Federalism and Local Politics in Russia

Leviathan’s return 7necessary for the overall strategy. The exponents of this ideology in Russiawere the ‘young reformers’ who moved centre stage in the 1990s.Finally, the self-governmental ideology is founded on the normative idealof representative democracy and civil society. Regional and local autonomyand the division of powers on the basis of the supremacy of law are the mostvalued (although not in themselves sufficient) principles of this ideology.They are seen as an organic part of the ‘correct’ form of local and regionalgovernment in the spirit of an idealized conception of contemporary Westernpractice, and decentralization (like recentralization) is also seen as an importantelement in a broader project of democratization of the political life of thecountry as a whole. Like the ‘utilitarians’ the ‘self-governmentalists’ came topower riding on the wave of transformation of the early 1990s and thereforealso viewed the ‘Soviet legacy’ in wholly negative terms, although primarilyon account of its undemocratic character. Exponents of this ideology at thefederal level were found among those politicians termed ‘democrats’ –representatives of ‘Yabloko’, part of the Union of Right Forces and otherliberal parties.The differences between these ideologies as regards regional and localpolicy are derived from at least two bases: goals and means. At the level ofpolicy goals the managerialists and utilitarians by and large gravitatedtowards centralization (the former everywhere possible, the latter everywherewhere they thought it necessary); the self-governmentalists supported decentralization,as long as it did not hinder democratization. As far as means areconcerned, if the managerialists considered the best way of dividing responsibilitiesbetween Centre, regions and municipalities was delegation ofpowers (both top-down and bottom-up), then the utilitarians, together withthe self-governmentalists, advocated delimitation of competences betweenlevels of government. Thus there arose the possibility of ideological coalitionswith different configurations between interest groups (from theMinistry of Finance to ‘oligarchs’) and parties (such as the Communist Partyof the Russian Federation) that did not have a clear ideological preferenceon this topic. It was precisely these circumstances that made possible federalpolicy in the field in the period 1991-8, although as a rule during this periodthe regional dimension was not a priority for federal-level political actors.After the crisis of August 1998, the situation was substantially altered.First of all, the regional dimension of the political strategy became a prioritydue to the reaction of both the Centre and the regions to the economic crisis,and also due to the active part played by regional elites in the politicalstruggle on the federal level leading up to the Duma elections of 1999. Theloss of the Centre’s capacity to manage the regions of Russia on the onehand and on the other the likelihood that regional leaders would underminethe position of the federal elite, created the ‘demand for recentralization’ onthe part of disparate political forces. In other words the regional issue touchedthe interests of all federal-level actors and their very substantial ideologicaldifferences, against a background of great uncertainty, did not