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Territory, Politics, Governance
ISSN: (Print) (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rtep20
Intergovernmental bargaining in multilevel
autocracies: the case of the 2018 FIFA World Cup
Russia
Ekaterina Paustyan
To cite this article: Ekaterina Paustyan (2022): Intergovernmental bargaining in multilevel
autocracies: the case of the 2018 FIFA World Cup Russia, Territory, Politics, Governance, DOI:
10.1080/21622671.2022.2046632
To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/21622671.2022.2046632
© 2022 The Author(s). Published by Informa
UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis
Group
Published online: 27 Apr 2022.
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Intergovernmental bargaining in multilevel
autocracies: the case of the 2018 FIFA World Cup
Russia
Ekaterina Paustyan
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
HISTORY Received 27 February 2021; in revised form 8 January 2022
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 for-
mal 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 auth-
ority 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 lin-
kages 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
© 2022 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/),
which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
CONTACT
paustyan@uni-bremen.de
Faculty of Business Studies and Economics, University of Bremen, Bremen, Germany
TERRITORY, POLITICS, GOVERNANCE
https://doi.org/10.1080/21622671.2022.2046632
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 bar-
gaining 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 infor-
mal 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). Follow-
ing 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 pro-
cedure 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 cham-
pionship 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 pol-
itically 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
2Ekaterina Paustyan
TERRITORY, POLITICS, GOVERNANCE
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 (Golo-
sov, 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 method-
ology 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 ter-
ritory (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 insti-
tutions.
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 pro-
tect 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 candi-
dates, 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
Intergovernmental bargaining in multilevel autocracies: the case of the 2018 FIFA World Cup Russia 3
TERRITORY, POLITICS, GOVERNANCE
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 per-
mit 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 auth-
ority that can enforce agreements among the key players, it is the strength of elite networks sup-
porting 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 com-
bine 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 elec-
tions as a bargaining tool with the centre to get access to resources in return for voter mobiliz-
ation. 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, inter-
governmental 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
4Ekaterina Paustyan
TERRITORY, POLITICS, GOVERNANCE
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 grants
3
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, Tatar-
stan, Bashkortostan as well as Krasnodar Krai, Moscow Oblast, Krasnoyarsk Krai, Moscow, Pri-
morsky 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, Pri-
morsky 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 & Gaivor-
onsky, 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. Accord-
ing 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 con-
struction 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 mil-
lennium date and its stadium had been under reconstruction. In turn, Kazan would host the Uni-
versiade 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
Intergovernmental bargaining in multilevel autocracies: the case of the 2018 FIFA World Cup Russia 5
TERRITORY, POLITICS, GOVERNANCE
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). Neverthe-
less, 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 candi-
dates, 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 infra-
structural projects (Sharafutdinova & Turovsky, 2017). The governors with extensive networks
in the Presidential Administration are able to reach not only federal officials but directly the pre-
sident. 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 connec-
tions 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
6Ekaterina Paustyan
TERRITORY, POLITICS, GOVERNANCE
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 pol-
itical 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 vot-
ing 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 lead-
ing 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). Conjunc-
tural 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 depend-
ing 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 mem-
bership 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 Rus-
sian 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 cham-
pionship, 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 Mos-
cow 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
Intergovernmental bargaining in multilevel autocracies: the case of the 2018 FIFA World Cup Russia 7
TERRITORY, POLITICS, GOVERNANCE
cluster (Krasnodar, Sochi, and Rostov-on-Don), and (5) the Ural cluster (Yekaterinburg in Sver-
dlovsk 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 pre-
sident 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, ‘Akh-
mat Arena’, was planned to be opened in May 2011 (Ponomarev, 2011). The president of Dage-
stan, 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 Commit-
tee to consult with FIFA officials regarding the possibility to include Dagestan in the list of can-
didate 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 cali-
bration’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 par-
tial membership, and 1 means full membership in the set (Oana et al., 2021; Ragin, 2009). Mos-
cow 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 auth-
orities proposed to renovate existing facilities but the Organizing Committee rejected their pro-
posal (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-Peters-
burg, Tatarstan, and Krasnodar Krai (Sochi) receive a score of 1. The remaining candidates that
were selected, namely, Samara, Rostov, Volgograd, Kaliningrad, Nizhniy Novgorod, and Sver-
dlovsk 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 ‘get-
ting 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 fed-
eral 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 ful-
fillment 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
8Ekaterina Paustyan
TERRITORY, POLITICS, GOVERNANCE
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, Nezavi-
simaya Gazeta publishes expert evaluations of how effectively regional executives have been lob-
bying 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 Naz-
rullaeva (2018, p. 128) highlight that ‘much of the most important lobbying occurs during meet-
ings 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, Mos-
cow, 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 Uni-
ted Russia (Edinaya Rossiya) party in each region in the State Duma
9
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 Lankina
12
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
Intergovernmental bargaining in multilevel autocracies: the case of the 2018 FIFA World Cup Russia 9
TERRITORY, POLITICS, GOVERNANCE
Russian Federation
13
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 Nov-
gorod 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
Neces-
sity 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 con-
ditions 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 con-
ditions.
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).
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
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.
10 Ekaterina Paustyan
TERRITORY, POLITICS, GOVERNANCE
about the sufficiency threshold depends on the consistency score of each row shown in the col-
umn ‘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 suffi-
cient (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 inter-
mediate solution formulas. The conservative solution, reported in Table 2 below, is selected for
substantive discussion as it provides richer evidence for interpretation.
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 Nov-
gorod 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.
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
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.
Intergovernmental bargaining in multilevel autocracies: the case of the 2018 FIFA World Cup Russia 11
TERRITORY, POLITICS, GOVERNANCE
of the analysis are quite robust to modifications in the calibration, the case selection, and the con-
sistency 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 con-
ditions (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 trans-
fers from the centre. For example, the governor of Kaliningrad Oblast, Georgy Boos, had exten-
sive 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 pro-
moting Russia’s bid (Khomenko, 2009). In addition, Boos had important informal ties with fed-
eral 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 Rus-
sia’s bid and was the head of the Russian delegation in Zurich in December 2010, where the win-
ners 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 lob-
bying 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 demon-
strated 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’sofficial 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 cham-
pionship. 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 (Voro-
nina, 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
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.
12 Ekaterina Paustyan
TERRITORY, POLITICS, GOVERNANCE
in the 2011 parliamentary elections. On the eve of the 2016 elections, Merkushkin famously sta-
ted that if the governor gives 97 percent to United Russia, the Kremlin would listen to him (Ivol-
gin, 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 Organiz-
ing 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 Kras-
nodar 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-selec-
tion, Galitsky wrote in his Twitter account: ‘the most soccer-mad city was shut out, I simply can-
not 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 auto-
cracies 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.
Intergovernmental bargaining in multilevel autocracies: the case of the 2018 FIFA World Cup Russia 13
TERRITORY, POLITICS, GOVERNANCE
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 anon-
ymous 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 con-
dition’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 pur-
poses, 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 gov-
ernment 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 2n, where nis the number of conditions included in the analysis.
14 Ekaterina Paustyan
TERRITORY, POLITICS, GOVERNANCE
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 con-
struction 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).
ORCID
Ekaterina Paustyan http://orcid.org/0000-0002-4646-0550
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