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The article analyses the use of policy tools in the Russian housing sector, associated with the government’s objective of development, and examines the pattern of complementarity that exists between the policy tools. Building on the insights of historical institutionalist and public policy literatures, it argues that the choices of policy tools are determined by institutional and policy sector specific structural factors and temporal calculations by the policy makers leading them to adopt specific ‘bundles’ of policy instruments as well as doubling policy arrangements.

This essay considers how the tensions inherent to authoritarian politics structure urban governance in the city of Moscow. The focus here is on urban development policy and the housing renovation programme introduced in 2017. The essay demonstrates a flexible governance arrangement that responds to the interests and ideas of the country's leadership and involves city-level bureaucratic decision-making, the accommodation of economic interests and expert opinion, and consultations with the public. Such consultations have recently become more significant because of intensive protests paired with the city administration's belief in participatory urban governance. URBAN GOVERNANCE REPRESENTS A SIGNIFICANT CHALLENGE for an authoritarian regime. The challenge lies in the duality of the relationship between authoritarian political systems and urban dwellers. With their educated, professional and relatively wealthy population, cities are an important source of social support and recruitment for the regime (Linz 2000, p. 187). In addition, non-democratic states use redistributive policies to maintain the support of urban communities (Wallace 2013). Yet, the swelling numbers of urban residents attracted by such policies and the limits imposed by autocracies on the urban middle classes, particularly the more educated and intellectually sophisticated strata, present a long-term threat to regime survival. Thus, paradoxically, the stability of such regimes is often eroded by the very groups that seemingly benefit the most from their rule (Linz 2000, p. 190).This essay aims to examine the politics of urban governance by a non-democratic regime in contemporary Russia, using the case study of the housing renovation programme in the city of Moscow, initiated in February 2017. Our analysis draws on contemporary literature on authoritarian systems. Recent research underlines the 'dilemmas of