Niches of agency: managing state-region relations through law in Russia

ABSTRACT

State-region relations involve negotiations over the power to (re)-constitute local spaces. While in federal states, power-sharing ostensibly gives regions a role over many space-making decisions, power asymmetries affect this role. Where centralization trends may erode regional agency, law can provide an important tool by which regions can assert influence. We examine a case where, in response to a proposed Russian federal law highly unpopular with a regional population, the region's government sought to ameliorate its potential impacts by using opportunities to co-produce the law, amending regional legislation, and strategically implementing other federal and regional laws to protect its territory.

KEYWORDS:

• Law
• centre-region relations
• territory
• Russia
• Yakutia
• indigenous

Acknowledgements

We thank the many people who agreed to spend time with us, answering our questions and discussing the unfolding situation regarding land rights and issues in Sakha Republic (Yakutia). We greatly appreciate the constructive comments provided by Professor Mark Boyle and one anonymous reviewer on the initial draft of this paper. This research was supported by SSRHC grant 435-2016-0702, NORRUS grant 257644/H30, RFBR grant 18-59-11011 and AKA grant 314471. The usual disclaimers apply.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Gail Fondahl is a cultural and legal geographer. Her research focuses on indigenous territorial rights in the Russian North. Fondahl has carried out fieldwork in Eastern Siberia since the early 1990s.

Viktoriya Filippova is Senior Researcher at the Arctic Researches Department, with interests in the settlement and demography of Indigenous peoples, their traditional use of natural resource, as well as historical geography, GIS technologies and climate change.

Antonina Savvinova is an Associate Professor with research interests in GIS, remote sensing, natural resourses management of Indigenous peoples of the North, and sustainable development of the Northern territories.

Aytalina Ivanova specializes in Arctic and Indigenous peoples’ legislation, with a focus on legal anthropology. She has worked and published on the relations between extractive industries and indigenous and local populations in various regions of the Russian Arctic and Norway.

Florian Stammler has worked for 20 years in the Russian Arctic with local and indigenous people, and more recently in Finland and Norway. His publications focus on the encounter between extractive industries and local livelihoods, human-animal relations, youth wellbeing and oral history. He is the author of ‘Reindeer Nomads Meet the Market’, the last ethnography of nomads on the Siberian Yamal Peninsula before the advent of large-scale gas industry.

Gunhild Hoogensen Gjørv research examines tensions between perceptions of state and human security in a variety of contexts, with a particular focus on the Arctic. She has led numerous projects investigating the relationships between state, extractive industries, and northern/Arctic peoples.

ORCID

Gail Fondahl http://orcid.org/0000-0003-4287-1288

Notes

1 On 4 November 2018, two more regions were added to the FEFD.

2 The RS(Ya) government proposed changes to the draft federal law on the FEH (Response 1); it also is actively pursuing discussions of necessary amendments to a follow-up draft federal law that would introduce changes to the initial FEH law (see section ‘Response 1, Round 2’).

3 The Civic Chamber (Obshchestvennaya palata) enables representatives of professional and public organizations the opportunity to suggest modifications to a draft law during its ‘null-reading’ phase. Civic Chambers at both the national and republican level serve as a platform for dialogue, a place for negotiations and working out common solutions that take into account the opinion of the varied stake-holders. They also provide for consultation between the Government and the Parliament, prior to the formal introduction of a draft law, which can facilitate and expedite the legislative process.

4 Golomarëva chairs RS(Ya)'s Standing Committee on Issues of Indigenous Numerically Small Peoples and the Arctic, as well as serving as a member on its Standing Committee on Land Relations, Natural Resources and Ecology.

5 Initially RS(Ya) sought to defer the opening of the programme to all Russian citizens until 2018 (Gunaev, 2016).

6 Prior to this was a stage in which the project was ‘trialed’ in one pilot region in each of the nine regions of the FEFD.

7 A ‘List of Traditional Places of Residence and Economic Activities of Indigenous Numerically Small Peoples of the Russian Federation’ was confirmed by Order of the Government of the Russian Federation (No.631-r) on 2 May 2009 (and edited on 29 December 2017). These differ from ‘Territories of Traditional Nature Use’ (described under section ‘Response 3’, below).

8 The agency of citizens to influence the law through public engagement and actions (editorial writing, protests), and how this varies with the disposition of the regional government to pursue its agenda vis a vis the centre, deserves further exploration. The effectiveness of citizen action may correlate positively with the ‘strength’ (assertiveness) of the regions of the Russian Federation in which they reside.

9 An obshchina (‘tribal community’) is a collective of indigenous persons who carry out ‘traditional activities’, and receive (limited) usufruct rights to a territory on which to do so.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Russian Foundation for Basic Research [grant number 18-59-11011]; Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada [grant number 435-2016-0702]; Norges Forskningsråd [grant number 257644/H30]; AKA [grant number 314471].