Idea – Evgeniya Shamis. Research and text – Evgeniya Shamis and Evgeny Nikonov. Specially for RuGenerations.
Governing, managing, ruling the country and regions depends on the fact – who is the governor, what generation does this person belong to, what are the values basing on which the governor makes decisions and acts. We decided to analyze generational composition of Russian governors and compare it with US state governors.
Data on Russia was taken from open official sources; for analysis we added to regional governors mayors of two federal cities – Moscow and Saint-Petersburg. American data was taken from National Governors Association website (http://www.nga.org “Book of Governors biographies”, “Governors of the American States, Commonwealths and Territories”, 2009).
Observations and findings:
- Among Russian governors there more representatives of Baby-Boomer generation – 43 persons (52,4%), in USA maximum number of governors refers to Echo-generation “Silent-Baby-Boomer” – 44,2%. Exactly these two generations are currently in power and form “the game rules” in both of the countries. (This is one of the reasons, in our view, why Generations X and Y should study their values).
- In Russia governors age varies more and has wider extremes compared to USA. The difference between the eldest and he youngest governor in Russia is 42 years and in USA – 31 year. (The eldest in Russia is governor of Bashkortostan Republic Murtaza Rakhimov – born 1934, the youngest – born in 1976 Ramzan Kadyrov, governor of Chechnya. In USA the eldest of the governors is Ted Kulongoski from the state of Oregon – born 1940 and the youngest from Louisiana – Bobby Jingdal was born in 1971).
- We can define certain “harvest” periods when the highest number of governors was born. In Russia these are the years around 1952 and 1962. In USA – around 1946 and 1956. For explanation why these periods are the most “harvesting” it’s necessary to take data from several other countries (there could be delay in appearance of certain generations in Russia compared to USA, there can be peculiarities of political system, it can be non- global regularity). At the same time we can suggest that in Russia and USA there are “waves” of governors with close values.
- There are 7 women-governors in USA (Janice Brewer – Arizona, M.Jodi Rell – Connecticut, Bev Perdue – North Carolina, Chris Gregory – Washington, Katheline Sibelius – Kansas, Linda Lingle – Hawaii, Sarah Palin – Alaska). In Russia the only womenis Saint-Petersburg mayor Valentina Matvienko. That gives 13% of women-governors in USA and 1% in Russia for the country.
