#5 - JRL 8242 - JRL Home
Moscow Times
June 7, 2004
Putin's Centripetal Reform
By Nikolai Petrov
President Vladimir Putin has begun his second term the same way he began his first -- with a sweeping initiative aimed at the governors. In 2000, Putin launched federal reform; this year, he unveiled stage two. In the end, this process will weaken the federal compact at the heart of the Russian Federation while bolstering the unitary nature of the state.
Putin and his team are not sworn enemies of federalism per se. They are simply strengthening the state from the center. The dismantling of federalism -- and democracy -- is a side effect. In the semi-military logic of one-man rule and the "vertical of power," or executive chain of command, federalism as a structural principle is too complex. A unified state is both simpler and more familiar.
The publication of a proposal to replace the 89 regions with a system of 28 beefed-up regions, and the quickly quashed criminal case against Saratov Governor Dmitry Ayatskov could be seen as a warning to governors before last week's State Council meeting. The message was clear: Give up some of your powers voluntarily or risk losing them entirely.
There are a number of symbolic links between the current stage of federal reform and the first. Today's State Council, one of the weakest yet, is implementing plans drawn up by the council's first members. At that time, Tatarstan President Mintimer Shaimiyev headed a working group on the demarcation of state powers, and Moscow Mayor Yury Luzhkov led efforts to transform the state system. The Kremlin had no use for their proposals at the time, however. And the administrative reform commission headed by the current Cabinet chief of staff, Dmitry Kozak, was created in response to Kremlin dissatisfaction with the work of Shaimiyev's group.
Following Boris Yeltsin's re-election in 1996, the Kremlin and the government reneged on most of his campaign promises by claiming that there was no money in the budget to pay for them. A similar process is now under way, though both the president and the government warned in advance of the need to lighten the state's unmanageable social welfare burden.
Following last week's State Council meeting, the talk was of a "decisive division of powers between Moscow and the regions" and the need "to sort out the issue of joint jurisdiction." At issue is Article 72 of the Constitution, which lays out the areas of joint jurisdiction. The architects of Putin's federal reform program view the article as a flaw that must be corrected. In a sense, they are right. It is not (entirely) their fault that regional authorities are too weak and fragmented to counterbalance the federal government, or that society is too atomized to realize, much less insist upon, its interest in a clear, horizontal and vertical division of powers.
What does all this mean in practical terms? Five joint functions are being handed over to the regions in full: the transfer of agricultural land from one category to another; the concession of rights to generally found mineral deposits; employment and efforts to reduce joblessness; property inventories and the resolution of labor disputes. Moscow is simply shedding this burden. A number of other functions -- chief among them regulating the use of forests and rivers, architectural oversight of new construction and issues of civil defense -- will be delegated on a temporary basis.
The current talk about decentralization is misleading, however. In fact, we are witnessing a recentralization of state powers. To begin with, transferring functions while retaining control over their implementation amounts to no transfer at all.
Second, in many cases, functions are being transferred not to the regional level but to the federal districts. As a result, the estimates of a 10, 20 or even 30 percent reduction in the number of government employees are groundless. The number of federal employees in the regions may well be cut, but the same bureaucrats -- and many more -- will simply be added to the federal district rolls.
The move to impose some sort of order on the division of powers is laudable. Yet to date, the law on reorganization of the legislative and executive branches of government in the regions, which takes effect next year, remains unfunded. What's more, the positions staked out by Moscow and the governors continue to diverge. Lawmakers face the daunting task of bringing federal laws and codes into line with the reformed division of powers before moving on the laws already in effect in the regions.
Nikolai Petrov, a scholar-in-residence at the Carnegie Moscow Center, contributed this comment to The Moscow Times.