Federalism and Local Politics in Russia

Federal discourses, minority rights, and conflict transformation 73participation, broaden sources of legitimacy, limit the ‘terror of the majority’,broaden citizenship by institutionalizing multi-ethnicity and provide forsub-national competition, thus stimulating local self-governance, innovationand efficiency. The counter-argument holds that federalism institutionalizesregional overrepresentation and undemocratic veto positions, preserves subnationalauthoritarianism, promotes ethnocratic instead of democratic rule,exacerbates regional disparities, undermines the rule of law, and facilitatesthe rise of demagogues rather than encouraging democracy. 55 But if onelooks at the empirical evidence in diverse settings, there is no inevitable linkbetween democracy, federalism and the degree of sub-national autonomy.Especially in emerging and multi-ethnic federations, the integration of subnationalunits or groups often took precedence over democracy. Twoimperatives usually compete in these cases – integration and democracy.Federations generally tend to over-represent territorial units or ethnic groupson the federal level and thus contradict the democratic principle of ‘one manone vote’. Regional autonomy may protect non-democratic regimes too,although federal democracy may cascade downwards as well. Federalism isprobably a far too multi-faceted regime to attribute common effects to it.Empirically, there are more authoritarian regimes among the republicsand autonomous okrugs than among the purely territorial regions of theRussian Federation. The most critical cases are Bashkortostan, Kalmykiya,Chuvashiya, North Osetiya-Alaniya, Kabardino-Balkariya, followed byTatarstan, Buryatiya, and other republics. 56 In particular the republics werevery slow in the early 1990s in establishing post-Soviet, democratic regimes.Old elites effectively survived by virtue of holding positions in the unreformedSupreme Soviets in the republics.They acquired political resources that enabled them to remain in controlof local power hierarchies after the Communist Party and its mechanismsof political integration collapsed. A shift to directly elected presidencies,which occurred in the majority of the republics, did not elevatenew elites to power either. Rather, they institutionally redefined theincumbent heads of republics and the existing power hierarchies. 57Initially, the retention of ethno federalism thus inhibited democratizationof the republics.Gordon Hahn impliesthat the authoritarian variant of ethnofederalism may have stabilized theregions, whereas democratization could have sparked ethnic mobilization… Such mobilization, however, positive from the point of view ofmobilizing civil society as a counter to state-dominated institutionbuilding, could prove to be not only a democratizing factor but also adestabilizing one to the extent that it mobilizes simultaneously severalnationalities with conflicting interests in the regions. 58