Electoral Success and Federal-level Influence of Russian Regional Executives

Abstract

POLITICAL SCIENTISTS HAVE ASSERTED that popular legitimacy and durable leadership tend to increase the power and influence of political leaders. 1 In line with these assumptions, popular and durable Russian regional executive leaders should have been attributed with greater levels of bargaining power in centre – region relations. This study seeks to test whether regional leaders in the Russian Federation have been able to transform political strength and authority at the regional level—as measured by election outcomes and time in power—into political influence at the federal level. While controlling for economic, cultural and geographical variables—which can be associated with political resources that enhance the bargaining power of regional leaders—regression analyses do show a positive and statistically significant relationship between votes for regional chief executives and their federal-level influence in 2003. From 1996 practically all of the regional chief executives in the Russian Federation became elected by, and accountable to, their regional constituencies. Since the regional leaders were elected to public office, they enjoyed legitimacy and authority. Ideally, the regional presidents and governors had the potential to act as electorally generated institutional veto players, who had the capacity to constrain the central government. In order to effectively act as veto players, subnational leaders should have the power and authority to either prevent laws from getting passed at the national level by influencing national legislators or block policy initiatives put forward by the central government by refusing to comply at the implementation stage (Stepan, 2004; Mainwaring & Samuels, 2004). In Russia, the ability of regional governments to challenge the central government became possible during and after the demise of the Soviet Union. The final stages of the Soviet period saw the weakening of centralised and communist power and the regional authorities managed to procure greater levels of power and authority. The central authorities still played a major role, but the representatives of the regions— especially those in the ethnic republics—were by no means insignificant political actors. Stoner-Weiss (1997, p. 73) points out that it was quite a natural progression that regional politicians by 1990, in the midst of the transition process towards greater democracy in the Soviet Union, longed for greater control over policy within their