Federalism and Local Politics in Russia

12 Vladimir Gel'manthe whole they supported the strategy of ‘the dictatorship of law’, the consolidationof Russian state power regarding the supremacy of law, whichhad gripped all spheres of Russian politics during the 2000s: the policy ofrecentralization was no exception. 51The success of the first phase of the federal reform – the reassertion ofcentral control over the regions – was evident even by 2001, and helped tousher in the second phase, involving the setting up of new mechanisms forruling regions. The utilitarians prepared and introduced a series of institutionalchanges, with the aim of (1) securing the balance of power in favour ofthe Centre, maintaining the loyalty and malleability of the regions, preventingany possibility of any 1990’s style ‘landslip’ toward decentralization, and(2) assuring the effectiveness of regional and local administration. In thisdirection the Centre took the following steps. First, to supplement administrativemechanisms, the Centre also used political institutions – parties andelections – to eliminate regionalism from the political life of the country, andthe vertical integration of all regional political processes. 52 The law on politicalparties, adopted in 2001, forbade the registration of regional politicalparties, which were for the most part the political vehicles of the regionalelites. 53 The Centre required the regions to introduce for elections to regionallegislatures the mixed electoral system which had been used for State Dumaelections in 1993-2003: no less than 50 per cent of seats must be reserved forfederal party lists. 54 These measures were introduced to increase the influenceof parties in general and the ‘party of power’, United Russia in particular, overthe regional political process and regional administration.Although these reforms were successfully brought into being, the consequenceswere ambiguous: on the one hand, the electoral success of UnitedRussia became possible only through the patronage of regional branches ofthe ‘party of power’ by strong governors, but not the other way around; 55 onthe other hand, United Russia managed to establish influential factions in awhole series of regional legislatures, controlling their agenda-setting anddecision-making processes, 56 and after 2003 this process became irreversible.Second, the Centre advanced the idea of reducing the number of regionsin the federation that had been on the agenda since 2000. However, theradical plans for regional amalgamations were rejected by the presidentialadministration, because the utilitarians had an interest in getting rid of someweak regions but not in having to deal with strong regions. Therefore theprocess of amalgamation was carefully targeted and was directed towardsthe absorption of autonomous districts into the krais and oblasts, fromwhence they had emerged in the early 1990s (see chapter 4). Perm Oblastwas reunited with the Komi-Permyatskii Autonomous Okrug, KrasnoyarskKrai with the Yevenk and Taimyr autonomous okrugs, and KamchatkaOblast with the Koryakskii Autonomous Okrug. It is only a matter of timebefore the Ust'-Ordynskii and Aginskii-Buryatskii autonomous okrugs areunited with Irkutsk Oblast. However, the Centre blocked the proposal by anumber of financial-industrial groups to merge Tyumen Oblast and the