Federalism and Local Politics in Russia

Federal discourses, minority rights, and conflict transformation 55perceived as a mere means of symbolically solving the ‘nationality problem’,the re-foundation of Russia was characterized by the takeover of federalprinciples in state construction. Federalism was understood as the voluntarycovenant of the ‘subjects’ of the federation (Federation Treaties of 1992), anembodiment of the horizontal division of powers, of power division, anarena for inter-governmental bargaining, and as an instrument of decentralization.Some authors also linked federalization with democratization.Among the federal markers of the newly found Russian state was the recognitionof the exclusive competencies of the federation, the combination ofconstitutional and contractual elements, the autonomy of the regions inrealizing their exclusive and residual competencies, the formal equality of theregions vis-à-vis the central government and the tolerance of diversity in theorganization of regional political regimes. Ethnic federalism additionallydrew its legitimacy from the ‘essentialist’ characteristics and demands ascribedto ethnic groups or ‘peoples’. In principle, the post-Soviet logic of ethnofederalismcoincided with that of nationalism: self-determination wasunderstood as discretion over a state apparatus and a specific territory.In the 1990s, Russian discourses mostly criticized the deficiencies of theRussian Constitution of 1993 and the contradictory legal order, whereasAnglo-Saxon discourses – with few exceptions – viewed post-Soviet federalismwith disdain. Federalism Russian style, it was claimed in the mainstreamliterature in the USA and the UK, would destroy the commonmarket. Asymmetry would undermine the common legal sphere. The diversityof regional regimes had allegedly led to a federation of regional tyrannies.1 Mikhail N. Afanasyev and Paul Goble attacked three ‘myths’ ofRussian federalism: (1) it had not solved nationality problems but in factmade them worse, (2) federalism was not the purported twin of democracy.The call for more local sovereignty was authoritarian and, (3), the mistakenidea that the Russian government’s weakness under Yeltsin resulted fromfederalism, whereas Putin’s policies of de-federalization have strengthenedthe state. 2 The view that federalism promoted ethnic conflict and regionalauthoritarianism was also widespread in Russian studies, as seen, for example,in official textbooks and introductory studies on the political system. Butonly a few would side with the view that Putin’s recentralization is a mythbecause it has not delivered the promised strengthening of state capacity(more on this below).With the end of the Yeltsin era (1999) and the beginning of the Putinperiod the prevailing views of Russians also shifted. However, there are different‘schools’ of thought – those that welcome Putin’s re-centralization as areconstruction of the legal order (‘konets bezpredela’), 3 and others that sharplycriticize de-federalization. 4 Finally, there are some authors of mostly non-Russian origin who fear that Putin’s so-called ‘harmonization’ policy will leadto ethno-cultural homogenization and the dominance of ethnic Russians. 5Among the political elites and Russian scholars there is no longer a consensuson the founding principles of post-Soviet federalism. Since the end of