA World Cup. As these events aim to boost the development of certain regions, they involve large federal investments, which often go beyond the direct support of the event. For example, two bridges were newly constructed in Vladivostok as a part of preparations for the APEC summit that took place in a newly built campus of the Eastern Federal University on Russky Island (Libman & Rochlitz, 2019, p. 25). Due to preparations for this summit, Primorsky Krai received 12 per cent of all funds from the federal budget to the Russian regions in 2011 (Zubarevich, 2018b, p. 375).

There is no surprise that regional governments compete for the organization of such events. Their preparation involves a large amount of transfers and, therefore, provides regional elites with vast opportunities for rent-seeking (Orttung & Zhemukhov, 2014; Turovsky & Gaivoronsky, 2017). For example, the 2014 Sochi Olympics were the most costly Olympic Games ever, with Krasnodar Krai (the region where the games were hosted) receiving 23 per cent of all federal investments in 2013 (Golubchikov, 2016; Kresova & Prutz, 2014; Zubarevich, 2018b). In 2018, the FIFA World Cup took place in Russia. It similarly turned out to be the most expensive in history (RBK, 2018b). The case of the FIFA World Cup is striking as Russia’s selection as a venue for the championship implied that more than ten regions would be selected as its hosts.

The initial nomination of the candidate venues was decided in 2009. In the beginning of the year, the Russian Football Union announced that Russia would bid for hosting the FIFA World Cup (RBK, 2018a). In May, prime-minister, Vladimir Putin during his meeting with the sports minister, Vitaly Mutko, officially supported this idea and asked Mutko to prepare an official bid (Kommersant, 2009). In turn, Mutko stated that the World Cup could be potentially hosted by such cities in the southern part of the country as Sochi, Krasnodar, and Rostov-on-Don. According to Mutko, Sochi was a good candidate as following the 2014 Olympics it would have all necessary infrastructure including the stadium. Krasnodar could fit as well because it is a big city with a football club playing in the Russian Premier League. Rostov-on-Don is another big city, where the reconstruction of the stadium had been already on-going. Mutko also named several potential venues in the central part of the country: Moscow, Moscow Oblast, and Saint Petersburg. He highlighted that Moscow had already had a ‘Luzhniki’ stadium and it would be possible to build another new stadium there as well as in Moscow Oblast. The construction of the new stadium in Saint Petersburg had already started and was set to be completed by the end of 2011 or the beginning of 2012. In addition, Mutko mentioned two other cities, Yaroslavl and Kazan. At that time, Yaroslavl had been preparing for the celebration of its millennium date and its stadium had been under reconstruction. In turn, Kazan would host the Universiade in 2013 and, consequently, would have the required sports infrastructure as well. Finally, Mutko noted that there were also such cities as Samara, Volgograd, Saransk, and Yekaterinburg that potentially could host the championship.⁵ As a result, initially fourteen candidate venues located in the European part of the country have been proposed for hosting the World Cup. Moscow Oblast, however, soon withdrew from the competition because of the disagreements between its governor and the Local Organizing Committee regarding the need to construct a new stadium in the region (Kommersant, 2011b). In the end, the Russian bid included thirteen candidates. In December 2010, when the FIFA Selection Committee chose Russia as the host of the 2018 World Cup, officials in the proposed venues started intensive preparations.

In May 2011, during a visit to Russia, FIFA President, Joseph Blatter, suggested that thirteen hosting venues would be too many and advised reducing their number to a maximum of twelve. In turn, Putin, following his meeting with Blatter, reassured that the number of the hosts would not be changed and none of the candidates would be ruled out (Kommersant, 2011a). Nevertheless, soon it became clear that some of the nominees had to be excluded. In one of his interviews, Mutko, as a chair of the Local Organizing Committee, emphasized that out of thirteen candidates, the selection of only four (Moscow, Saint Petersburg, Kazan, and Sochi) was guaranteed. He also pointed out that the remaining candidates were expected to submit monthly updates to the Organizing Committee regarding their progress with the preparations for the championship (Expert, 2011). Furthermore, Mutko indicated that the final selection would be made based on mutual consultations with the FIFA officials but then added that ‘we would make a final choice that the FIFA Executive Committee would approve’ (Sovetskii Sport, 2011). This statement suggests that while the FIFA Inspection Commission visited and formally assessed the candidate cities, it is the Russian officials but not the FIFA bureaucrats who decided the final selection. One week preceding the official announcement of the selected venues, Mutko named Saransk, Volgograd, Yaroslavl, Kaliningrad, and Rostov as the most problematic candidates. He suggested that two out of these five were highly likely not be selected (Expert South, 2012). In the end, only Yaroslavl was excluded from this list, along with Krasnodar, which had been regarded as a most likely candidate. Given this counter-intuitive outcome of the selection along with the fact that the chosen localities received a large amount of federal transfers, this study aims to explain the selection of venues for the 2018 FIFA World Cup held in Russia.

CONDITIONS OF INTERGOVERNMENTAL BARGAINING IN RUSSIA

Existing studies suggest that sub-national elites with strong links to the Kremlin compete for obtaining the right for their regions to host large-scale events (e.g., Turovsky & Gaivoronsky, 2017). Some regional elites consciously cultivate their relations with the centre, maintaining regular contacts with federal executives and demonstrating their capacity to build large infrastructural projects (Sharafutdinova & Turovsky, 2017). The governors with extensive networks in the Presidential Administration are able to reach not only federal officials but directly the president. Politically connected governors are more ‘likely to do better in quiet, intra-elite bargaining than their counterparts without such connections’ (Robertson, 2007, p. 788). Empirical studies confirm that the governors with strong lobbying skills and extensive networks are successful in bringing additional transfers to the region (Turovsky & Gaivoronsky, 2017). The political connections logic of intergovernmental bargaining then suggests that strong administrative capacity of the regional governments in combination with the lobbying power of governors enhances the ability of sub-national elites to secure additional funds from the federal budget.

It is also argued that the Kremlin rewards the sub-national elites for their loyalty. On the one hand, loyalty refers to the ability of regional elites to deliver high voting results (Gilev, 2017; Hale, 2003; Libman & Rochlitz, 2019). Previous studies (Golosov, 2011; Reisinger & Moraski, 2017; Reuter & Robertson, 2012) show that the ability of sub-national elites to mobilize voters plays an important role in intra-elite bargaining in Russia. Furthermore, Frye et al. (2015) find that electoral politics matters for transfers and demonstrate that the centre tends to transfer more funds to the regions, delivering more votes to the regime at national elections. Electoral incentives tend to matter more in the periods before the elections and less after the elections (Reuter & Robertson, 2012). Taking into account the economic and financial crisis of 2008–2009 as well as the massive protests of 2011-2012, it is plausible that the centre also rewards elites that are able to control protest activity in their regions, as by doing so they contribute to the political stability of the regime (Gel’man, 2010; Robertson, 2007). As a result, the rewarding loyalty logic of intergovernmental bargaining posits that the ability of the regional elites to deliver high voting results and to keep stability in the regions is rewarded by the centrer.

METHOD, DATA AND CALIBRATION

Method

To evaluate these two logics of intergovernmental bargaining, the paper employs Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA). This method is able to reveal necessary and sufficient conditions or combinations of conditions accounting for the outcome (Ragin, 1987). QCA is appropriate for the structural comparison of a medium number of cases and is able to reveal multiple paths leading to the outcome. QCA emphasizes causal complexity, which unfolds through equifinality, conjunctural causation, and asymmetry (Schneider & Wagemann, 2012). Equifinality means that several conditions or combinations of conditions can lead to the same outcome. Therefore, there might be several sufficient paths to the outcome (Anisin, 2018; Keating, 2018). Conjunctural causation denotes that a single condition may produce the outcome only in a combination with other conditions and may not lead to the outcome on its own. Asymmetry implies that the absence of conditions producing the outcome may not lead to the absence of the outcome. As a result, the analysis of the outcome and its absence is performed separately. Asymmetry also suggests multifinality, meaning that the same condition can produce different outcomes depending on the context (Oana et al., 2021).

It is important that QCA does not operate on existing data but relies on membership scores of cases in sets. The raw data are first collected and then calibrated or transformed into membership scores of cases in sets. This study employs fuzzy-set QCA (fsQCA), which establishes qualitative differences in kind and in degree among the cases and differentiates not only between full membership and full non-membership of cases in sets but also between their partial membership and partial non-membership in sets (Ragin, 2000).

Calibration of the outcome, selection as a World Cup venue

The outcome of this study is the selection as a World Cup venue, hereafter denoted as SEL. The starting point of the analysis is January 2007, two years preceding the announcement by the Russian Football Union that Russia would bid for hosting the FIFA World Cup (RBK, 2018a). In December 2010, the FIFA Selection Committee announced Russia as a host of the 2018 championship, with the list of selected venues in Russia being finalised in September 2012, which is the endpoint of the analysis. The unit of analysis in the study is a region and not a city because, while individual cities were competing for the right to host the event, it was regional rather than city officials that actually negotiated with the centre. As two cities, Krasnodar and Sochi, were nominated from the same region (Krasnodar Krai), they are labelled in the empirical analysis as KDA I and KDA II, respectively. The population includes both positive and negative cases, in other words, the ones that were selected to host the FIFA World Cup games and the ones that were not. Initially, fourteen venues were proposed by the Russian Football Union in January 2009. They were arranged in five clusters, including (1) the Northern-Western cluster (Saint Petersburg and Kaliningrad), (2) the central cluster (Moscow and Podol’sk in Moscow Oblast), (3) the Volga cluster (Yaroslavl, Nizhniy Novgorod, Samara, and Volgograd as well as Kazan and Saransk in the republics of Tatarstan and Mordovia, respectively), (4) the Southern cluster (Krasnodar, Sochi, and Rostov-on-Don), and (5) the Ural cluster (Yekaterinburg in Sverdlovsk Oblast).

Along with the regions that were nominated, the heads of three other regions (Voronezh Oblast, the republics of Chechnya and Dagestan) expressed explicit interest in hosting the games. The governor of Voronezh Oblast, Aleksey Gordeev, appealed to federal officials, asking them to consider the region as a potential venue for the World Cup (Kosinov, 2011). The president of Chechnya, Ramzan Kadyrov, similarly suggested that some football games could take place in Grozny, the capital of the republic, as its newly constructed 30,000-seat stadium, ‘Akhmat Arena’, was planned to be opened in May 2011 (Ponomarev, 2011). The president of Dagestan, Magomedsalam Magomedov, also stated that the republic could be another venue for the World Cup because the new owner of the Anzhi football club, Suleiman Kerimov, was ready to invest in the construction of a new stadium in the republic (Ponomarev, 2011). The presidential envoy in the North Caucasus, Aleksandr Khloponin, even asked the Local Organizing Committee to consult with FIFA officials regarding the possibility to include Dagestan in the list of candidate venues for hosting the World Cup. However, later Khloponin reported that the inclusion of republic was not possible because of security considerations (Moi Dagestan, 2011). Since these three regions had not been officially nominated to host the event, they are not included in the analysis. As a result, the population consists of fourteen venues proposed as potential hosts in 2009.

To assign set membership scores to cases in the outcome set, I followed a ‘theory-guided calibration’ strategy, opting for a four-value fuzzy scale of 0, 0.33, 0.67, and 1. According to this scale, 0 refers to full non-membership, 0.33 denotes partial non-membership, 0.67 indicates partial membership, and 1 means full membership in the set (Oana et al., 2021; Ragin, 2009). Moscow Oblast, which was initially in the Russian bid, but later withdrew, receives a score of 0. The reason for its withdrawal was the disagreement between the Local Organizing Committee and the regional government concerning the need to construct a new 40,000 seat stadium. The authorities proposed to renovate existing facilities but the Organizing Committee rejected their proposal (Kommersant, 2011b). Yaroslavl Oblast as well as Krasnodar Krai (the city of Krasnodar), which were nominated yet did not pass the final selection procedure, are assigned a score of 0.33. The primarily candidates for hosting the games were Moscow, Saint-Petersburg, Tatarstan (Kazan) and Krasnodar Krai (Sochi). In 2017, the FIFA Confederations Cup took place there. The head of the Local Organizing Committee, Vitaly Mutko, repeatedly named them as ‘the main pillars of the Russian bid’ (Sport-Express, 2011). As a result, Moscow, Saint-Petersburg, Tatarstan, and Krasnodar Krai (Sochi) receive a score of 1. The remaining candidates that were selected, namely, Samara, Rostov, Volgograd, Kaliningrad, Nizhniy Novgorod, and Sverdlovsk oblasts as well as Saransk in the Republic of Mordovia, get a score of 0.67.

Calibration of the conditions

Strong administrative capacity of the regional governments (CAP)

In previous studies, administrative capacity has been operationalized as voter turnout since ‘getting a high turnout in Russia is often associated with administrative pressure and mobilization’ (Sharafutdinova & Turovsky, 2017, p. 168). This operationalization seems insufficient in the case of the FIFA World Cup as its preparation, on the one hand, required capacity to attract federal funds to finance sports projects. On the other hand, it required a proven ability to complete sports-related projects on time. Therefore, I used the data by the Ministry of Sports on the fulfillment of sports-related federal targeted programs in the regions in the period of 2006-2013.⁶ In addition, I collected the data about newly constructed sports venues starting from November 2011, using the all-Russian register of sports facilities.⁷ The cases with low, moderate, high, and very high administrative capacity received a score of 0, 0.33, 0.67, and 1, correspondingly. For example, Kaliningrad Oblast was assigned a score of 0, as only seven projects were completed there during the period of 2007-2012. Yaroslavl Oblast received a score of 0.33 with 19 projects. Rostov and Nizhnyi Novgorod oblasts got a score of 0.67 with 26 and 28 projects, respectively. Finally, the republics of Tatarstan and Mordovia were assigned a score of 1 with more than forty completed projects.

The lobbying power of governors (LOB)

There are several measures for assessing the lobbying power of governors. For example, Nezavisimaya Gazeta publishes expert evaluations of how effectively regional executives have been lobbying for their regions, in particular, by influencing decisions of the central government related to the financial support of the regions (Petrov & Nazrullaeva, 2018, p. 122). Another indicator is the tenure of governors, as ‘the more time a governor spends in power, the more he/she could be expected to learn about the various lobbying mechanisms and acquire necessary connections’ (Sharafutdinova & Turovsky, 2017, p. 167). These indicators, however, do not account for gubernatorial turnover. Sharafutdinova and Turovsky (2017) use visits of federal officials to the regions as a proxy for the lobbying capacity of governors. This measure is also problematic as federal officials visit regions for a variety of reasons including emergencies. Petrov and Nazrullaeva (2018, p. 128) highlight that ‘much of the most important lobbying occurs during meetings with the president – either in Moscow or in the regions.’ This indicator best captures the ability of governors to reach the president. Therefore, using the official presidential website,⁸ I collected data on bilateral meetings between the governors of selected regions and the president in either one of the presidential residences or during his visits to the regions. After that, I assigned fuzzy-set membership scores of 0, 0.33, 0.67, and 1 to the regions whose governors had rare, occasional, regular, and frequent meetings, respectively. For example, Yaroslavl, Moscow, Kaliningrad oblasts, and Saint Petersburg received a score of 0, 0.33, 0.67, and 1 with 2, 4, 6, and more than 8 meetings, respectively.

The ability of regional elites to deliver high voting results (VOT)

Presidential and parliamentary elections are held nation-wide and are of primary interest to the centre. Therefore, I first collected data on the share of votes for Dmitry Medvedev in the 2008 and Vladimir Putin in the 2012 presidential elections, as well as on the share of votes for the United Russia (Edinaya Rossiya) party in each region in the State Duma⁹ elections in 2007 and 2011. I used a public database on political elites and economic performance in Russia provided by the International Center for the Study of Institutions and Development (ICSID) of the Higher School of Economics in Moscow.¹⁰ Then, I calculated the mean and the median values and assigned a raw score to each case in each election round, having four rounds in total. If the share of votes for Dmitry Medvedev, Vladimir Putin, and United Russia is more than 50 percent, then the case gets a score of 1. If a share of votes is higher than both 50 percent and the national average, the case receives a score of 2. The mean value is selected as a benchmark because it is more restrictive in comparison with the median value.¹¹ As a result, the minimum score that the case has is 0, while the maximum score is 8. After that, I transformed this raw score into a fuzzy-set membership score. The cases with scores of 1 and 2; 3 and 4; 5 and 6; 7 and 8 were assigned fuzzy scores of 0, 0.33, 0.67, and 1, correspondingly. This means that to be regarded as a member of the set, the case should always display the share of votes that is higher than 50 percent and once or twice have a share of votes that is higher than the national average.

The ability of regional elites to keep stability (STAB)

Protest activity is taken as a proxy for political stability in the regions. The Russian protest event data set by Lankina¹² lists the main protests across Russia and provides information about their turnout. It contains data for the entire period under consideration; however, it seems to under-report protests’ turnout. The monitoring reports published by the Communist Party of the Russian Federation¹³ represent an alternative source of information on protest activity. They include information about political, social, and economic protests, and their turnout. Systematic data, however, are available only for the period of 2008-2012. I first collected the information about total protests’ turnout in each region. As the regions differ in their population, I calculated the number of total protest participants relative to the region’s population.¹⁴ Then, I assigned fuzzy-set membership scores of 0, 0.33, 0.67, and 1 to the cases with low, moderate, high, and very high protests’ turnout, respectively. These distinctions were made mainly based on the gaps in the data. For example, Volgograd and Kaliningrad oblasts, as well as Moscow, were assigned a score of 0, with the highest turnout exceeding 10 per cent of the population in these regions. Saint Petersburg received a score of 0.33, with protests’ turnout being more than 5 per cent but less than 10 per cent of its population. Rostov Oblast got a score of 0.67, with protests’ turnout being between 3 and 5 per cent of the population. Finally, Nizhny Novgorod and Sverdlovsk oblasts, together with the Republic of Tatarstan, were assigned a score of 1, with the lowest protest turnout of less than 3 per cent of their total population.¹⁵

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

The analysis of the outcome, selection as a World Cup venue

The first step in running Qualitative Comparative Analysis is the analysis of necessity.¹⁶ Necessity means that the outcome could not have been achieved without the condition. Empirically, the condition is considered necessary if it reaches a consistency threshold of at least 0.9 (Ragin, 2006). The analysis reveals that the lobbying power of governors is a necessary condition for the selection as a World Cup venue. It has a high consistency value of 0.965.¹⁷ The next step is the analysis of sufficiency. Sufficiency implies that the condition or the combination of conditions is present where the outcome is also present. The analysis is based on minimization of sufficient truth table rows, which together contain all logically possible combinations of conditions.¹⁸ Table 1 below displays the truth table representation of 14 cases in the outcome set and the condition sets. It reports only empirically covered rows and does not display so-called ‘logical remainder’ rows, for which no empirical evidence exists (Schneider & Wagemann, 2012).

Table 1. Truth table, outcome selection as a World Cup venue.

									Cases
Row	VOT	STAB	CAP	LOB	OUT	n	incl.	PRI	SEL	Not SEL
16	1	1	1	1	1	2	0.923	0.858	ROS TA	–
4	0	0	1	1	1	3	0.901	0.859	SAM SPE MOW	–
8	0	1	1	1	1	1	0.875	0.752	NIZ	–
2	0	0	0	1	1	2	0.858	0.754	VGG KAL	–
6	0	1	0	1	1	1	0.834	0.670	SVE	–
12	1	0	1	1	1	3	0.832	0.714	MO KDA II	KDA I
1	0	0	0	0	0	1	0.663	0.000	–	YAR
3	0	0	1	0	0	1	0.596	0.000	–	MOS

¹ Consistency threshold = 0.80, PRI threshold = 0.65.

The first column displays the row number as it appears in the software output. Columns two to five show the status of four conditions: 1 means ‘present’, 0 means ‘absent’. The column ‘OUT’ indicates if a given row is sufficient for the outcome, with 1 denoting sufficiency. The decision about the sufficiency threshold depends on the consistency score of each row shown in the column ‘incl.’ as well as on the PRI score displayed in the column ‘PRI’.¹⁹ It is recommended to include in the minimization procedure the rows with consistency scores of higher than or equal to 0.75 (Schneider & Wagemann, 2010, p. 10). Furthermore, recent recommendations suggest that truth table rows with a PRI value of lower than 0.50 should not be regarded sufficient (Oana et al., 2021). Following these guidelines, 0.80 is set as a consistency threshold and 0.65 as a PRI threshold in the analysis. The column ‘n’ displays how many cases belong to a given row. The column ‘Cases’ names them. The columns ‘SEL’ and ‘Not SEL’ indicate if the cases exhibit the outcome or its absence. The analysis produces conservative, parsimonious, and intermediate solution formulas. The conservative solution, reported in Table 2 below, is selected for substantive discussion as it provides richer evidence for interpretation.

Table 2. Conservative solution formula, outcome selection as a World Cup venue.

	Cons.	PRI	Raw coverage	Unique coverage	Typical cases	Deviant cases
vot*LOB +	0.942	0.911	0.572	0.144	VGG KAL SVE NIZ SAM SPE MOW	–
CAP*LOB	0.880	0.834	0.785	0.357	ROS MO TA KDAII NIZ SAM SPE MOW	KDAI
Overall solution	0.897	0.858	0.929

¹ Capital letters denote presence, small letters absence, * stands for logical AND, + for logical OR.

² Uniquely covered cases are in bold.

This formula consists of two sufficient combinations of conditions. The first combination is the inability of regional elites to deliver high electoral results combined with the lobbying power of governors (vot*LOB). The second combination is strong administrative capacity of the regional governments combined with the lobbying power of governors (CAP*LOB). The overall solution consistency is 0.897. The solution coverage, which indicates how much of the outcome is in line with the solution term, is 0.929. The consistency of the first combination (vot*LOB) is 0.942; its coverage is 0.572. The typical uniquely covered cases, the ones that belong to only one combination, are Volgograd, Kaliningrad, and Sverdlovsk oblasts. The consistency of the second combination (CAP*LOB) is 0.880; its coverage is 0.785. The typical uniquely covered cases include Rostov Oblast, the republics of Mordovia and Tatarstan along with Krasnodar Krai (Sochi). The deviant case is Krasnodar Krai (the city of Krasnodar). Four cases, Nizhniy Novgorod and Samara oblasts, Saint Petersburg and Moscow belong to both combinations of conditions.

The analysis of the outcome, non-selection as a World Cup venue

The analysis reveals that none of the four conditions in either presence or absence is necessary for the non-selection as a World Cup venue. For the analysis of sufficiency, 0.95 is set as a threshold for both consistency and PRI based on observable gaps in these scores. The conservative solution formula is selected for substantive interpretation because it provides richer evidence. It is reported in Table 3 below.

Table 3. Conservative solution formula, outcome non-selection as a World Cup venue.

	Cons.	PRI	Raw coverage	Unique coverage	Typical cases
vot*stab*lob	1.000	1.000	0.501	–	YAR MOS
Overall solution	1.000	1.000	0.501

¹ Small letters indicate absence, * stands for logical AND.

The solution formula includes one combination of conditions, that is, the inability of regional elites to deliver high electoral results and to keep stability in the region together with the lack of gubernatorial lobbying power (vot*stab*lob). The solution formula has perfect consistency of 1.000 and coverage of 0.501. The typical cases include Yaroslavl and Moscow oblasts. The results of the analysis are quite robust to modifications in the calibration, the case selection, and the consistency thresholds.²⁰

DISCUSSION OF THE RESULTS

The analysis reveals that the lobbying power of governors (LOB) was a necessary condition for the selection as a World Cup venue. Additionally, it detects two sufficient combinations of conditions (vot*LOB or CAP*LOB). These results are in line with the political connections logic of intergovernmental bargaining. They imply that well-connected regional elites were able to secure the right for their regions to host the championship and, consequently, receive substantial transfers from the centre. For example, the governor of Kaliningrad Oblast, Georgy Boos, had extensive networks at the federal level as he used to work in the government. Following his appointment as governor in 2005,²¹ Boos had regular meetings with the president. In August 2009, he officially joined Russia’s bid committee and participated in all international events promoting Russia’s bid (Khomenko, 2009). In addition, Boos had important informal ties with federal officials: the First Deputy Prime Minister, Igor Shuvalov, became a godfather to Boos’s daughter in July 2010 (REGNUM, 2010). Shuvalov was responsible for the preparations of Russia’s bid and was the head of the Russian delegation in Zurich in December 2010, where the winners of the 2018 and 2022 FIFA World Cup bids were announced. Despite being dismissed from the position of a governor in September 2010, Boos managed to secure for Kaliningrad the right to host the FIFA World Cup. This case supports the argument by Libman and Rochlitz (2019, p. 120) that the newly appointed ‘outsider’ governors (so-called Varangians) could successfully lobby for additional resources and federal support due to their extensive connections at the federal centre. More importantly, this case suggests that well-connected governors can have strong lobbying power even lacking the ability to deliver high electoral results at national elections (vot*LOB). This finding implies that the ability to deliver high voting results does not ultimately enhance governors’ lobbying power.

The Republic of Mordovia represents a different case. Its authorities successfully demonstrated their capacity to build sports facilities and organize large-scale sports events. For example, the 2011 international sports forum ‘Russia–Sports Nation’ with more than 3,500 participants took place in Mordovia. Next year, the republic hosted the World Cup of Race Walking. In addition, its head, Nikolay Merkushkin, was a part of Russia’s official delegation to Zurich in 2010. He had been in office as the head of the republic since 1995; however, in May 2012 he was appointed as governor of Samara Oblast, another region that was selected to host the championship. In an interview with a local newspaper, Merkushkin emphasized that he met three times with prime minister Putin and two times with president Medvedev before this decision was made. According to Merkushkin, when Putin asked him to move to Samara Oblast, he agreed but asked in return to keep Mordovia in the list of the FIFA World Cup venues (Voronina, 2012). The case of Mordovia indicates that the regional elites had to demonstrate strong administrative capacity as well as to be well-connected to the centre to be selected as a World Cup venue (CAP*LOB). However, it is important to note that under Merkushkin the republic delivered strikingly high results to the United Russia party, which received 91.6 percent of votes in the 2011 parliamentary elections. On the eve of the 2016 elections, Merkushkin famously stated that if the governor gives 97 percent to United Russia, the Kremlin would listen to him (Ivolgin, 2016). This statement implies that the ability of governors to deliver votes at national elections can actually increase their lobbying power.

Finally, while Sochi represents a typical case, the city of Krasnodar is a deviant case. The non-inclusion of the latter surprised many observers as it has never been mentioned as a problematic venue. Following the announcement of the selected venues, the chairman of the Local Organizing Committee, Vitaly Mutko, stated that the final choice was guided by the principle that one city is selected from one region (Popov & Protsenko, 2012). This principle was, however, never spelled out before the official announcement of the final venues. Actually, Krasnodar was one of the few nominated candidates that had a private investor, Sergey Galitsky, the owner of the Krasnodar football club. Galitsky was ready to co-finance the construction of the new stadium there.²² The city had also two football clubs playing in the Russian Premier League. After its non-selection, Galitsky wrote in his Twitter account: ‘the most soccer-mad city was shut out, I simply cannot believe that’ (Popov & Protsenko, 2012; The New York Times, 2018). The non-inclusion of Krasnodar clearly suggests that the selection process was accompanied by intense competition among the elites who lobbied for attracting additional resources to their regions. It provoked unpredictable power dynamics that eventually resulted in a paradoxical situation where a primary candidate for inclusion was actually excluded, while ‘outsiders’ got in.

CONCLUSION

This paper studied intergovernmental bargaining in electoral autocracies, focusing of the case of the 2018 FIFA World Cup held in Russia. Qualitative Comparative Analysis of 14 cases revealed that the lobbying power of governors was necessary for the selection as a World Cup venue. Furthermore, the lobbying power of governors, combined with either the inability of regional elites to deliver high electoral results or with strong administrative capacity of the regional governments, was sufficient for the selection as a World Cup venue. These results support the political connections logic of intergovernmental bargaining in multilevel electoral autocracies. They imply that well-connected political elites were able to obtain the right for their regions to host the championship and, as a result, to receive substantial funds from the centre.

While previous accounts (Golosov, 2011; Libman & Rochlitz, 2019; Reisinger & Moraski, 2017; Reuter, 2013) pointed out that intergovernmental bargaining in multilevel electoral autocracies is shaped by the ability of regional elites to mobilize voters on behalf of the regime, this study suggests that political loyalty cannot ultimately guarantee the receipt of intergovernmental transfers that are sensitive to intergovernmental bargaining. Instead, it is the political connections of sub-national elites that matter for obtaining such transfers. By allocating funds in favour of politically connected elites, the centre creates an additional mechanism for regime stability as sub-national elites become interested in the preservation of the system that enables them to secure additional federal resources.

However, since in electoral authoritarian regimes the control over the electoral arena remains essential for the longevity of the national regime, it is politically connected elites who are also able to provide electoral support that render the best service to the regime. In fact, distributing funds in favour of politically connected elites who are not able to deliver high electoral results, the centre faces a trade-off that may hinder the stability of the regime in the long run. Overall, these findings capture the complex logic of intergovernmental bargaining in multilevel electoral authoritarian regimes. They suggest that under certain conditions intergovernmental bargaining may contribute to the national regime’s survival.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I thank participants of the Second Ghent Russia Colloquium, the BOFIT research seminar, the 14th CEU Annual Doctoral Conference, the 8th Annual ICSID Conference as well as the anonymous referees and the journal editor for helpful comments and suggestions on earlier versions of this paper.

DATA AVAILABILITY STATEMENT

Supporting data including descriptive statistics, raw data and calibrated data set, additional tables and figures and the results of robustness tests are available at https://dataverse.harvard.edu/dataset.xhtml?persistentId=doi:10.7910/DVN/SF14TU

DISCLOSURE STATEMENT

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 Riker (1964, p. 12) argued that the two necessary conditions of the federal bargain are ‘the expansion condition’ and ‘the military condition.’ He also suggested that these two conditions together are sufficient (Riker, 1964, p. 13). However, at that time Riker was not able to assess the hypothesis of sufficiency and asserted only the hypothesis of necessity studying ‘all the instances of the creation of a federalism’ (Riker, 1964, p. 13).

2 At the same time, it is necessary to acknowledge that intergovernmental interactions in federal democracies can take place in informal setting as well. I thank an anonymous reviewer for highlighting this point.

3 Discretionary grants (dotatsii) include equalization grants (dotatsii na vyravnivanie) and extraordinary bailout grants (dotatsii na sbalansirovannost). The former are granted to underdeveloped and poor regions to reduce the gaps in the regions’ revenue per capita and their size is formula-based. The latter are allocated for multiple purposes, therefore, their distribution is subjected to intergovernmental bargaining.

4 Subsidies (subsidii) provide financing, for example, to industries as well as enterprises seen by the federal government as important and worthy of additional support.

5 http://archive.government.ru/special/docs/4066/index.html.

6 The report is available at https://www.minsport.gov.ru/documents/.

7 The register is available at: https://data.gov.ru/opendata/7703771271-typesportobjects.

8 www.kremlin.ru.

9 State Duma is the lower house of the Russian parliament.

10 The database and the codebook are available at https://iims.hse.ru/en/csid/databases.

11 The descriptive statistics are available at https://dataverse.harvard.edu/dataset.xhtml?persistentId=doi:10.7910/DVN/SF14TU

12 The data set is available at https://popularmobilization.net/about/.

13 The reports are available at https://kprf.ru/actions/kprf/114345.html.

14 I thank an anonymous reviewer for suggesting this measure.

15 The raw data and the calibrated data set are available at https://dataverse.harvard.edu/dataset.xhtml?persistentId=doi:10.7910/DVN/SF14TU

16 For the analysis, the R packages ‘QCA’ (Dusa, 2019) and ‘Set Methods’ (Oana & Schneider, 2018) were used.

17 Additional tables and figures are available at https://dataverse.harvard.edu/dataset.xhtml?persistentId=doi:10.7910/DVN/SF14TU

18 Their number is equal to $2^n$, where n is the number of conditions included in the analysis.

19 PRI means ‘proportional reduction in inconsistency’; it shows how much it helps to know whether a given X is a subset of Y and not a subset of not Y (Schneider & Wagemann, 2012, p. 242).

20 The results of the robustness tests are available at https://dataverse.harvard.edu/dataset.xhtml?persistentId=doi:10.7910/DVN/SF14TU

21 Between 2005 and 2012, governors in Russia were appointed by the president.

22 Following the non-selection of Krasnodar, Galitsky still spent around 300 million U.S. dollars on the construction of a new stadium. Its construction was finished in 2016–two years before the start of the FIFA World Cup in Russia (RIA News Sport, 2018).