Putin's Prosecutors: Personnel Politics and Building Authoritarianism in Russia

This dissertation examines personnel management policies within the institution of Russia's Procuracy in the first decade of Putin's presidency and how they contributed to the demise of Russia's fledgling democracy. I argue that such policies, in Russia and beyond, serve as a low-cost and subtle way to build loyal bureaucracies, which would-be autocrats use to unravel constraints on their power, remove or threaten opponents, and facilitate desired electoral outcomes. In this dissertation, I demonstrate that personnel management strategies can contribute to the stealth nature of authoritarian encroachments. By virtue of being legal, often having no paper trail, and lending themselves to the justification as measures to improve the functioning of the state, the authoritarian intentions behind personnel management strategies are difficult to detect and interpret even for experts, which gives a significant advantage to a would-be autocrat. By focusing on legal institutions that have the power to open and investigate criminal cases, this dissertation demonstrates that the legal process that happens outside of courts matters for the vulnerability of democracies to authoritarian encroachments.