- 著者
- ⿃飼 将雅
- 出版者
- ロシア・東欧学会
- 雑誌
- ロシア・東欧研究 (ISSN:13486497)
- 巻号頁・発行日
- vol.2020, no.49, pp.144-166, 2020 (Released:2021-06-12)
- 参考文献数
- 42
As a result of a series of centralization reforms, initiated in 2000, a great number of studies have discussed that the center entrenched its control over regional subjects in Russia. Yet, several regional unrests observed in the recent years demonstrates an urgent need for an overhaul of the Russian center-periphery relationship, to which only limited attention has been paid yet. This study explains this instability by the increase of outsider governor deployments. Exploiting an original dataset of all governors from 1991 to 2019, patterns of outsider deployments and the effect of such deployments on the regional political processes are examined. Although President Boris Yel’tsin initially held the right to appoint and dismiss most governors in the first half of the 1990s, he did not try to dispatch outsider governors not firmly embedded in the regional societies. Whereas governors began to be elected through the popular gubernatorial elections in almost all of the regions since 1995, outsider candidates rarely won the posts of governors. In Vladimir Putin’s first and second terms (2000-2008), the power balance between the center and regions radically changed in favor of the center. In addition, scholars have argued that the center’s dominance over regional elites increased rapidly due to the de facto appointment system of governors was introduced in 2004. Nevertheless, even then, outsider governor deployments remained exceptional cases. Since the influence of United Russia as a dominant party was limited at that time, federal elites had to receive the endorsement of governors, as regional bosses, to secure the stability of the regime. However, after the triumph of United Russia in the 2007 parliamentary election and the advent of President Dmitrii Medvedev, the Presidential Administration embarked on active replacements of regional bosses with outsider governors loyal to the center. Consequently, while the center got capable of controlling regional political processes more tightly, these radical cadre reorganizations caused dissatisfaction and protests of regional elites, as a result of which electoral performances in the 2011 parliamentary and 2012 presidential elections declined in the eyes of the center. As a compromise to massive protest movements brought about by the immense size of electoral frauds, popular gubernatorial elections were reinstated in 2012. However, the influence of the center over the recruitment of governors continues to be remarkable and the number of outsider governors is still growing. Yet, in the late 2010s, the decline of the regime’s popularity caused instability at the regional level, as demonstrated by the fact that several candidates backed by the federal government lost in gubernatorial elections. While outsider deployments have merits for the federal elites to control regional political processes through them as loyal agents of the federal government, their lack of embeddedness in local elite communities has detrimental effects on regional unrests. To test this argument, this study investigates the relationship between outsider deployments and regional electoral performances. The OLS estimate and Inverse Probability Weighted estimate demonstrate that outsider governors deliver fewer votes than local governors. Those findings imply that the center-periphery relationship in Russia is still in flux even though the rules of the game have changed since the 1990s.
2 0 0 0 OA 跋扈するクラン政治から垂直的権力の形成へ:ダゲスタンの共和国政府-市郡政府の関係の変遷
- 著者
- 鳥飼 将雅
- 出版者
- ロシア・東欧学会
- 雑誌
- ロシア・東欧研究 (ISSN:13486497)
- 巻号頁・発行日
- vol.2018, no.47, pp.98-116, 2018 (Released:2019-10-08)
- 参考文献数
- 20
Although the political processes in specific regions of Russia have attracted much scholarly attention since the collapse of the USSR, the number of case studies involving the North-Caucasian ethnic republics has been quite limited. Consequently, a rather shallow and stereotypical understanding emphasizing only limited aspects of the politics in these republics has been represented in the academic discussion. Building on information from local news-sources and interviews in Dagestan, this study highlights three overlooked but important aspects: (1) the consociational nature and instability between the regional and municipal governments in Dagestan politics, (2) the uniqueness of electoral mobilization in Dagestan, and (3) the struggle to consolidate the power vertical following Ramazan Abdulatipov’s appointment as the governor.The consociational nature of Dagestan politics, particularly in the 1990s, has been discussed by several specialists. While this uniqueness was guaranteed by the legal and constitutional framework of Dagestan, the Kremlin’s initiative to force regional governments to revise regional laws to comply with federal laws removed these constraints. However, by scrutinizing the composition of the regional assembly, this study shows that the balance of power among ethnic groups has been maintained informally in contemporary Dagestan. Moreover, an analysis of municipal level elites reveals the independence of diverse actors in Dagestan’s politics, which has resulted in an unstable regime.This study also highlights the difficulty of aligning our understanding of electoral mobilization in Dagestan with the general conception of political machines in the non-Russian ethnic republics. Although, as the literature on Russian electoral politics points out, turnout and support for incumbent candidates and parties in federal-level elections are extremely high in Dagestan, mayoral elections have proved highly competitive, implying that electoral mobilization in Dagestan is not controlled by the regional government but rather by clan groups whose activities are rampant at the municipal level. This finding demonstrates the need to modify the prevailing concept of Russian political machines, which has been based mainly on case studies of ethnic republics such as Tatarstan, to explain Dagastanʼs uniqueness.Finally, governors recently sent from the center have begun to establish the power vertical in Dagestan in order to enforce stable rule by the federal government. The fourth governor of Dagestan, Ramazan Abdulatipov, was the first outsider governor in Dagestan since WWII. His close relationship with the Kremlin enabled him to neutralize several local clans that were firmly rooted in specific municipalities, although this attempt was left incomplete. His successor, Vladimir Vas’liev, had had no ties whatsoever to Dagestan prior to his inauguration as governor. Given his efforts to thoroughly transform Dagestan’s politics, there is an urgent need to observe whether this transformation, with support from the Kremlin, will succeed.Whereas the main focus is on the contemporary political process in Dagestan, the implications of this case study offer a deeper understanding of Russian federalism during Putin’s presidency. Study findings also show the importance of case studies focused on specific regions, even in centralized Russia, in order to expand our understanding of federalism and electoral politics in Russia.