In Chapter 3, I argued that at the level of the central government, the Putin government increased its ability to use the power ministries for exceptional
05 Pushkarev 2001; Anisim Tarasov, “Privolzhskiy forum: Stremleniye uyti ot praktiki part-khozaktivov,” RRB, 3, 21 (November 5, 2001); Interview Ye-5; Interview Ye-9; Interview N-1; Interview N-8; Interview N-10.
06 Chebankova 2005, pp. 934-935; RRR, 6, 39 (November 7, 2001); RRR, 6, 18 (May 16, 2001); Interview NN-7; Interview NN-8; Interview N-6; Interview Ye-4; Interview Ye-5; Interview Ye-9; Interview Ye-10.
07 Jeffrey Kahn, Alexei Trochev, and Nikolay Balayan, “The Unification of Law in the Russian Federation,” Post-Soviet Affairs, 25, 4 (2009), pp. 310-346.
Tasks, such as repressing economic and political rivals, but made less progress in increasing state capacity to fight crime and terrorism and protect private property rights. The story at the regional level is similar, in that greater central control was used at the regional level to further particular political interests rather than establish the rule of law after the so-called “legal anarchy” of the Yeltsin years.292 Although polpreds and federal district law enforcement agencies did in some cases make efforts to sever the link between business, politics, and the law at the regional level, more often it appeared that federal district structures themselves manipulated law enforcement organs for political ends.
The need for truly independent procurators and police was clear after a sometimes brutal and often legally questionable decade of redistributing power and property in Russia. Vladimir Ovchinskiy, a former assistant to ex-Interior Minister Anatoliy Kulikov, applauded the changes in the police law that weakened the governors’ role in MVD appointments, calling them a necessary condition “for the liberation of regional police from the yoke of local corrupt clans and the criminal fraternity.” Even procurators themselves admitted that, in the words of Pskov’s regional procurator Nikolay Lepikhin, “procuracy offices fulfill political orders all the time.”293 Some observers, such as Igor Rabinovich, hoped that Putin’s federal reforms would “strengthen the level of legality and the observation of human rights,” at least in more authoritarian regions such as Bashkortostan.294
What happened turned out rather differently. The federal districts became a further source for the manipulation of law enforcement, not an instrument for combating such practices.
In Chapter 3, I described how law enforcement organs were used to shape elections, and some of the examples involved the Federal District structures, including in the Northwest and Southern federal districts. Similar practices were seen in other federal districts. In the Urals Federal District, a deputy of envoy Latyshev (himself an MVD general) ran for governor in the Tyumen region, with the support of MVD offices around the okrug. In the Volga okrug, law enforcement structures established a commission to investigate the President of the Mariy-El Republic, Vyacheslav Kislitsyn, before an election: A candidate backed by the Kremlin and polpred Kiriyenko then defeated him.295 The procuracy and the courts also were heavily involved in elections for mayor of Nizhniy Novgorod and for the regional legislature in 2002. The favored mayoral candidate of Kiriyenko was eventually declared the winner after a scandal-plagued election that commentator Yulia Latynina described as an “orgy of filth.” One mayoral candidate was removed from the ballot by court order, and criminal cases were opened against the incumbent mayor and his associates; local observers attributed these acts to pressure from Kiriyenko. The head of the Nizhny Novgorod police was removed a year later, allegedly at least in part because of his refusal to carry out instructions from Kiriyenko during the mayoral election.296
Other law enforcement investigations apparently were related to similar political disputes. For example, in the Southern Okrug, Stavropol Governor Aleksandr Chernogorov was investigated by the procuracy and other federal organs. Local observers suggested that the investigations stemmed from a struggle for control over the pro-Putin “United Russia” party.297 Former St. Petersburg Governor Vladimir Yakovlev was another prominent regional leader whose position came under heavy attack from okrug officials. Indeed, it appeared that the primary task of the first Northwest Okrug polpred, Viktor Cherkesov, was to unseat Yakovlev, who successfully ran for mayor against Putin’s former boss and patron, St. Petersburg Mayor Anatoliy Sobchak, in 1996. The Northwest Federal District Procurator-General opened corruption investigations against four of Yakovlev’s deputy governors, something the city procurator was less likely to do. Several other top officials were also investigated, and Vladimir Zubrin, head of the okrug procuracy, stated: “The corruption investigation of the city’s administration is a serious warning to St. Petersburg Governor Vladimir Yakovlev, and our demand to him is to instill order among his associates.” Federal pressure was widely believed to be behind Yakovlev’s June 2003 decision to resign as governor.298
Thus, the successful wresting of control over law enforcement structures from regional leaders did not put an end to the manipulation of their work in order to implement extraordinary decisions. The use of the FSB, procuracy, and police for political purposes continued, but it took place more at the okrug and federal levels and at the direction of the Kremlin. Of course, in all of these cases, it is quite possible that the targets were indeed guilty of various forms of malfeasance. But the timing and nature of the law enforcement investigations and actions suggested that political motives were at work. The return to federal dominance of law enforcement did not change the basic rules of the game - the power ministries were manipulated for political advantage by whoever could control them, which undermined their capacity to carry out their lawful tasks.
The Power Vertical Restored
Putin’s federal reforms in his first term were designed to alter the terms of the federal bargain that existed under Yeltsin sharply in the direction of the center. The power ministries in general, and law enforcement structures (the MVD, the FSB, and the procuracy) in particular, were key objects in this struggle. In particular, the new federal districts and the district-level power ministry structures presided over a series of efforts to diminish the power of the regions, including the appointment of new regional law enforcement officials. The polpreds launched efforts to coordinate the work of the siloviki in their federal districts, creating security councils bringing together the power ministries in their regions. Although these collegiums were only empowered to give recommendations and not directives, one GU MVD colonel in the Siberian Federal District noted that in reality, these “recommendations” were fulfilled - tersely adding, “try not to.” Similarly, the main federal inspectors, who were, in the words of one of them, a “mini-polpred,” met regularly with power ministry officials in their region. One Russian expert concluded as early as 2001 that these reforms “undoubtedly seriously undermine the opportunities for regional leaders to use ‘their’ power structures in conflict with the federal center.”299
In many regions, governors offered little or no resistance to this diminution of their power. For example, of the forty-six bilateral treaties in force when Putin took power, twenty-eight were annulled by April 2002, often at the initiative of the regional governor himself as a sign of loyalty to the center. In 2003, the rest of the bilateral treaties lost their power due to national legislation, although a handful of regions still insisted their agreements were in force.300 In most cases, governors saw little to gain and much to lose, both economically and politically, in challenging the popular Putin, particularly now that he had taken his club back.
Other regional leaders offered more resistance. For example, Sverdlovsk Governor Eduard Rossel was one of Russia’s most powerful and independent governors. He quickly clashed with the Urals Federal District polpred, MVD General Latyshev, and their early relations were extremely poor. Latyshev held the ultimate trump card, however, and moved quickly to undermine
Rossel by getting a new procurator, GUVD head, Tax Police chief, and head of the regional State Customs Committee (later the Federal Customs Service) appointed within his first year. Yekaterinburg political scientist Ilya Gorfinkel remarked in May 2001, “on the field in which [Rossel] could put up pressure - control over federal structures, law enforcement, police, the procurator - he either has lost already or is losing now.”301
Symptomatic of the change in the coercive realm was the altered composition of the Sverdlovsk Oblast Security Council. As noted above, Rossel created the council in 1995 to coordinate the work of the power ministries in his region, and all of the key officials participated. In contrast, after Latyshev arrived on the scene, the head of the Urals Military District (Volga-Urals Military District after September 2001) stopped attending these meetings, as did the oblast procurator. The regional heads of the other power ministries lowered their level of participation, sending their deputies instead of attending themselves, a move described by a member of Rossel’s staff as a “show of loyalty to the center.” The okrug procurator insisted that the Sverdlovsk charter be amended to strike the provision on creating its own police force - a provision, as noted earlier, that was inconsistent with the federal “Law on the Militia.” Sergey Belyayev, the head of a Yekaterinburg human rights organization, observed, “the polpred has taken control of all power ministries - this is his main function, and his main accomplishment.”302
Other powerful regions, such as Tatarstan and Bashkortostan, as noted earlier, were able to maintain greater autonomy in the coercive realm. Volga Federal District envoy Kiriyenko remained quite deferential to Tatarstan President Shaymiyev in particular.303 In his home base of Nizhniy Novgorod, however, Kiriyenko used the power ministries to impose okrug dominance on the region. As Kiriyenko’s political rival and controversial businessman/con-victed criminal Andrey Klimentev asserted, “Kiriyenko as presidential envoy has taken control of the local power structures - the police, the tax police, and the special services.”304
These changes in the distribution of coercive power between federal and regional leaders were not the only aspects of Putin’s federal reforms, but they were, in my view, the most fundamental.305 Further, it was necessary to start with the power bodies because they were both more reliable mechanisms for changing the terms of the federal bargain than other possibilities, and because they could help determine outcomes in other aspects of federal reforms. A brief overview of these other possible mechanisms, and other key Putin reforms, demonstrates that force was not the only mechanism available for shifting the federal balance, but it was pivotal.
The Constitutional Court, although obviously not an irrelevant player in the process, did not have the authority to enforce decisions regulating jurisdictional disputes between the center and the subunits. Indeed, the Constitutional Court had ruled against the regions in several cases under Yeltsin, but these decisions had little effect because the regions involved either disputed the standing of the Court or simply ignored the rulings. Jeffrey Kahn noted that the Court had “consistently (but futilely) opposed” the regions, and that it had been “an ineffective and infrequent arbiter in federal disputes.” One member of the Court noted that it took a signal from the top to rule against key regions, stating that the Court acted “only after President Putin announced his crackdown on recalcitrant regions; we would not have been brave enough to do this under Yeltsin.” Although under Putin, the center exerted greater control over courts at all levels, this was a far cry from the role of the judiciary envisioned by comparative theories of federalism, which expect the courts to be independent and authoritative bodies whose judgments are respected and enforced.306
Political parties and the party system also were unable to regulate the federal balance both under Yeltsin and in Putin’s first term. National parties in this period had very weak roots in the regions, and in political life generally (neither Yeltsin nor Putin joined a political party). Even by 2003, most regional leaders “remained staunchly independent of parties.” Although subsequent steps by the Kremlin strengthened the United Russia party and changed the rules of the game to make regional penetration easier, these changes came well after the changes in state coercion that shifted the balance toward the center.307
Other federal reforms enacted by Putin also were enabled at least in part by his initial steps in the coercive realm. For example, another key move in 2000 was to remove governors from the upper house, the Federation Council, where their presence not only gave them considerable influence on national policy but also immunity from prosecution. The Kremlin, in the person of its representative to the Duma, Aleksandr Kotenkov (a former Soviet army officer who held the rank of Major-General), openly threatened at least sixteen unnamed governors with criminal prosecution if such immunity was lifted, relying on information from a top MVD official. Although such a threat seemed counterproductive in terms of encouraging governors to back Putin’s proposal, Kotenkov was primarily seeking to detach Duma members from regional governors who had been pressuring deputies from their regions to oppose the reforms. Moreover, sending the signal that the Kremlin was willing to use federal law enforcement organs against outspoken opponents was part of a broader effort to fracture a potential anti-Putin coalition and to “cow the governors into submission.” After Putin tossed in a few sweeteners, such as delaying the implementation of the change, the governors relented and gave up their seats.308
Even in terms of the important issue of fiscal federalism, the changes in controlling coercion preceded and helped enable a renegotiation of the provisions of the fiscal bargain. Legally, the regions were supposed to receive half of Russia’s total tax income. Putin slowly eroded that split, so the federal government received 51 percent in 2001 and 62 percent in 2002. By 2008, the central government took 70 percent of tax receipts.309 Not only did this change temporally follow the changes in state coercion by more than a year, but it also was enabled by them. As one Russian commentator noted at the time, governors’ control over law enforcement was a key tool in their ability to pressure local economic interests and to resist the center. Writing in May 2000, the commentator observed that “after governors lose their control over force bodies it will be just a matter of time [before] they lose their financial independence.”310
Because of the weakness of other mechanisms for regulating Russian federalism, Putin and the governors understood that much would depend on controlling the power ministries. Putin cleverly used the weapons at his disposal, including his high popularity rating, divisions between regional leaders, and, not least, his dominance of the procuracy at the federal level and the FSB at all levels of government, to undermine the cozy relations between law enforcement and governors that had developed under Yeltsin. After these changes, incompliant governors, as Russian politician Sergey Glazev stated in 2004, “can expect trouble from the law enforcement organs.” The flip side of this, as the Russian journalist Aleksandr Zhilin accurately predicted in 2000, was that the new rule for governors became “be loyal, and you won’t be touched.”311
In summary, the changes in the federal bargain in Russia in the Yeltsin and Putin periods show the centrality of force to center-subunit relations in hybrid regimes. The mechanisms that regulate and stabilize federalism in liberal democracies, such as courts and parties, were too weak to play this role. The dynamics in the center-region balance also cannot be explained by the
Original institutional design embedded in the Constitution, which of course did not vary. Further, it is not a simple story of central neglect under Yeltsin and renewed vigor under Putin. Rather, a complicated process of both de jure and de facto decentralization and recentralization unfolded in stages and varied across power structures. Finally, the importance of force is further emphasized by the fact that Putin’s federal reforms began in this realm and helped make possible other important reforms in different arenas.
THE DEATH Of fEDERALISM?
In September 2004, in the aftermath of the Beslan terrorist incident, Putin made two major speeches in which he decried the continuing weakness of the Russian state in general and the power ministries in particular, and proposed a series of political reforms to mobilize the state and society to confront the terrorist threat.128 Most relevant for the purposes of this work, he fundamentally altered the nature of Russian federalism by suggesting that the heads of the subjects of the federation (presidents, governors, and the mayors of St. Petersburg and Moscow) be appointed by the president rather than popularly elected. Although technically the heads of the regions are confirmed by the regional legislatures after a recommendation from the president, the proviso in the final law that the president can disband the legislature if they reject his nominee twice gave the regions little leverage against the president. In the first three years of the new system (2005-2007), not only did every presidential candidate get confirmed, but they did so by overwhelming margins, with around 85-90 percent of the vote from the regional assembly. The president also gained the ability to remove governors who had lost his trust; although Putin only employed this weapon three times in this period, in each case, the procuracy brought a criminal case against the governor before he was dismissed.129
It is also important to note that these changes allowed some republic presidents and oblast governors to continue in power indefinitely. By 2007, a total of fifteen regional leaders were in their fourth term in office.130 The longevity of some of the most prominent regional bosses, such as Luzhkov in Moscow, Shaymiyev in Tatarstan, Rakhimov in Bashkortostan, and Rossel in Sverdlovsk, not only served their interests, but also that of Putin, who was willing to tolerate these bosses if they joined the United Russia party, delivered votes to United Russia in national elections, and maintained regional stability,
See the discussion in Chapter 3.
Ross 2005, p. 360; Aleksey Titkov, “Krizis naznacheniy,” Pro et Contra, 11, 4-5 (July-October 2007), pp. 94-96. See also: Paul Goode, “The Puzzle of Putin’s Gubernatorial Appointments,” Europe-Asia Studies, 59, 3 (May 2007), pp. 365-399; Nikolay Petrov, “Naznacheniya gubernatorov: Itogi pervogo goda,” Brifing Moskovskogo Tsentra Karnegi, 3, 8 (April 2006).
Titkov 2007, p. 94.
Especially during the managed succession from Putin to Medvedev that took place in Z007-Z008.312
Overall, the move to appointed governors, coupled with the absence of independent regional courts and other centralizing features of federal design in Russia, as well as the more general undermining of democracy under Putin, have gravely weakened Russian federalism. This outcome is consistent with the view that federalism is a very precarious institutional form in the absence of a robust constitutional democracy. Russian federalism is now more akin to the “sham federalism” of the Soviet Union, another federation that also sought to dominate the regions, not only through the mechanism of a highly centralized party a la Riker, but also via a complete dominance over state coercive organs.
The power ministries were crucial actors not only in carrying out the assault on federalism in Putin’s first term, but also managing regional politics in Putin’s second term. One indication of the importance of the power ministries came from an expert survey on regional influence conducted by the Institute of Situational Analysis and New Technology (ISANT) in Russia. ISANT published survey results in 2003 and 2007 on the most politically influential figures in the regions by position. The heads of the three main law enforcement bodies - the FSB, the procuracy, and the MVD - each moved up in ranking between 2003 and 2007. The FSB chief moved up from sixteenth to fifth, the procurator moved up from thirteenth to seventh, and the head of the UVD moved up from tenth to eighth. In the top ten positions, only one - the mayor of the regional capital - was now directly elected by voters. “Simply speaking,” Nikolay Petrov concluded in 2007, “politics in the regions is now conducted not by [legislative] deputies and mayors, but FSB employees and procurators.”313
If Putin’s recentralization sticks, which is by no means guaranteed, the 1990s may have turned out to be simply a short-term anomaly in terms of the dispersion of state control over coercion in Russia. David Bayley argues that the degree of centralization/decentralization in the control over law enforcement is very path-dependent, even in the face of major political, social, and economic changes. In the case of Russia, Bayley notes that “tension between local initiative and central control in Russia has always been resolved in favor of the latter.”314 Given Stepan’s finding that for a large, multinational state to be a democracy it must be federal, this historical centralizing tendency creates another potential obstacle to successful Russian democratization.315
I have argued that in conditions faced by Russia and other hybrid regimes - particularly the weakness of parties, constitutional norms, and judiciaries - force may serve as a substitute in “policing” jurisdictional boundaries and the division of powers between levels of government. The key issue for federations is giving the central government enough power to prevent subunit cheating on the federal bargain, but reserving some power for the subunits to resist encroachment by the national government. Relying on a “balance of power” in controlling coercion to regulate federal relations is unlikely to produce a stable, long-term equilibrium. It may be difficult, if not impossible, to find the right mix of central and subunit coercive resources that simultaneously will prevent subunit cheating and central encroachment, as well as adequately balance the values of state integrity, local autonomy, and democracy. Scholars who point to the importance of a well-institutionalized party system, strong constitutional norms, and an independent judiciary for stable federalism are clearly, at one level, correct. Unfortunately, many countries with imperfect federalism and imperfect democracy may lack these attributes and have no easy or short-term methods for acquiring them. In these situations, clubs may indeed be trump.
Given the importance of coercion in managing federal relations in hybrid regimes, an important issue is if there are particular organizational patterns that have proven their utility at simultaneously maintaining the state and federalism. This shifts the question to a more normative one: What are the “best practices” for organizing coercion in federal hybrid regimes? Since control over coercive institutions in itself is unlikely to create long-term federal stability, the goal should be institutional arrangements that can, in the short and medium term, help preserve federal stability and contribute to the development of more reliable democratic institutions. Institutional arrangements can either help or hinder the promotion of a “culture of federalism” identified by some as necessary for federal stability.316
The most obvious principle for federations in organizing coercion is centralized control over the armed forces. Indeed, if subunits control the military then the situation more closely resembles, in the best case, confederation, and in the worst case, warlordism. Even in the United States, which has an externally oriented military with severe restrictions on domestic usage, it has on occasion been necessary to use the army to ensure public order and preserve fundamental rights when local courts and law enforcement were either unwilling or unable to perform this function.
Finding the proper balance of central and subunit control is more difficult when it comes to law enforcement. Although many of the oldest and most consolidated democratic federations give considerable law enforcement power to state and local government, such as the United States, Germany, and Switzerland, there is no universal pattern, as shown in Table 4.1. Moreover, in Europe recently, there has been a convergence on policing systems that combine local, national, and international (particularly EU) bodies, whether the country is federal or unitary.317
Thinking of government responsibility in a federation as shared across many levels, rather than as divided into distinct spheres, is consistent with models of American federalism that stress federalism’s interdependent nature. As opposed to alternative models that stress either the autonomy of different levels or a hierarchy of relations with the center clearly dominant, the interdependent model sees overlapping spheres of responsibility, with bargaining the dominant pattern of relations. Further, these interdependent models note that power in a federation is not necessarily zero-sum, and that both the central government and the subunits can gain capacity in a properly functioning system.318
Constructing appropriate federal relations thereby involves bargaining and shared powers rather than exclusive powers or hierarchical relations. The difficulty in hybrid regimes is that many key actors see power in zero-sum terms and will seek to increase their power relative to other actors rather than to pursue power sharing. For every argument decentralizers can advance in favor of their position (local responsiveness, better innovation, competition between units, proximity to citizens), centralizers can provide reasonable counterarguments (coordination problems, localistic biases, capture by wealthy interests, redundancy, inequality).319 The recent political economy literature on federalism has produced no clear verdict on the relative merits of centralization versus decentralization, with much of the devil remaining in the details.320
The best possible outcome in controlling law enforcement in semidemo-cratic/semiauthoritarian federal states is for relatively equal power balances that necessitate shared powers and bargaining between different levels. This outcome is desirable primarily because of the congruence between institutional power sharing and bargaining and norms of democratic decision making - norms that may ultimately lead to strengthening the judicial and party-based mechanisms used for resolving jurisdictional disputes in consolidated democratic federations. Indian federalism has appeared to work, for example, because of the development of “formal and informal political institutions” - including parties - that “make the politics of bargaining work.”321 But Indian federalism has also worked because the center has always maintained enough coercive power, and mechanisms for using it, to deter or defeat secessionists. One model for law enforcement organization in hybrid federal regimes, particularly in multinational federations, may be one that decentralizes some structures (public-order police, for example), while also maintaining a small reserve force if central intervention becomes necessary in emergency situations, akin to the Indian Central Reserve Police Force.322
The possibility of at least partially decentralizing the Russian police is a persistent debate among Russian law enforcement experts.323 As noted earlier, under Khrushchev, the entire central MVD was dismantled and policing was transferred to the republics - a move reversed under Brezhnev. Debates about decentralizing the police reemerged under Gorbachev. His Minister of Internal Affairs, Vadim Bakatin, argued for greater regional and local control over the local militia (public-order militia, or MOB), but Gorbachev resisted this idea. Similarly, under Yeltsin, reformers such as his legal adviser, Mikhail Krasnov, pushed a similar proposal, which would have transferred the MOB to governors or mayors while leaving the criminal police, such as criminal investigation and police responsible for organized crime, terrorism, and economic security, under the federal MVD. The federal police would be responsible for serious crimes, whereas the municipal militia would have responsibility for public order and minor street crime. One of Putin’s top officials, Dmitriy Kozak, indicated in 2002 that legislation to turn control over public-order policing to municipalities was soon to be introduced, but nothing came of this proposal.324
One reason that decentralized public-order policing has been stymied is that serious opposition to this reform exists within the MVD. Although some of the opposition can be linked to bureaucratic conservatism, there are also serious principled objections. The two basic objections are that it will contribute to separatism in Russia, and that it will de facto put many militia forces under local political and economic “clan” interests. For example, a former high-ranking MVD official argued that such a change would create “89 armies of Dudayev,” a reference to the former Chechen separatist leader. Further, he argued that, except in a handful of well-off regions, the only source of funds to support the police will inevitably be the powerful “oligarchs and financial industrial groups,” and that “he who pays will also call the tune.”325 Others in law enforcement were not definitively opposed but suggested the need for caution, given the difficulty some local governments might have in coping with this new task.326 Opposition is not confined to the police, with some legal scholars and even human rights activists and officials highly skeptical of the idea. For example, the Sverdlovsk human rights ombudsman Tatyana Merzlyakova stated that local governments were not prepared to cope with financing issues, especially pensions, and that “nothing good will come of it” if the police are divided between federal and local services.327
Proponents of the police reform, including within the police, counter that the risk of separatism is overstated, given that a considerable portion of the police will remain under central control, as will control over the other power ministries. Further, they contend that what needs to be transferred to local jurisdiction is not just power over the municipal militias, but also government funds to support them. Sergei Tushin of the Yekaterinburg city administration argued that as long as appropriate financing was available, municipalities could manage the local police, and that this would bring them closer to the people. Russia is simply too big, proponents argue, for the entire police force to be controlled from Moscow. Some advocates of police decentralization even argue, along the model of American sheriffs, for electing the local head of police to make him more responsible to the public.328
The decentralizing of Russian policing probably would be successful only in the context of further reform to strengthen local self-government and of greater democratization at the local level. Otherwise the danger of significant control over law enforcement by local political and economic clans certainly would be a real one, although Georgiy Satarov rightly asked, “which is worse - the control of local or federal clans?”329 Local control is not an end in itself and will not automatically lead to better policing from the perspective of average citizens - witness the role of local law enforcement in the American South prior to the civil rights movement, or the dominance of police “machines” in northern American cities well into the post-World War II period, or even the close links between the local police and drug cartels in Mexico today.330 In theory, however, in a democratic and federal system, local government officials should be able to exercise some degree of civilian oversight and control of the state’s coercive agencies, particularly law-enforcement bodies. Under Putin, in contrast, the general tendency was to weaken the powers not only of the regions, but also of local government.331
FORCE, FEDERALISM, AND RUSSIAN STATE CAPACITY
Leonid Smirnyagin, Yeltsin’s regional affairs adviser, observed in 2001 that Putin “does not need or understand federalism.” Indeed, he noted, the very idea of building “vertical power” is inconsistent with the logic of federalism.332 Federalism was an obstacle to Putin’s conception of strengthening the state, and he progressively undermined it without formally changing the constitution. The power ministries, law enforcement in particular, were central to this effort.
Putin undoubtedly strengthened the center vis-a-vis the regions. But did this strengthen the state? His supporters, such as former Main Federal Inspector in St. Petersburg, Nikolay Vinnichenko, maintained that the federal district reforms made the state more effective because polpreds were the “eye of the state” who could “intervene and discipline” federal officials at the regional level if necessary. Opponents, such as Vladislav Yegorov, a top communist party official in Nizhniy Novgorod, referred to the federal districts as “gendarme okrugs” with “repressive functions” that were creating a “police state.”333 Of course, both Vinnichenko and Yegorov could be correct - the ability to “intervene and discipline” might have both increased state capacity while making it more repressive. No less an expert on the state than Charles Tilly contended in 2007 that “Putin’s regime was aggressively expanding state capacity as it squeezed out democracy.”334
Experts on Russian federalism, however, were not as confident as Tilly that Putin had indeed strengthened the state. For example, Kathryn Stoner-Weiss concluded that Putin had built “authoritarianism without authority” and, by and large, had not increased the capacity of the state.335 Indeed, the evidence discussed in Chapter 3 showed that under Putin, the power ministries had become more subject to direction from the Kremlin for extraordinary tasks, but their ability to carry out their core functions of fighting crime and terrorism, although improving in Putin’s last years, remained low in comparative terms. The results in this chapter were also mixed. Some reforms to the practice of Russian federalism were definitely needed, and the “harmonization of laws” campaign was necessary and important. But the broader assault on the regions went too far, including in the coercive realm. Indeed, much of the activity of the polpreds and federal district law enforcement structures seemed directed more at political and economic rivals than toward fighting crime and strengthening law enforcement capacity - once again, extraordinary decisions took priority over routine tasks. There were also the opportunity costs of Putin’s approach; the resources and efforts devoted to bringing the governors to heel could have been directed toward raising the professionalism and administrative capacity of law enforcement bodies.
Putin’s state-building efforts were devoted most of all to making the regions accountable to the center; however, in a federal democracy, regions should be accountable most of all to the voters. As a monitoring strategy, the creation of the federal districts was akin to the police patrol approach, in which state agents are enlisted to periodically check up on other state agents. The capacity of the central government to monitor the regions, including power ministry structures at this level, undoubtedly increased. But the federal reforms also undermined the fire alarm strategy of trusting citizens and civil society actors to monitor state behavior - an issue I take up directly in Chapter 6.
In short, the methods used to fix the problems with center-region relations that arose under Yeltsin were not long-term solutions to achieving Putin’s stated goal of creating a “strong state.” Greater central government control over the power ministries reduced the influence of regional governors over law enforcement, but it did not transform these officials into disinterested or public-spirited administrators. Rather, law enforcement officials became subject to manipulation by federal and okrug-level politicians. In other words, the same problems that previously afflicted Russian power ministry behavior continued to exist under Putin, just at a different level. Rather than eighty-nine regional patrimonial machines, an effort was made to create one national patrimony centered in the Kremlin. The rebuilding of the “power vertical” in the coercive realm directed attention away from the more important task of increasing not just state capacity, but state quality. The consequences of this neglect of quality are explored in the next two chapters.
World History
