Russian Federalism and Post-Soviet Integration: Divergence of Development Paths

Abstract

The article compares the development of two institutional systems organising intergovernmental relations in the former Soviet Union: Russian federalism and post-Soviet regional integration. Despite the common origins of these two sets of institutions, and the common developmental trends they experienced over the first decade of their existence, the two systems diverged significantly in the 2000s. The article discusses the driving forces behind these differences. It also addresses various forms of direct links between centralisation in Russia and regional integration in the post-Soviet space; these include cross-border cooperation, policy spillovers and perceptions of decentralisation by national elites.

Notes

For a survey of these changes see Tarkhov (2005).

There is a related literature on the reasons for the collapse of the Soviet Union as opposed to the stability of the Russian Federation (for a survey, see Laitin (2000)); however, it looks at relatively different economic and political conditions (weak central state, economic crisis) as opposed to the integration and federalism divergence studied in this article. The fundamental question addressed in the related literature is why the weak federation of the USSR collapsed and the weak federation of Russia survived; my question is why the weak federation of Russia re-emerged as a centralised state and the weak international union in the post-Soviet space did not.

The literature sometimes refers to the institutions of regionalism as international unions (Alesina et al. 2005) or alliances (Niou & Ordeshook 1998). I will avoid the latter term because alliances can also include the cases of an informal cooperation between countries. For example, in the post-Soviet area the relations between Russia and Armenia approximate those of an alliance (although, as is usually the case, the relations are too complicated to be encompassed by any simple definition); however, as Armenia does not participate in any regional economic integration projects organised by Russia and is only a member of the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), the distinction is necessary.

That is, if one ignores the important notion of federalism as a political ideology and way of thinking, as I will in this article to ensure conceptual clarity.

A good example of this type of regionalism is the monetary unions in Western Africa. The (British) Commonwealth of Nations was also (originally) partially discussed along these lines.

The term ‘government’ refers here to the whole set of the institutions at the federal level representing federal interests, and not just the executive. (In this view the State Duma could be treated as part of the ‘central government’ as well.) A certain problem of the analysis is that there are institutions at the federal level, such as the Council of the Federation, that are specifically designed to represent regional interests. The key question is whether they turn into independent subjects of negotiation or should be treated simply as an arena of negotiations that can be used by the regions to veto the power advancements of the central interests.

In this article I specifically examine the following regional arrangements: the CIS with its ‘modifications’ such as the Economic Union or the Payment Union; the ‘Ruble zone’; the EAEC with the affiliated institutions such as the Customs Union of 2010 or the EDB; the USRB; the CES; and the CSTO. See Libman (2007) for more details.

However, for some of them, different comparative approaches are applicable, for example, a comparison of the domestic decentralisation in Kazakhstan with Kazakhstan's ability to support the regional integration in Central Asia.

See Colton and McFaul (2003) for a survey.

Although for some caveats on this see Chebankova (2005, 2006).

Interestingly, several post-Soviet countries, although unitary according to their constitution, followed a similar development: this was observed in Kazakhstan (Cummings 2000; Melvin 2001; Jones Luong 2004) and in Ukraine (Turovsky 1999; Way 2002) before the ‘Orange Revolution’. Hence, the cycle may represent a logical path of the evolution of the Soviet administrative market after the collapse of the old hierarchy rather than merely an artefact of Russia's size and heterogeneity.

See also Trenin (2010).

For examples see: BBC Russian, 8 July 2010, available at: http://www.bbc.co.uk/russian/russia/2010/07/100707_lukashenko_films_russia.shtml, accessed 15 March 2011; Interfax, 22 July 2010, available at: http://www.interfax.by/news/belarus/76309, accessed 15 March 2011. In the period 2000–2010, the countries experienced a short-term gas war (in 2004), permanent struggles over the purchase of the Belorussian gas company Beltransgaz by Gazprom, regular threats by Lukashenko to change the orientation of his country's foreign policy ‘towards the West’, the decision not to recognise Abkhazia and Southern Ossetia and not to support Russia's embargo on wine trade with Georgia and Moldova and, finally, conflict over import duties on Russian oil in the Customs Union and a full-scale attack on Lukashenko in the Russian media in 2010.

As a caveat, one should mention the Customs Union of 2010, which does generate a certain level of policy coordination between its members. However, the future of this institution is highly uncertain and requires further investigation.

These effects have been particularly strong in the 1990s and have persisted in the 2000s. For example, in 2006 during the Kodor crisis in Abkhazia, this territory was visited by the heads of the Abazin district of Karachaevo-Cherkesia (Markedonov 2010).

Kazakhstan is argued to be a good example of this approach (see Pomfret 2009).

In several cases the relations were also connected to the business interests of the governors themselves. This surfaced also in the issues of ‘big politics’, as seen with the Moscow Mayor Yurii Luzhkov's involvement in the debate over the autonomy or independence of Crimea, Abkhazia and Adzharia. Here, ‘cross-border cooperation’ and ‘paradiplomacy’ are merged.

NewsRu.com, 14 August 2002, available at: http://www.newsru.com/russia/14aug2002/union_all.html, accessed 14 March 2010. Belarus consists of seven regions: six oblasti and the city of Minsk. An oblast' in Belarus is a purely administrative unit without any political autonomy (unlike an oblast' in Russia, which at least de jure enjoys substantial rights as a constituent unit of the federation).

Telegraf.by, 19 May 2007, available at: http://www.telegraf.by/belarus/2007/05/29/chechnia/, accessed 14 March 2010.

In Russia during the 1990s, regions sometimes controlled the most attractive resources (like the petroleum industry in Bashkortostan or diamond industry in Yakutiya), but in the 2000s this control was lost in favour of the central government.

Generally speaking, however, one should not overestimate the guarantees of the internationally recognised sovereignty as a source of the political property rights in general, and particularly in the former Soviet Union, where many countries have border disputes. The enforcement of international political property rights is also associated with the reaction of third parties, like that of the EU during the ‘gas wars’ between Russia and Ukraine.

The situation is somewhat similar to that of several attacks by the Putin government against private business, where the ‘selective application’ of the already existing legal instrument was an instrument of pressure sufficient to enforce federal interests and to ‘capture’ the once powerful oligarchs (Yakovlev 2005).

There are examples in the post-Soviet world in which the weaker partner indeed dominated the political sphere of the stronger one; these include the special case of Armenia, where a substantial part of the elite comes from the separatist enclave Nagornyi Karabakh in Azerbaijan, which is de facto treated as an independent state by the republic.

For a detailed description of the dynamics of the USRB and other factors influencing Russian–Belarus integration, see Danilovich (2006).

Here I use the term ‘asymmetry’ in relation to unequal resource endowment; it does not necessarily imply an asymmetric degree of political autonomy, although such was the result in Russia and in the CIS in the 1990s. In order to describe the latter phenomenon, I use the terms ‘asymmetric federalism’ and ‘asymmetric regionalism’.

The lack of expert knowledge is recognised even by the representatives of Putin's administration (see Kolerov 2006).

It is interesting to note that the comparison demonstrated above not only fits the objectives of this study but also is consistent with the evidence from the research on the collapse of the USSR and the stability of Russia. Hale (2004, 2005) analyses the collapse of the Soviet ethnic federation and claims it was strongly influenced by the presence of the dominant core ethnic region (RSFSR); in Russia, in contrast, no such ‘core’ is present. In terms of this article, the USSR could be characterised by a ‘strong’ asymmetry within the federation, while Russia is only ‘weakly’ asymmetric.

For another example see Jones Luong and Weinthal (2004).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Alexander Libman

The author appreciates the very helpful comments by an anonymous referee and by the Editor. All mistakes remain my own.