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Federalism, Local Government, and Transition to Authoritarianism in Russia

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Local Governance in Multi-Layered Systems

Part of the book series: Ius Gentium: Comparative Perspectives on Law and Justice ((IUSGENT,volume 108))

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Abstract

Since the adoption of the Russian Constitution in 1993, the legal regulation of relations between local self-government, the component units of the federation, and the federal centre has undergone many changes. These developments could occur thanks to the Constitution itself, which, in a rather broad way, refers to the federal legislature, the discipline of the organization of local self-government and of the component units of the Federation. However, the analysis from a diachronic perspective of the adopted legislative acts reveals that, primarily since 2014, they have increasingly shaped the relationship between the different territorial levels of government in a way that essentialy serves the consolidation in Russia of an authoritarian State. It is clear that these reforms were shaped under the influence of Tsarist and Soviet legacies, even if reinterpreted and adapted to new situations.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Gronskj (1929); Kis (1973).

  2. 2.

    Kahn (2004), pp. 74–75.

  3. 3.

    Lynn and Novikov (1997), pp. 190–192.

  4. 4.

    Starr (1972), p. 100.

  5. 5.

    Mironovo (1994).

  6. 6.

    Yaschuk (2017).

  7. 7.

    The definition provided by the USSR law of 9 April 1990 was not included in the USSR Constitution, which by virtue of the constitutional revision of December 1990 merely recognised the presence of the ‘local self-government system’.

  8. 8.

    Art. 138, paragraph 2 Constitution RSFSR 1978. In this Art., the soviets of the people’s deputies were still asked to guarantee ‘the execution of the decisions of bodies of state power made within their scope of competence’, which illustrates the difficulty of abandoning the principle of the unity of state power and dual subordination.

  9. 9.

    Art. 138, paragraph 1, Constitution RSFSR 1978.

  10. 10.

    Art. 85, paragraph 1 Constitution RSFSR 1978.

  11. 11.

    Art. 85, paragraph 2 Constitution RSFSR/FR 1978: ‘Local soviets of people’s deputies–of districts, cities, urban districts, towns and rural settlements–are part of the local self-government system’.

  12. 12.

    See Henderson (2011).

  13. 13.

    Art. 5, paragraph 3, Constitution RF.

  14. 14.

    Art. 77, paragraph 2 Constitution.

  15. 15.

    Art. 11, paragraph 1 Constitution RF: ‘State power in the Russian Federation shall be exercised by the President of the Russian Federation, the Federal Assembly (the Council of the Federation and the State Duma), the Government of the Russian Federation, and the courts of the Russian Federation’.

  16. 16.

    Art. 11, paragraph 2 Constitution RF: ‘State power in the subjects of the Russian Federation shall be exercised by the bodies of state power created by them’.

  17. 17.

    Art. 130, paragraphs 1 and 2 Constitution RF: ‘1. Local self-government in the Russian Federation shall ensure the independent solution by the population of issues of local importance, of possession, use and disposal of municipal property. 2. Local self-government shall be exercised by citizens through a referendum, election, other forms of direct expression of the will of the people, through elected and other bodies of local self-government’.

  18. 18.

    The provisions of the chapter 8 could indeed be modified – just as those of chapters 3–7 – through a Law of the Russian Federation to amend the Constitution adopted with at least two thirds of the total number of the deputies of the State Duma, with at least three quarters of the total number of the members of the Council of the Federation and ratified by no less than two thirds of the component units of the Russian Federation. Otherwise, the provisions of chapter 1 – similarly to those included in chapter 2 ‘Rights and Freedoms of Man and Citizens’ and in chapter 9 ‘Constitutional Amendments and Review of the Constitution’– could only be changed through the approval of a new Constitution. In this respect see: Petersen and Levin (2016), p. 526.

  19. 19.

    Nikitenko (2014), p. 490.

  20. 20.

    The federal legislator also intervened in local self-government before the approval of the new Constitution of 1993 when – after the introduction of the term ‘local self-government’ in the Constitution of the RSFSR of 1978 by the revision of 24 May 1991–a RSFSR law was passed ‘On Local Self-Government in the RSFSR’ on 6 July 1991, later abrogated by the law of 29 August 1995.

  21. 21.

    Kruzhkov (2005) p. 36.

  22. 22.

    Ross (2006), p. 645.

  23. 23.

    Wollmann (2004), p. 122.

  24. 24.

    On proposals and works of the Commission, named Kozak Commission: Campbell (2008), pp. 264–270.

  25. 25.

    Bazhenova (2017).

  26. 26.

    Cfr. Wollmann and Gritsenko (2009).

  27. 27.

    Art. 4, paragraph 1, Law No. 131 FZ.

  28. 28.

    Above all on the basis of: Federal Law of May 27, 2014 No. 136-FZ ‘On Amendments to Art. 26.3’ of the Federal Law ‘On the General Principles of the Legislative (Representative) and Executive Bodies of State Power of the Subjects of the Russian Federation’ and the Federal Law ‘On the General Principles of Organization of Local Self-Government in the Russian Federation’ and of: Federal Law of February 3, 2015 No. 8-FZ ‘On Amendments to Arts 32 and 33 of the Federal Law ‘On Fundamental Guarantees of Electoral Rights and the Right to Participate in a Referendum of Citizens of the Russian Federation’ and the Federal Law ‘On the General Principles of Organization of Local Self-Government in the Russian Federation’.

  29. 29.

    Alongside these categories of municipal entities available to the component units of the federation, the 2003 Federal law set forth a series of ad hoc categories, such as ‘science cities’, ‘frontier territories’, the ‘territories of the Skolkovo innovation centre’, ‘advanced socio-economic development territories’, ‘territories of centres of scientific and technological innovation’, the ‘territories of the free port of Vladivostok’, and the ‘closed administrative-territorial formations’ which are further regulated by an ad hoc federal law, with the exception of the so-called category of ‘municipal formations located in the Far North and surrounding territories with limited periods for the delivery of goods’. At same time, Law No. 131 FZ does not make any reference the so called ‘national districts’ which were reintroduced in three component units of the federation (Republic of Sacha/Jakutija, Republic of Karelija, Territory of Altaj) by means of their regional laws.

  30. 30.

    Data sourced from Kiskin (2020), p. 112.

  31. 31.

    Accordingly, the number of urban areas rose from 512 to 632, while thirty-three municipal areas were already established.

  32. 32.

    Bezhenova (2020).

  33. 33.

    Blagov (2017a).

  34. 34.

    Shugrina Kutafin (2017).

  35. 35.

    Judgement of the Constitutional Court of the Russian Federation, 1 December 2015, No. 30-P, in www.ksrf.ru.

  36. 36.

    However, according to the decision of the Russian Constitutional Court, in rural and urban settlements (which are smaller in size and jurisdiction than urban areas) the alternative of direct election of heads of the municipal formations must always be guaranteed.

  37. 37.

    Wollmann and Gritsenko (2009).

  38. 38.

    This rule is not applied in rural/urban settlements and in intra-urban division, in which half of the members of the competition commission must be respectively selected by the rural/urban council and by intra-urban district council meanwhile the other half respectively appointed half by the municipal district head and by the head of the urban area with intra-urban division to which they correspondingly belong.

  39. 39.

    Golosov et al. (2016), p. 511.

  40. 40.

    Noble and Petrov (2020).

  41. 41.

    Until 2009 only the municipal council of the lower tier were vested with the right to choose the method of election of the assemblies of the upper tier of the two-tier municipalities.

  42. 42.

    If the components units of the federation opt for an indirect electoral system, they can furthermore establish the number of delegates that each lower-level municipality can appoint to the upper-tier municipal council.

  43. 43.

    Pomazanskiy and Sevalnev (2018), p. 1756.

  44. 44.

    Judgement of the Constitutional Court of the Russian Federation, 7 July 2011, No. 15-P, in www.ksrf.ru.

  45. 45.

    Solovev et al. (2018).

  46. 46.

    Judgement of the Constitutional Court of the Russian Federation, 24 December 2012, No. 31-P, in www.ksrf.ru.

  47. 47.

    Art. 130, paragraph 1 Constitution RF: ‘1. Local self-government in the Russian Federation shall ensure the independent solution by the population of issues of local importance, of possession, use and disposal of municipal property’.

  48. 48.

    E.g., the delegation of powers between the executive organs of the federation and those of its component units is mainly governed by edicts of the President of the RF and decrees of the Government of the RF.

  49. 49.

    Since the possibility of the bodies of the federation to delegate their powers is governed by different sector-specific federal laws, the Ministry of Justice furthermore constantly updates a ‘List of duties of the Russian Federation which have been transferred by means of federal laws to federal subjects’ bodies vested with state power or to local self-government bodies’. This list also specifies which powers of the bodies of the federation can be retransferred from the bodies of the component units of the federation to the bodies of local self-government.

  50. 50.

    M- Zubarev (2018).

  51. 51.

    It is nonetheless impossible to distribute the duties of local self-government bodies towards bodies of state power regarding a few issues, such as the management of municipal property, the protection of public order, the definition of the structure of local self-government bodies and the alteration of boundaries of the territories of the municipal formation.

  52. 52.

    Nanba and Alimov (2020), pp. 139–140.

  53. 53.

    Shagoyko (2020).

  54. 54.

    Cfr. Babun (2020).

  55. 55.

    Blagov (2017b).

  56. 56.

    Kozhevnikov and Meshcheryakov (2020), p. 95.

  57. 57.

    Ruling of the Constitutional Court of the Russian Federation, 16 July 2013, No. 1219, in www.ksrf.ru.

  58. 58.

    Astafichev (2018).

  59. 59.

    Specifically, a head of a municipal formation may be revoked if: (1) his/her acts or actions lead to an excessive debt ratio of the municipal formation with regard to the permitted level, or he/she misused funding related to the transfer of single duties of state power; (2) for three months or longer, he/she has not exercised the duties set forth by federal law on local self-government, by other federal laws or by the statute of the municipal formation, or he/she has not upheld obligations to solve issues of local importance and/or he/she has not guaranteed the execution by local self-government bodies of the state duties transferred to them by means of federal laws and laws of the Federation’s subject; (3) he/she has not received a positive assessment regarding his/her activities two times in a row in the context of the presentation of their yearly report to the representative body of the municipal formation and lastly; (4) if he/she or other bodies and officials of local self-government have committed mass violations of the securities set out by the state in terms of the safeguarding of the rights and freedoms of humans and citizens, or have restricted laws or committed discrimination on the basis of race, nationality, language or religion, engendering discord among ethnicities and religions and have encouraged the rise of conflicts between ethnicities and religions.

  60. 60.

    Cf. Kurmanov (2004); Kolosova (2008).

  61. 61.

    Kolosova (2008).

  62. 62.

    Bazhenova (2020), pp. 31–32.

  63. 63.

    Art. 131, paragraph 1, indentation 1 Constitution RF: ‘[…] local self-government shall be exercised in the municipal formations, the categories of which are set forth by federal law […]’.

  64. 64.

    Art. 132, paragraph 2 Constitution RF: ‘Local self-government bodies may be vested by federal law and by a law of a component unit of the Russian Federation with certain state powers and receive the necessary material and financial resources for their implementation. The implementation of the delegated powers shall be controlled by the State.’ However, with the revision of Art. 132, paragraph 1 of the Constitution of the RF, local self-government bodies at the same time lose their right to ‘protect public order’.

  65. 65.

    Art. 131, paragraph 1, indentation 3 Constitution RF: ‘[…] local self-government shall be exercised in the municipal formations, the categories of which are provided for by federal law. The territories of municipal formations shall be defined in consideration of their historic and other traditions. The structure of local self-government bodies shall be defined independently by the population in compliance with the general principles of organisation of local self-government provided for by federal law’.

  66. 66.

    Babichev (2021), p. 52.

  67. 67.

    Judgment of the Constitutional Court of the Russian Federation. 1 December 2015, supra.

  68. 68.

    Teague (2020), pp. 312–313.

  69. 69.

    Art. 132, paragraph 1.1 Constitution RF.

  70. 70.

    As emphasised by Chertov (2020), p. 20: ‘The exclusion of social power (obščestvennaja vlast’) from public power undermines the very essence of public power, which is based on the principles of people’s power and this power belonging to the people’.

  71. 71.

    Art. 71, letter d Constitution of the RF: ‘The jurisdiction of the Russian Federation shall comprise the organisation of public power, the determination of federal bodies of legislative, executive and judicial power; the relative methods of their organisation and activities; the establishment of federal bodies of state power’.

  72. 72.

    Correspondingly, the draft of a new federal law ‘On General Principles for the Organization of Local Self-government within the System of Public Power’ has been also introduced in the State Duma. This law should replace Law No. 131 FZ.

  73. 73.

    Pomazanskiy and Sevalnev (2018), p. 1755.

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  1. Department of International, Legal, Historical and Political Studies, University of Milan, Milano, Italy

    Caterina Filippini

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  1. University of Verona, Verona, Italy

    Matteo Nicolini

  2. Eurac Research, Bolzano, Bolzano, Italy

    Alice Valdesalici

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Filippini, C. (2023). Federalism, Local Government, and Transition to Authoritarianism in Russia. In: Nicolini, M., Valdesalici, A. (eds) Local Governance in Multi-Layered Systems. Ius Gentium: Comparative Perspectives on Law and Justice, vol 108. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-41792-4_15

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