Authors
Daria Gerashchenko1; 1 Personal capacity, Russian Federation Discussion
This study analyses leadership in higher education management in a context of authoritarian state. Ever since Russian universities have become less independent from the authorities and adopted a model of NPM, a new type of university leaders has emerged - appointed managers who typically have little experience of working in academia. I hypothesise that while authoritarian context typically neglects meritocracy principles, appointed leaders would demonstrate inefficiency in university management in contrast to elected leaders. Specifically I analyse dynamics in university scores related to teaching, research, and finance. For the study I use an extensive database on Russian public universities over several years. The method used is panel regression. The models include controls on university leader's gender, university specialisation, university status (e.g., research university), region. The study suggests that authoritarian states sacrifice improvement in university management in favour of having loyal actors as university leaders thereby hindering the development of higher education institutions. 
