Federalism and Regional Policy in Contemporary Russia

Andrey Starodubtsev

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• eBook ISBN: 9781317136149
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Política y relaciones internacionales
• Subtopic: Política

How do Russian leaders balance the need to decentralize governance in a socially and politically complex country with the need to guarantee political control of the state?

Since the early 2000s Russian federal authorities have arranged a system of political control on regional elites and their leaders, providing a "police control" of special bodies subordinated by the federal center on policy implementation in the regions. Different mechanisms of fiscal federalism and investment policyhave beenused to ensure regional elites' loyalty and a politically centralized but administratively decentralized systemhas beencreated.

Asking clear, direct, and theoretically informed questions about the relationship between federalism, decentralization and authoritarianism, this book explores the political survival of authoritarian leaders, the determinants of policy formulation, and theories of federalism and decentralization, to reach a new understanding of territorial governance in contemporary Russia.As such, it is animportant work for students and researchers in Russian studies and regional and federal studies.

1 Tertius gaudens

What is wrong with Russian federalism?

On September 1, 2004, a group of armed terrorists took hostages in a school in Beslan, a small town in North Ossetia, one of the North Caucasus republics. A total of 1100 people, including 777 children, were captured. Three days later, during the rescue operation at least 314 hostages were killed.

This act of terrorism and the actions surrounding the fearful episode reflected all the particularities and difficulties of intergovernmental and interregional relations in Russia. The hostage-takers were members and supporters of the Chechen separatist and Islamic terrorist movement, which has battled with the federal forces in Chechnya since 1999. The terrorists were known to have declared their demands to the federal government: the federal army was to withdraw from Chechnya, and the federal center was to recognize the independence of Ichkeria, as the separatists named the Chechen Republic.

As well as Chechens, the terrorist group included representatives of the Ingush people. This fact exacerbated a deep conflict between the Ingush and Ossetian peoples, which had broken out due to the controversial status of a part of North Ossetia’s territory that had been Ingush land before that people was deported by the Soviet government. Since the time of real war between the two republics in 1992, their relations have remained suspicious and hostile. The fact that the terrorist camp had been located in the territory of Ingushetia before the massacre strengthened such suspicions and could have led to a new phase of conflict between North Ossetia and Ingushetia.

The Beslan tragedy demonstrated the weakness of all levels of government in the North Caucasus in fighting terrorism, including the federal anti-terrorist agencies. Yet Vladimir Putin blamed only the regional governments for this failure. On September 13, 2004 he declared that the power of special agencies had to be increased, and, at the same time, that the institution of popular election of governors had to be replaced with the mechanism of their de facto appointment by the Russian President. In this way, Putin used the massacre to dramatically limit the autonomy of the Russian regions.

The governors’ reaction to these decisions was unexpected. Where ten years ago they had enjoyed an extremely autonomous, almost independent existence, and five years ago they had loudly protested—unsuccessfully—against the president’s idea of replacing them with their representatives in the higher house of parliament, now they demonstrated complete support for Vladimir Putin’s initiatives. The presidents of Tatarstan and Bashkortostan, probably the politically strongest regions in Russia, were the first governors to express their agreement with the president. The head of the Republic of Karelia even said that he considered this option the only possibility for achieving his state’s goals.

In that moment, the regional leaders gave up all advantages they had gained in the 1990s, the decade of the great Russian decentralization. Six years later the federal government replaced the presidents of Tatarstan and Bashkortostan without any effort. The powerful leaders of regional autonomy gave place to completely loyal appointees. The year 2016 started with an unprecedented decree by the Russian President concerning the governor of the Republic of Karelia. I will quote it verbatim: “Because A. P. Hudilainen, the head of the Republic of Karelia, failed in his obligations to resettle citizens from emergency housing, I decree to rebuke the head of the government of Karelia A. P. Hudilainen” (Decree, 2016). Hudilainen agreed:

It is obvious that the criticism is completely fair, and [I] deserve the reprimand. Karelia has many problems. Vladimir Putin has heard everything and accepted our arguments. That is why only a reprimand was declared. Today I have made a tough decision—the government of the Republic of Karelia is dissolved.

(Glava, 2016)

On the same day, Konstantin Ilkovsky, the governor of Zabaykalsky Krai, another regional leader who had been blamed for the failure of housing policy in his region, asked the president to accept his resignation.

Article 1 of the 1993 Constitution of the Russian Federation declares federalism to be a fundamental principle of the public administration in Russia. Subnational governments and parliaments, the distribution of spheres of responsibility between federal and regional authorities, and the upper chamber of the Russian parliament as a channel for representation of regional interests are established by the Russian legislation. At the same time, the practice of intergovernmental relations in Russia in the 2010s is similar to relations between national and regional governments in a unitary state. How has this become possible? Why did the regional governments in Russia reject their political autonomy and integrate themselves into the so-called “power vertical,” the united system of government that includes all levels, from the national to the very local? What is wrong with Russian federalism?

How is a federal state built and preserved?

The presidential reprimand to governors, and many other pieces of evidence concerning intergovernmental relations in the 2000s and the 2010s, demonstrates that Russian federalism, if it exists, differs significantly from “classic” cases of federal states. Riker and his followers note that a federation is an extremely fragile and unstable form of government. Federal and subnational politicians’ interests motivate them to struggle for additional spheres of responsibility, financial resources, and political power. That is why such a state is at risk of transformation into either a unitary state or a confederal union.

This fact has led scholars to formulate one of the core research questions in studies of federal states—what institutional safeguards allow for a stable, robust, self-sustainable political system (Riker, 1964; Filippov et al., 2004; Bednar, 2009)? These three authors see a federation as a set of constitutional norms, a specific institutional arrangement that is able to provide the necessary balance in a political system.

Later I will discuss these safeguards in detail, but for now it is important that these findings raise another question: why do some countries create such an institutional context, while others do not and as a result become examples of failed federations? In searching for the factors that contribute to understanding these outcomes, I follow historical institutional reasoning and seek them in the particularities of the origin and the process of federalization in such countries. My argument here is that a specific context of federalization (Faletti, 2005) generates certain mechanisms that allow or force regional elites to struggle for their autonomy in federal states. I theorize that all institutional safeguards are results of such mechanisms’ activity.

One of the most comprehensive reviews of ideas concerning causes and factors involved in federal states’ origins is contained in the concluding chapter of Ramesh D. Dikshit’s book The Political Geography of Federalism (1975). The central place in his analysis is given to Riker’s concept of two conditions of federal bargaining. Riker insists that each of two conditions is a “necessary condition for the creation of a federalism” (Riker, 1964: 13). The first is the “expansion condition,” which indicates the will of a state’s rulers to expand their territory peacefully. The second one is the “military condition,” which is engaged when politicians participate in federal bargaining to become stronger in the face of a dangerous enemy. Riker’s point is very radical: he is confident that the absence of at least one of these two conditions leads to the failure of a federal state. Dikshit does not agree with this assertion. His analysis demonstrates at least two cases (West Germany and Austria) that did not meet these assumptions. At the same time Dikshit supports Riker’s and many other authors’ focus on the military condition. He agrees that a foreign threat promotes the reinforcement of the central government and support for a federal state as a whole.

Dikshit himself proposes a model that explains why some cases of federalization result in centralized federations or even unitary states while other cases end in decentralized federal models or confederal unions. Dikshit’s model pays attention to the entities that will ultimately become the subnational units of a future federal state. He writes that the six factors contributing to the creation of a more centralized system are the subnational units’ sense of common military insecurity, their similarity of race, language, and culture, the interdependence of their economies, the prior existence of these communities as parts of the same political system (for example, as colonies of an empire), the existence of easy interregional communication, and their compatibility in terms of social and political institutions. On the other hand, there are six factors that can prevent any integration processes. They are the existence of regionally grouped diversities, the existence of communities with independent or competitive economies, the communities’ prior independent existence as political units, the absence of a common external threat, the presence of conflicting threats to the different units involved, and the existence of groups of units following contrasting and mutually incompatible “philosophies” (today we would say “ideologies”).

Dikshit believes that different combinations of factors from both groups lead to specific types of federalism (he uses Riker’s distinction between centralized and peripheralized federations) or even transformations of federal states into unitary ones or complete disintegration. For example, Dikshit insists that “if the first factor of the first set is found in combination with the first three factors of the second set, the situation is confederal” (Dikshit, 1975: 229). Additionally, there is a combination of factors that, according to Dikshit, contributes to the formation of a centralized federal state and its subsequent transformation to a unitary state. To reach such an outcome, all the factors of integration must be combined with one factor of disintegration—the units’ experience of being independent states or regionally autonomous provinces in an empire (Dikshit, 1975: 232).

The main advantage of this model is that it is based on empirical analysis of at least 17 federations across the world. The thorough description of these countries allows Dikshit to make a comprehensive list of factors. At the same time, this can be seen as a disadvantage. With six factors involved in protection of autonomy in a model, it is very difficult to understand which one of them is the most important and which others perform technical and supporting roles.

However, the most significant limitation of both Riker’s and Dikshit’s ideas lies in Albert Venn Dicey’s statement that a federation is born when “political communities in an area desire union without desiring complete unity” (Dikshit, 1971: 101). During almost the whole of the twentieth century, the biggest theorists of federalism reproduced the idea that federations are products of the integration of independent states or autonomous parts of empires. That is exactly why the United States of America became a prototype and ideal type of federalism for many scholars.

Alfred Stepan (2005) was probably one of the first authors who insisted that we should distinguish between two types of modern federal states. He called them “coming-together” and “holding-together” federalisms. The USA, the exemplar of coming-together federalism, can be useful for understanding only those federations that were formed as a result of the integration of several sovereign or partially independent states. They must bargain with each other to create a supranational government and design an institutional environment that protects them from transformation of the federation into a unitary state. Hereafter I name this process of federalization the “scenario of centralization.”

Apart from the USA, other examples of this type of federalization are Argentina, Australia, Canada, Germany, Malaysia, Mexico, South Africa, and Switzerland. Of course, they all are very different cases, but the particularities of their federalization, I would argue, lead to the development of a specific context of intergovernmental relations, which I will describe later.

Most of the newer federations have formed in a different way. They are the result of decentralization, when the central government of a unitary state delegates a share of its responsibilities to subnational governments. This scenario of decentralization develops into holding-together federalism. Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Ethiopia, India, Nepal, and Nigeria were formed in accordance with this pattern.

Later I will discuss basic differences in the content of coming-together and holding-together federalisms. Now I will examine the preconditions, causes, and particularities of federalization in both scenarios.

Due to the American case, the scenario of centralization has been extensively scrutinized. There are detailed descriptions of every stage of federalization as well as theoretical interpretations of every moment of this process.

The key moment in the scenario of centralization is the signing of the constitutional contract between the states that will become subnational units in a future federal state. This contract transfers part of their responsibilities to the federal government that is formed as a result of this bargaining. This process must provide obvious advantages for the elites of the future subnational units, otherwise they would not agree to the loss of their independence. What are their incentives in this process?

The scenario of federalization follows the model of the social contract described in the works of Thomas Hobbes (Hobbes, 1998) and John Locke (Locke, 1999), which explain the origin of the state through the great disadvantage of the “the state of nature,” where people feel a lack of safety. They make a contract to overcome this problem: safety and law replace their natural freedom.

The same incentives push independent states to give up their independence. The Federalist Papers, the best source where the Founding Fathers of the USA thoroughly explain why they propose to establish a centralized state instead of the extremely weak confederal union, indicates two main reasons to centralize. Both concern issues of states’ safety, because “among the many objects to which a wise and free people find it necessary to direct their attention, that of providing for their safety seems to be the first” (Hamilton et al., 2008: 79). On the one hand, a federation allows its formerly independent units to avoid wars with each other. On the other, a united state is a more powerful player in the international arena, as it can protect itself and its interests in relations with other states better than a set of small countries.

Of course, this finding is not novel for federal studies. Riker’s Federalism states the same when the author describes the military condition of federalization (Riker, 1964: 12–13). This rationale remains effective even two centuries later. However, it now concerns predominantly economic rather than military safety. For example, the successful development of the European Union’s integration can be explained by the same reasons.

The numerous examples of federations that were created in accordance with this scenario allow one to formulate a model of the formation of such federal states. In the first stage, several independent states with relatively small territories and limited influence on international affairs make an agreement of collaboration and coordination in certain spheres. In the USA, that agreement was formalized in the Articles of Confederation, which was aimed at strengthening 13 states in the face of foreign enemies. But five centuries before the American experiment, in Europe the three rural communities of Uri, Schwyz, and Unterwald, which had gained independence from the Holy Roman Empire, arranged the “Everlasting Alliance” to provide for defense against the big players in the European arena. Over the next half-century five more communities joined the confederation.

Initially, a confederation can be managed by an assembly or other coordination organization, which represents all members of a confederation and does not make any decision without the consent of each member. However, quite soon the absence of a powerful center of decision-making, and numerous disagreements between the members of a confederation, lead to discussions about the need to strengthen the union. As a result, the members of a confederation make a new bargain and create an authoritative federal government along with an assembly, courts, and other components of a real centralized state. This process can take many years, but one day a federal state is declared by a new constitution, which includes all the requirements I discussed in the Introduction.

Of course, n...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• List of figures
• List of tables
• Preface
• Introduction
• 1 Tertius gaudens: what is wrong with Russian federalism?
• 2 Why has regional development in Russia failed?
• 3 Who, how, when, and how much? Factors of the redistribution of intergovernmental transfers in Russia
• 4 Decentralize but not federalize: coordination, subordination, and control in Russian territorial governance
• Conclusion
• Appendix 1
• Appendix 2
• Appendix 3
• Appendix 4
• Appendix 5
• Appendix 6
• Index