Excessive Loyalism and Russian Regional Governors: The Case of the Pension Reform 2018

Abstract

The main focus of the scholarly literature on authoritarian regimes is on the dynamics of political control and power preservation and hence tools the incumbents use against potential opposition. This paper argues that another, and a highly important, challenge for many authoritarian regimes is the behavior of actors loyal to the regime, i.e., trying to act in line with the regime goals. These actors, while incorrectly guessing the objectives of the regime, or overshooting in terms of implementation of the regime goals, could cause actual harm to the regime. We offer a sketch of the theory of this phenomenon, which we refer to as ‘excessive loyalism’, as well as test a number of hypotheses concerning the origins of excessive loyalism using the example of the reaction of Russian regional governors to the highly unpopular pension reform of 2018.