The Centralization of Authority and the Paper Federation

     In 2013, months before his country was set to host the Olympic Games, Russian President Vladimir Putin revoked the right of citizens within the Russian Federation to freely elect local governors. To some, this might sound eerily familiar, because this has, indeed happened before. Almost ten years previously, Putin and his United Russia party passed a law repealing the direct election of governors for Russia’s 89 (currently 83) regions (essentially states). Instead of holding direct elections, Putin would be empowered to appoint new governors who would then have to be approved by the local legislature. However, this barrier of the local legislature was illusory. According to an article from Radio Free Europe Radio Liberty, under the 2004 law “if the president's candidate is rejected twice, he can then dissolve the rebellious legislature and appoint his own choice as acting governor” (Bransten, 2004). The law was later temporarily repealed after protester exerted pressure on the national government. Then after the protest movement petered out, the law was quickly re-instituted. Such actions are highly un-democratic in nature.

     The Russian Federation is constitutionally just that: a federation. In practice however, Russia can no longer be considered to be a constitutionally-based federation. The centralization of power carried out under Putin’s reign has rendered the idea of federalism pointless, as power in Russia is no longer decentralized, rather power is highly concentrated in the executive. The regions of Russia are no longer independent subunits of the federal (central) government, they have become extensions of the executive. As recently-assassinated Russian opposition leader Boris Nemtsov described the situation in an interview with Reuters, "It's another lever to manage everything from Moscow” (Carbonnel, 2013).

     With the power to elect state (regional subunit) government stripped from the populace, the Russian Federation is a federation in name only. As Steven Taylor et al point out in their book A Different Democracy, in terms of a principal-agent relationship “[i]n a federal system the citizens as principals delegate to both the central and subunit governments”(Taylor et al. 2014, 85). With the elimination of the selection of the subunit governments the citizens have lost their status as a principal in relationship to the state (regional) government. Thus, one the key elements of a federation has been lost in Russia, and it should now be considered as a federation in name only. With all legally binding decisions emanating from the executive (along with a pliant parliament), the subunit governments in Russia have lost their sovereignty, again another key characteristic of a federal system is lost.

     Over the course of the previous decade, Russia has slipped closer and closer toward autocracy, and further from the ideals of federal democracy outlined in their constitution. Power has been concentrated in the executive and a vertical hierarchy has stripped the citizenry of its power to delegate authority to their regional governmental subunit, and therefore the electoral relationship between the Russian government and its citizens has been fundamentally altered.

    

Works Cited:

Bransten, Jeremy. Russia: Putin Signs Bill Eliminating Direct Elections Of Governors. Radio Free Europe Radio Liberty. December 13, 2004. Accessed: April 7, 2015. http://www.rferl.org/content/article/1056377.html

Carbonnel, Alissa De. Putin signs law to allow him to pick Russian governors. Reuters. April 2, 2013. Accessed: April 7, 2015. http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/04/02/us-russia-elections-idUSBRE9310GR20130402

Taylor, Steven L. et al. A Different Democracy: American Government in a Thirty-One-Country Perspective. Print. 2014. Yale University Press. London and New Haven. Page 85.