This paper studies political career incentives in a nondemocratic historical setting to assess early political institutions. We construct a novel panel database of governors of Imperial Russia in 91 provinces between 1895 and 1914. Measuring an imperial governor’s performance by his ability of peacekeeping, we test whether the central authorities in the Russian Empire resorted to career incentives to improve the performance of provincial governors. We find that the central administration promoted better performing governors only in the peripheral provinces (oblasts), but not in the main ones (gubernias). In addition, we show that political connections had no significant effect on career prospects.

中文翻译：

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政治等级制度中的职业激励：来自帝国俄罗斯的证据†

本文研究了非民主历史背景下的政治职业激励，以评估早期的政治制度。我们构建了一个新的面板数据库，用于研究1895年至1914年间91个省的俄罗斯帝国州长。通过衡量维京帝国州长的表现，我们测试了俄罗斯帝国的中央当局是否通过职业激励手段来改善俄罗斯帝国的绩效州长。我们发现，中央行政管理机构仅在外围省份（州）提拔表现更好的州长，而在主要省份（省）提拔更好的州长。此外，我们证明政治联系对职业前景没有重大影响。