Lists of posts requiring party approval, and of those eligible to fill them, constituting the real structure of power beneath the formal one.
The Soviet state's organisation chart and its actual hierarchy were different documents. What determined authority was whether a post sat on a nomenklatura list and who controlled that list, which is why analysts who read the constitution understood less than those who tracked appointments.
In practice
- A company's real hierarchy is the list of who may approve a hire, which appears on no chart.
- A restructure that changes every title and none of the approval rights changes nothing.
- Further reading
- Wikipedia
- Subject
- Law & Politics
- Essay
- Competing accounts of how power works