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Abstract
Elections for all 83 Russian governors were reinstated in Russia in 2012, seven years after they had been suspended. The democratic reform coincided with renewed political activism in Russia since December 2011, but the reform was as much a belated recognition of the shortcomings and failures from appointing Russian governors. Pragmatic necessity and not democratic conversion was the determining factor. Based on the first elections in October 2012, the reform will have only a limited effect over the next few years on democratic change in Russia, at most placating liberal and regional demands while consolidating personal rule under Putin.
Notes
1 For uniform terminology in this article, all 83 territorial-administrative subdivisions of the Russian Federation are termed ‘regions’ and their leaders ‘governors’. Formally, 24 are titled ‘republics’ or ‘districts’, and some leaders have the official titles ‘head’ with two still termed ‘president’ (Tatarstan and Bashkortostan).
2 On the legislative debates in the national parliament and reference sources on the specific terms of the amended law in the autumn and early winter of 2004 passed on 14 December, see Goode (Citation2007, pp. 368–72).
3 Federal'nyi zakon ot 05.04.2009 N 41-F3, ‘O vnesenii izmenenii v federal'nyi zakon ‘‘Ob obshchikh printsipakh organizatsii zakonodatel'nykh (predstavitel'nykh) i ispolnitel'nykh organov gosudarstvennoi vlasti sub’’ektov Rossiiskoi Federatsii’’ i federal'nyi zakon ‘‘O politicheskikh partiyakh’. The full text of the law was included under the sublink ‘documents’ of President Medvedev's webpage, available at: http://graph.document.kremlin.ru/page.aspx?1;1006961, accessed 12 July 2010.
4 The specific laws, edicts and decrees related to changes in the appointment of governors under President Medvedev in 2009–2012 are still posted on the Russian presidential webpage under the link Dokumenty, available at: http://graph.document.kremlin.ru/, accessed 6 August 2014.
5 Over the first four years of appointing governors through to October 2009, a generally negative view of the reform was already shared by these very same Russian political scientists and analysts (Moses 2010, pp. 1441–48). The political realities of 2010–2011 outlined below only seemed to vindicate their criticism of appointing governors as an inherently flawed reform.
6 The ratings can be found posted on the webpage of Minchenko Consulting Communication Group under the sublink ‘Analytika’, available at: http://wwwminchenko.ru/analitika, accessed 1 August 2014. Typical articles in the Russian media highlighting the Minchenko rankings include Nagornykh (Citation2011) following the release of the eighth Minchenko rating of governors.
7 ‘Svedeniya ob itogakh vyborov deistvuyushchikh glav ispolonitel'noi vlasti sub”ektov Rossiiskoi federatsii. 1996–2000’, available on the website of Tsentral'naya Izbiratel'naya Komissiya Rossiskoi Federatsii, Federal'nyi Tsentr Informatizatsii at: http://www.cikrf.ru/, accessed 13 November 2000.
8 For an insider perspective on the greater authority by elected governors from those appointed as ‘federal cogs’ after 2004, see the interview of Vyacheslav Pozgalev, elected three times Vologda governor in 1996, 1999 and 2004, appointed to the same office in 2007, and compelled to resign in December 2011, because of the low UR vote percentage in Vologda for the State Duma election (Mamaeva Citation2012).
9 ‘Vremya politiki’, Radio Liberty (Moscow), radio transcribed broadcasts, 5 July 2010 and 16 August 2010, available at: http://www.svobodanews.ru, accessed 7 July 2010 and 16 August 2010. ‘Vremya politiki’ was a weekly radio programme on Radio Liberty featuring a series of live direct reports by journalists, activists, officials and analysts around Russia on various aspects of current regional and local politics, hosted by the anchor Mikhail Sokolov, and broadcast-transcribed over the Radio Liberty weblink. All specifically cited broadcasts of this programme in their original transcribed versions are no longer available from the Radio Liberty website, but copies of the transcriptions are available in the supplementary material for this article which can be found hosted alongside the article on tandfonline.com at: http://10.1080/09668136.2014.958290.
10 ‘Vremya politiki’, Radio Liberty (Moscow), radio transcribed broadcast, 6 December 2010, available at: http://www.svobodanews.ru, accessed 8 December 2010.
11 Mikhail Tul'skii from the Petersburg Politics Fund has estimated that since 2007 at a minimum 45 Russian mayors who defeated UR candidates were forced to resign and that 27 of the 45 had been implicated in criminal cases. ‘Vremya politiki’, Radio Liberty (Moscow), radio transcribed broadcast, 2 April 2012, available at: http://www.svobodanews.ru, accessed 5 April 2012.
12 ‘Vremya politiki’, Radio Liberty (Moscow), 19 October 2009 and 4 April 2011, radio transcribed broadcasts available at: http://www.svobodanews.ru, accessed 21 October 2009.
13 ‘Mayor Resigns, Possibly in Conflict with United Russia’, RFE/RL Newsline, 11, 8 November 2008, Part 1, available at: http://www.rferl.org, accessed 10 November 2008.
14 ‘Vremya politiki’, Radio Liberty (Moscow), radio transcribed broadcasts, 5 July 2010, 17 May 2010 and 10 October 2011, available at: http://www.svobodanews.ru, accessed 12 May 2010, 19 May 2010 and 12 October 2011.
15 Putin had a bill emphasising the importance of mayoral elections introduced right after he was elected in June 2012.
16 The original explanatory memorandum on the draft bill distributed to State Duma deputies on 16 January is reproduced in its entirety at the end of the article by Ivanov and Solov'ev (Citation2012).
17 The ‘political survivability’ indices and influence rankings of all governors compiled and issued twice annually by Minchenko Consulting have just been updated to incorporate both the old and new systems. They include relatively the same evaluative criteria amended by the probability of the incumbent governors both keeping their appointed positions before termination or winning competitive elections in their regions. See for example the most recent 13th ranking for October 2013, ‘Trinadtsatyi reiting politicheskoi vyzhivaemosti gubernatorov’, available at: http://www.minchenko.ru/analitika/analitika_38.html, accessed 1 August 2014.
18 Federal'nyi zakon Rossiiskoi Federatsii ot 2 maya 2012 N 40-F3, ‘O vnesenii izmenenii v Federal'nyi zakon ‘Ob obshchikh printsipakh organizatsii zakonodatel'nykh (predstaviltel'nykh) i ispolnitel'nykh organov gosudarstvenoi vlasti sub”ektov Rossiiskoi Federatsii’ i Federal'nyi zakon ‘Ob osnovnykh garantiyakh izbiratel'nykh prav i prava na uchastie v referendum grazhdan Rossiiskoi Federatsii’, Rossiiskaya gazeta, 4 May 2012, available at: http://www.rg.ru/2012/05/04/gubernatori-dok.html, accessed 1 August 2013.
19 On 26 February 2014, Vadim Potomskii as a political pay-off for his role of the foil in the Bryansk staged competition was appointed acting governor of the neighbouring Orel region, replacing the appointed governor at the end of his term, and setting Potomskii up to be elected Orel governor in September 2014 as the jointly endorsed candidate of UR and the Russian Communist Party.