Federalism and Local Politics in Russia

280 Vertical or triangle?In conclusion, one may state first that the centralization campaign of thePutin administration was never uniform regarding local and regional government,and that the notion of local government as a counterweight toregional power has survived. On the other hand, it remains largely undevelopedas an idea, and lacks mechanisms and resources to give it greaterapplication. This is not, it is argued, due largely to any conspiracy by thefederal centre, but more to as yet weak capacity in local government’s ownfederal-level institutions. This in turn may be explained by the absence ofany substantial and continuous institutional dialogue between the federalcentre and local government.In terms of the evolution of the Russian state, the limited degree to whichthe ‘triangle’ of federal, regional and local power has developed has led tothe development of what may prove to be a brittle ‘state vertical’ once againvulnerable to the development of patrimonialism both at the centre and inthe regions. Support for a balance of power between the three levels would havehelped to secure movement towards constitutional democracy. The experienceof the Kozak Commission suggests, however, that a rational approach toestablishing a law-based state may have unintended consequences, and a morepragmatic approach may after all be required.Notes1 Federal Law ‘Ob obschikh printsipakh organisatsii mestnovo samoupravleniya vRossiiskoi Federatsii’ (131/2003). 26th edition, Moscow: Yurait, PravovayaBiblioteka, 2007.2 ‘Eshche odno ogosudarstvlenie’. Interview with N. B. Kosaryeva, President of theFoundation ‘Urban Economics Institute’, Konservator, 25 October 2002. Thisview is disputed by A. Campbell, ‘State versus Society? local government and thereconstruction of the Russian State’, Local Government Studies, Vol. 32, No. 5,2006, pp. 659-76. According to V. A. Lapin and V. Y. Lyubovniy, ReformaMestnovo Samoupravleniya i Administrativo-Territorial'noe Ustroistvo Rossii,Moscow: Izdatel'stvo Delo, 2005, ‘publichnaya vlast'’ is defined (p. 134) as ‘powerderived from the people’, and the ‘system of public power’ as having as elementsbodies of state power and bodies of local self-government. This accords withinternational usage and in no way contradicts the constitutional principle ofseparation of local self-government from the State.3 Institut Ekonomiki Goroda (Institute of Urban Economics Moscow). ‘PositsiyaFonda “Institut Ekonoiki Goroda” po proektu FZ “Ob obshchikh printsipakhorganizatsii mestnovo samoupravleniya v RF.”’ http://www.urbaneconomics.ru, 21January 2003.4 Marina Liborakina, ‘Atribut vertikai vlasti ili osnova grazhdanskogo obschestva’,Perekryostok, No. 1 (Winter 2003) (executive director of the Foundation Institute ofUrban Economics): ‘The attempt to make local self-government part of the verticalof public authority in a country as large and diverse as Russia is bound to fail.’5 R. Orttung, ‘Key Issues in the Evolution of the Federal Okrugs’, in P. Reddawayand R. Orttung (eds), The Dynamics of Russian Politics, Vol. 1. Putin’s Reform ofFederal-Regional Relations, Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2004, pp. 43–5.6 N. Petrov and D. Slider, ‘Putin and the Regions’, in D. L. Herspring (ed.), Putin’sRussia, Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield, 2005, pp. 237–58.