Local Regimes, Sub-national Governance and the ‘Power Vertical’ in Contemporary Russia

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Notes

¹In this essay, we refer to ‘local’ as a category which combines both regions and cities.

²Actually, the Communist Party of the Soviet Union performed similar functions of local governance in the Soviet times (Rutland 1993); but while the Communist Party was the major actor, which exercised control over the state apparatus and could impose sanctions for violations of formal and informal ‘rules of the game’, today the role of the ‘party of power’ is quite limited. In fact, most local branches of United Russia are just one of the competing cliques of the local regimes.