What factors determine the timing of elite defection in conditions of post-Soviet personalistic presidentialism? How do relations with a powerful patron state affect this process? This article analyzes these questions on the basis of a case study of Transnistria, a de facto state with strong links to Russia. It argues that privatization processes involving actors from the patron state provide a unique opening for elite defection by heightening tensions between the rent-seeking interests of the personalistic president and those of new owners; direct or indirect signals from the patron state may also affect elite’s perceptions of incumbent durability and their corresponding decisions.

Post-Soviet de facto states are presented in the social science literature, first of all, as a by-product of research on secession, nationalism, and conflict resolution. The paper focuses instead on issues of institution-building and governance in de facto states. It examines the construction of a hybrid political regime in the most populous of post-Soviet de facto states, Transnistra. The paper analyzes secessionist elites’ strategies of maintaining power and sources of domestic pressures to democratize political institutions of the de facto state. The evolution of the Transnistrian regime, it is argued, provides interesting ground for exploring the mechanisms of democratization under an unfavorable choice of institutions and problematic external environment.