The Politics of Local Government in Russia by Alfred B. Evans, Jr. , Vladimir Gel'man (review)

Abstract

REVIEWS 379 Evans,AlfredB.Jr. and Gel'man,Vladimir(eds).7The Politics ofLocalGovernment in Russia.Rowman and Littlefield, Lanham, MD, Boulder, CO and Oxford, 2004. vii + 300 pp. Notes. Tables. Bibliography.Index. /57.oo. LocALgovernment in post-Soviet Russia has been a much neglected field of study,and it is this gap in the literaturethat this editedvolume aims to fill. In contrastto the Soviet period, where local self-governmentdid not exist, local autonomy was one of the fundamentalsof the 1993 Russian constitution.Yet, despitethis, local governmentand local democracyhave failed to take root in Russia. T7ePoliticsof LocalGovernment in Russiaexamines why this has happened . The volume is divided into three main sections.The firstsection looks at the historicalroots of local government in the zemstvo reformsof the late tsarist era. Successive authors grapple with the main issue underlying the developmentof local government,namely the balancebetween centralcontrol and local autonomy. Porterand Seregnynote the contradictionat the heartof the zemstvo movement, between the intention of centre to deconcentrate power in orderto retaincontrolover the localities,and the desireof society to pursue its own intereststhroughindependent activityand civic initiative.The balance between these opposing two forces in tsarist Russia was ultimately decided by the central authorities.Deason outlines how the conflicts within centralgovernmentand lack of ministerialconsensuson provincialreformleft local government in a no-man's land. Evans's contribution focuses on how scholars have re-evaluated the character of elected local government in the post-Soviet period. While Soviet scholars saw the emergence of zemstvos as part of the process of transforminga feudal monarchy into a bourgeois one, more recent studies have noted that the tsaristbodies of local government had a number of advantages, including greater independence and a higher degree of professionalism,over local government in both the Soviet period and in contemporary Russia. This has led to the revival of the myth of the 'democratic' zemstvo as an alternative path of development for local government. The second section looks at the politics of local reform from a national perspectivein post-Soviet Russia. Gel'man examines the influence of various groupingsat the federallevel on the institutionaldevelopmentof local government in the El'tsin era. He concludes that inconsistency in implementation has hinderedthe developmentof local governmentand has allowedindividual regional governments to diminish the status of government at the municipal and districtlevel. Young's chapter looks at the issue of the financing of local government, noting that, while post-Soviet reforms have concentrated on a societal mode of development, the federal government has failed to assign local government revenues sufficientto cover the responsibilitiesdelegated to it, leaving it dependent upon regionalgovernment.This fiscalsqueeze has left local governmentunable to operate properly. The thirdand final section is a more detailed analysisof local government. Slider looks at governor-mayorrelations in Russia and the means, legal or otherwise, used by regional governors to undermine an autonomously functioning local government and the ways in which mayors of larger towns and cities have attempted to fight back. Matsuzatobuilds on this analysis,proposing a typology of relationshipsbetween local and regional politics and using 380 SEER, 84, 2, 2006 five case studyregions,coming to the conclusionthat the growthof competent and independent local government has in fact been impeded where regional governmenthas proved competent. Brie uses the concept of 'machine'politics to analyse the dynamics of the Moscow City regime where Mayor Luzhkov successfullyutilized the power of the city government to fashion a winning voter coalition and construct alliances to prevent opposition from gaining power. The strength of this coalition and federal weakness enabled Moscow to pursue a privatizationprogramme significantlydifferentfrom that implemented at the federal level. While giving a useful insight into the dynamic of power in Russia's largest city, Moscow's special status as a subject of the RussianFederationmeans that it is partof the second tier of government,and it is debatablewhether it should be included in a book on local government. A more substantivecriticismof this book is not so much the content of its contributors'chapters, which are excellent, but the absence from the main body of the volume of work on the Putin era. While the editor's conclusion does go some way in correcting this omission, it seems probable that this volume will need updatingalmostimmediately.These criticismsnotwithstanding...