Federalism and Local Politics in Russia

6 Vladimir Gel'manthat they themselves could not solve. Against the background of profoundfragmentation of Russian elites, the divergence between their interests preventedthe development of a coherent political strategy for the Centre andled to incongruent decisions being made.Ideology was a major factor in the process of institution building inRussia, in terms of its positive and normative functions. It allowed actors,first of all, to minimize the amount of information needed for political decision-making(a particularly important advantage during a period of uncertaintyand transition) 26 and, second, it enabled them to make judgementsabout how far existing institutions fitted their normative conceptions. 27 Inthis way the deployment of (applied) ideology in each sphere enables actorsto take action on the basis of the information they have and to launch politicalstrategies on the basis of particular ideological coalitions. 28In terms of decentralization and recentralization federal political actorsdemonstrated three main applied ideologies: (1) managerial; (2) utilitarian;(3) self-governmental. 29 These may be defined as follows: the managerialideology is based on the normative conception of government as a unifiedcorporation, of which regional and local institutions form the lower stratum.Accordingly, state policy on regions and municipalities is seen as a matter ofadministrative centralization. From the point of view of this ideology localand regional autonomy are permissible only insofar as they do not obstructthis; they are thus seen as deviations to be corrected. In practice this ideologyfinds its purest incarnation in the notion of the ‘state vertical’, that is asystem where all state authorities at all levels are directly subordinated to thesupreme authority, whether this is the tsar, general secretary or president.For adherents of this ideology regional policy is primarily about strengtheningadministrative controls over the actions of the lower levels of the governmentalhierarchy. A significant proportion of senior officials at the federallevel have been exponents of this ideology, as a rule veterans of Soviet-eranomenklatura or the security services, their ideal conception of governmentbeing ‘good’ Soviet practice, shorn of its characteristic deficiencies.The utilitarian ideology is unconnected to the philosophy of the samename but refers to the notion of utility maxim. The normative conception ofthe functions of the State, including regional and local authorities, is exclusivelylinked to the imperatives of economic efficiency, understood from thestandpoint of economic liberalism, minimizing the responsibility of the Statein general and the federal state in particular, for the welfare of the populationregionally or nationally. Regional and local economic or politicalautonomy are therefore permissible insofar as they further the cause of liberalizationof the economy. Regional and municipal policy is therefore secondaryto economic policy objectives and is thus subject to shiftingpriorities. In other words Centre–regional relations are purely instrumentalaccording to this ideology. They may for example, be used to undermineenemies such as the (then) Communist Party, to ‘shove’ onto regional andlocal government the responsibility for carrying through unpopular policies