The Concept of Multilayered Statehood in the System of Russian Federalism

Abstract

The Russian state has a long tradition of top-to-bottom centralism. Nevertheless, Russia’s 1993 Constitution is based on both federalism and local autonomy, principles that create and require multilayered sovereignty, distributed over a larger number of political power centers, which is alien to the Russian tradition of centralized sovereignty. During the Boris El’tsin era, state power was decentralized to a certain extent, and regions, local governments, economies, and civil society were given room to act independently from the Kremlin’s tutelage. Nonetheless, many felt that this was chaotic. Vladimir Putin’s ‘consolidation of vertical power’ reduced federalism and local autonomy to a facade behind which traditional top-to-bottom centralism has been re-established. In reducing federalism to a mere show, Putin has been able to rely on Soviet traditions. Furthermore, central power instrumentalizes local autonomy in order to further reduce the powers of federal entities, i.e., subjects of the Russian Federation. Thus, political reality has returned to Russian traditions, whereas the text of the Constitution preserves the ‘outdated’ institutions of federalism and local autonomy.

Theoretical and methodological foundations for the study of federalism

“…The methodology of the study of Russian federalism is characterized by significant differences from the principles of the study of this phenomenon in its Western understanding. The key difference lies in the specific composition of the subjects, through the interaction of which the features of federalism are revealed, as well as in different assessments of the degree of significance of the conflicting nature of their interaction ranging from absolutization of the role of antagonisms between society and the state to the idea of complementarity and interdependence of different levels of public authority combined with an awareness of their common tasks [16].…”

Institutional Outcomes of Territorial Contestation: Lessons from Post-Communist Europe, 1989–2012

“…First, while Russia was affected by the overall Europeanization process, it at no point sought to engage with any of the two types of Europeanization processes we identified, thus not satisfying our second scope condition. Second, from a methodological standpoint, with thirty-three TSGclaiming groups of which twenty-five have received some form of it, the Russian federation would severely skew our analysis toward one country in which minority TSG as a meaningful practice of accommodating ethnic diversity has been in doubt since the early 2000s (Küpper 2013). Territorial contestation in the cases included resulted in some form of TSG for eight minorities in seven countries; no TSG is available for the remainder of eleven groups in eleven countries; and five groups in four countries have established de-facto states.…”