Federalism and Local Politics in Russia

Between a rock and a hard place 45territorial integrity of the state by using coercive measures only sparinglywhile adjusting and adapting to ethnonational claims and challenges in thepolity by promoting internal self-determination coupled with a vibrant localdemocracy. 57Malaysia also comes closer to both India and the Russian federal model interms of its overriding concern for order, security, stability and nationalunity. And ‘national unity’ in Malaysia takes on a special meaning in acountry of 20 million people of whom the Malays constitute approximately59 per cent, Chinese 32 per cent and Indians 9 per cent. A combination ofspecific historical and economic circumstances have led to race, languageand religion being formally consecrated in the federal constitution so thatIslam is recognized as the official religion of the state and the majorityMalay language is designated the national language of the federation.Moreover, it is also the case that the Bumiputeras (meaning literally ‘sons ofthe soil’), who comprise the Malays and other indigenous or native peoples,are afforded a special recognition and status in the federation, an arrangementthat dates back at least to 1948 and was intended to redress theeconomic imbalance between them and the non-Malays, especially theChinese. 58The Nigerian federation shares a similar heritage of authoritarian governmentwith Russia in that the coercive forces of the state have been used bypolitical, economic and military elites to control civil society. In the first fourdecades since its independence from the United Kingdom in 1960, Nigeriahas had six separate federal constitutions and long periods of military rule,the last one ending in 1999 with the imposition of another constitution thatreintroduced a strong executive presidency as a variant of liberal democracydesigned primarily as ‘an antidote to Nigeria’s ethnic fragmentation’ butwithout either popular citizen consultation or the participation of the constituentunits. 59 Indeed, the recent national elections in April 2007, thealleged corruption, intimidation and ballot rigging notwithstanding, werelandmark elections reflecting the first handover of power from one civiliangovernment to another in Nigeria’s post-independence history.Nigeria’s three main nationality groups – Ibo, Yoruba and Hausa-Fulani –exist in conjunction with an estimated 200–400 ‘ethnic minorities’, rangingin size from several thousand to a few million and comprising adherents toChristianity, Islam and traditional indigenous religions. With Nigeria’spopulation estimated at approximately 110 million people who are distributedacross thirty-six constituent units of varying territorial size, Suberuclaims that any federal system in Nigeria must give adequate recognition to‘the multiplicity, complexity and latent fluidity of ethnic territorial interestsin the federation’. Accordingly the operation of ethnic conflict managementhas been successfully achieved by a multi-state federation that has been ableto ‘fragment and crosscut the identities of each of the three major ethnicformations’ so that the core population of each majority ethnic identity ‘hasbeen distributed among at least five states’. In this light, the creation of so