#16
RFE/RL Russian Political Weekly
Vol. 3, No. 19, 15 May 2003
THE SECOND ATTACK ON THE REGIONS
By Ilya Malyakin
Ilya Malyakin founded the Volga Information Agency in 1991 and remains its chief
editor. He also works as an independent regional expert with the Moscow-based
International Institute for Humanitarian and Political Studies.
The State Duma did not consider the president's draft laws on reforming local self-government and federative relations in April. The chamber was to have considered the draft law "on general principles of organization of legislative and executive state power in the [federation] subjects" in its second reading on 16 April. However, on 15 April the Duma Council took that draft law off the agenda. As for the law "on general principles of local self-government," the Duma Council said nothing about it. The Duma Committee on Local Self-Government, chaired by Vladimir Mokryi, is working on proposed amendments to that law, of which there are more than 6,000 so far. There is no guarantee that that number will not rise further. The bill may be considered sometime in May, but it is possible that "work on the mistakes" in the draft will not be complete by then.
So, the Russian regional authorities and bodies of local self-government have gotten a reprieve. They probably will not manage to freeze the reforms on which the commission led by Dmitrii Kozak, the deputy head of the presidential administration, has been working for a year. And yet the process of establishing new relations between steps of the pyramid -- the center, regions, and local government -- is going slowly. Not just slowly, but much more slowly than the presidential team that initiated the process was counting on. Just a little bit more delay and it will get tied up in pre-election squabbles. And then it will become advantageous for the Duma deputies to delay and not disentangle themselves from the intricate, behind-the-scenes battle being waged around federal reforms. The Kremlin understands this. Kozak recently announced: "In this politically complicated election period it is difficult for the State Duma deputies to be absolutely objective and it is essential for them to better articulate their positions, demonstrating that these laws are above all aimed at upholding the interests of voters."
However, in reality the main factor complicating the adoption of the "second federal packet" of presidential draft laws has nothing to do with the voters. The Duma deputies, who are deeply interested in getting re-elected, will have to maneuver between the Kremlin, governors, and the heads of municipal administrations. No matter how devoted to Vladimir Putin they are, they will have to remember that the notorious "administrative resource," so important for getting re-elected, is by no means controlled by the Kremlin. It is shared by governors' and mayors' teams, who as a rule have very complicated relations with each other.
The problem is that on the threshold of such significant reform, the Russian system of state management turned out to be incapable of formulating a consensus position. Moreover, it turned out that the interests of its teams were hardly even compatible with one another. A dialectical unity of opposites did not emerge -- only a battle. For that very reason, the discussion of the product of Kozak's commission drowns in a stream of amendments, and the opinions of Russian politicians about how the reforms will turn out become ever more hazy. The process of working on draft laws turns into an attempt to mask a conflict in which every level of government is lobbying for its own interests.
The essence of the conflict is obvious. The foundation for it was laid in the summer of 2000, when the president's team submitted to parliament the "first federal packet" of draft laws and carried out the first attack on the unlimited resources of the "regional barons," laying out a new system of relations between the regions and the center. Since then we've gotten a system of federal districts, the right of the president to remove governors from office before the end of their terms, a Federation Council in which the leaders of regional executive and legislative branches were replaced by their representatives, and also official rhetoric declaring the final triumph over centrifugal tendencies in the Russian Federation. But that last assertion is false, as the current "multilateral war" surrounding the "second federal packet" demonstrates.
If we leave official rhetoric alone, then it's not difficult to determine the interests of the participants in the conflict. The Kremlin is interested in turning its half-declarative resources for controlling the regions into real ones. The Kozak commission's proposals call for perfecting mechanisms of such control, including simplifying the existing system for removing the heads of regional executive power from office and for disbanding legislative organs. Such a procedure currently exists on paper, but is in practice not realizable because of its complexity. In addition, the federal center would like to avoid many financial obligations toward the regions and their populations, transferring these obligations, along with the accompanying responsibility, to regional authorities. However, the regional authorities do not want additional responsibility, or interference in their affairs, or personal dependence on the president, or, even worse, dependence on the prime minister, as Kozak and company have proposed.
It goes without saying that the Kremlin controls the "centrist majority" in the State Duma. However, the regional elite control a majority in the Federation Council, and without the approval of the upper house, the new laws could die on paper. And if the Duma doesn't hurry, then by the time the Duma would have to override the Federation Council's likely veto, the parliamentary elections (scheduled for December) will be approaching. At that time the "centrists" that didn't land spots on party lists will have to think very hard before coming out against those who are able to help or hurt their chances for re-election in the Duma's single-mandate districts. For that reason, it's important for the Kremlin not only to win the battle, but to get the vanquished to approve the victory. There are two paths for achieving this. One is to make major concessions, which would make reform safe in the eyes of the governors. They took this path with respect to the "first federal packet" in 2000, but that's exactly why the need for the "second packet" arose. The second option is to pay a suitable compensation.
That compensation will be paid, but not at the Kremlin's expense. It will be paid with federal budget funds that the regions need to carry out the functions to be transferred to them. And it will be paid in additional powers, but not at the Kremlin's expense. The Kremlin has decided to take those powers out of the pocket of local self-government.
Here the losing participant in the trilateral conflict appears. Local self-government has virtually no representation at the federal level, and consequently, is not capable of fighting its opponents on equal terms. It can only take measures that are more symbolic than effective: writing letters of protest, convening roundtables, and proclaiming its point of view through a few friendly federal legislators.
By the way, in the regions the relations between governors' teams and local self-government are a mass of contradictions. During the Kremlin's first attack on the "regional barons," a huge blow was dealt to the governors by taking away their right to revoke the powers of mayors of large cities before the end of their terms. The president took that power for himself. In general, the governors and mayors of regional capitals did not get along -- in fact, the conflict between the governor and mayor became the basic political paradigm of the majority of regions. However, after the innovations of 2000, the "municipals" sensed the support of the Kremlin and finally turned into independent politicians, bringing part of the "administrative resource" out of the governors' control. In order to defeat the mayors, the governors had only elections, as in Petrozavodsk, or evasive maneuvers, as in Samara, where the oblast introduced external financial management of its capital, depriving the mayor even of control over the city budget. More often the battle between governors and mayors reached a deadlock.
But the "municipals" never lived up to the main hope of the Kremlin. They did not weaken the "regional barons" enough so that the barons would be unable to resist the center. A genuine split of the regional elite did not materialize. For that reason the Kremlin decided to sacrifice its erstwhile ally. The Kozak reforms, among other things, propose taking away the current "immunity" of the heads of local self-government. Having lost most of their political powers, they will be occupied almost exclusively with management activities, and if they get it into their heads to be obstinate, then the governors will be able to remove them from their offices with ease. This compensation for losses to the federal center looks attractive to many regional leaders who are continually compelled to expend resources on battles on their own territory.
In exchange for the mayors, the president's team will probably cultivate new allies: regional legislatures. The "second federal packet" was preceded by reform of the electoral system, which required half of the regional legislatures to be elected from party lists, but eliminated the possibility of locally based parties representing the local elite to compete in elections. The new regional legislators will cease to be "voting machines" ready to support any decision of the governor. On the other hand, through federal party leaders, regional legislators may well fall under the control of the Kremlin.
But all this is speculation. For now only one thing is guaranteed: the demolition of the current trilateral system of checks and balances, from which one team will be excluded. It is hard to judge whether the Kremlin's new attempt to strengthen its control over the regions will succeed. On the other hand, one can certainly confirm that within the regions, the Kremlin's gambit will lead to the homogenization of political life -- one should not exaggerate the capabilities of the regional party structures. In addition, nothing will prevent the governors from accepting a gift from the federal leadership but blocking in the Federation Council the part of the "federal packet" that limits their own powers. For that reason, it's early for the president's team to speak of the imminent strengthening of the "power vertical" on a nationwide scale. But one can with a great deal of certainty expect to see the strengthening of the regional half-feudal regimes, thanks to reforms that had no such intention.