Introduction

Much like the local soviets in the Soviet system, local self-government (LSG) had come to play a special political and mobilizational role in post-Soviet Russia. Yel’tsin has used LSG to undermine regional power with some success, a case in point being the emergence of “mayor versus governor” as a central political cleavage in the regions. The regions, in turn, have tried to sabotage the 1995 federal law on LSG, since it is looked upon as a threat to regional power. Moreover, rather than serving as a challenge to regional regimes, as Moscow had envisaged, LSG is often actively used by these regimes to consolidate power locally. While the question of LSG’s challenge to the regional regimes has received scholarly attention, the issue of how it is used to consolidate regional power has remained outside of the purview of much of the literature. This factor is particularly salient in the ethnic republics.
Because non-titular groups are a sizeable presence in most of the republics, they are a potent source of challenges to the titular regimes as the titular elites try to institutionalise ethnic privileges locally. It appears that it is for this reason that the ethnic republics, as opposed to the non-ethnically defined regions, have been most reluctant to comply with Russia’s 1995 law on LSG and to give up their control over the municipalities. Not only have they obstructed federal efforts to make LSG genuinely separate from regional power; they have made it into an active instrument for the furtherance of titular regime power and the projection of ethnic ideologies onto the grassroots.
The article discusses what precise institutional mechanisms are used for the exercise of titular regime power through municipal bodies. It focuses on local government institutional set-up; its composition; and the usage of agenda-setting for influencing public opinion. I look at the cases of Bashkortostan and Adygeya. These republics were chosen according to the “most different” criteria, a method which allows to generalise about the other ethnic republics as well.

The Mobilizational and Control Roles of LSG in the USSR and Russia:
A Path-Dependent View

Local governing institutions have been accorded a special political role in both the USSR and post-Soviet Russia, which is substantially different from that of municipalities in the West. This political role is reinforced by the local bodies’ vast administrative functions, which stem from the statist and corporatist nature of the Soviet and post-Soviet local politics and economies. Because the paper takes a path-dependent view of LSG in Russia, I discuss the soviets in the Soviet period at some length.
Background
The Soviet state was founded and legitimised by the notion of “people’s rule” through the soviets. The soviets, meaning “councils,” from the Russian word sovet, (advice), were conceived by the Bolshevik ideologues as the primary institutions of government. Originating in the worker uprisings of 1905, during which they served as strike committees, these bodies’ role was appreciated by Lenin, who likened them to the Paris Communes of 1871. From October 1917 onwards the slogan of “All Power to the Soviets!” aided the Bolsheviks in capturing, establishing and legitimising power throughout much of the former empire.
The Soviet state was a multi-tiered federation involving several administrative levels. While the representative bodies at all levels were called soviets, officially, the local government organs proper or mestnye organy were considered to be those below the union and autonomous republics. They included the oblast’s, autonomous okrugs, krays, the districts or rayony, cities, city boroughs, settlements or posyolki and went all the way down to the village levels or syola.
The Bolshevik, and later Soviet official propaganda juxtaposed the soviets to their Western equivalents of “bourgeois democracy,” stressing the formers’ truly representative nature as government “of all the people,” ensuring grassroots contact between the average citizen and the state. At the inception of the Soviet Union, however, and during the maturation of the system, the soviets’ role was reduced to those of instruments of party dictatorship. This was achieved through the doctrine of democratic centralism and its institutional manifestations, as well as the nomenklatura system of appointments. The soviets themselves became rubber-stamp bodies, as power was vested in their executive departments, whose senior functionaries combined party posts with soviet work.
Local Government’s Political and Administrative Functions
The above centralist hierarchy performed an important political function. From the very origins of the soviets, the Bolsheviks regarded them as political in the sense of their role in the projection of the regime ideology into the grass roots and in the mobilisation of the public for political campaigns. Consider Trotsky’s fascination with the original Petrograd strike committee soviet during the revolution of 1905: “The soviet was the axis of all events, every thread ran towards it, every call to action emanated from it.” It “organized the working masses, directed the political strikes and demonstrations, armed the workers, and protected the population against pogroms.” The Party, he wrote triumphantly, “succeeded … in transforming the Soviet – formally a non-party organization – into the organizational instrument of its own influence.”
At the same time the soviets became hyper-administrative agencies considering the socialist nature of the economy and their resulting vast amount of micro-managing and service functions. “The Soviet citizen,” wrote Theodore Friedgut, “who changes his residence, wants his boots resoled, or wants to buy new clothing will most likely have to deal with an agency of his local soviet.” This administrative role in turn had very powerful social implications. De Tocqueville observed: “Centralization of government acquires immense strength when it is combined with administrative centralization. Centralization in that way accustoms men to set aside their own wills constantly and completely.” Yet, the soviets did not simply reproduce a system of social passivity; they created a system of forced dependence. The local publics, which the soviets permeated and controlled, had to “subject their own wills” not simply because they were made accustomed to be taken care of, but because of the material or other sanctions they might suffer from these agencies if they deviated from the regime line. The soviets’ executive departments were in charge of the so-called “administrative regime,” and they had jurisdiction over the territorial branches of the Ministry of Interior for its enforcement. Aside from these straightforwardly coercive mechanisms, they, together with other state agencies, controlled the system of local material sanctions and rewards, like the distribution of housing, payments of salaries to state employees, and so forth.
Post-Soviet Russia
The Gorbachev-era famous call for the return of “All Power to the Soviets!” started a decade of reforms of local government with the ostensible aim of making it genuinely democratic and to strengthen its representative branch. Yet, both Yel’tsin and Gorbachev continued to look at the institution from the point of view of its political role. Under Gorbachev it was to perform the mobilisational function of rallying local support for his liberal reforms. Yel’tsin manipulated local governing institutions and their set-up according to their perceived support or opposition to him and his political agendas. Following the August 1991 coup and the October 1993 crisis, during which the local soviets were accused of siding with the anti-Yel’tsin forces, many local soviets were disbanded. Local power shifted to executives appointed by and loyal to the federal executive or regional regimes. Yet another cycle of local government reforms was started in 1994-1995. Against the background of increasing “legal separatism” and the consolidation of regional regimes Yel’tsin had come to regard LSG as a potential check against them. The 1995 Russian federal law on local government and the various conferences and seminars sponsored by the Kremlin around that time made no secret of this political and mobilisational role LSG was to perform, once again in the country’s history.
Yet, five years after the passage of the law, its implementation has been slow and patchy at best. This is particularly true for the ethnically-defined republics. While the law made LSG separate from both federal and regional levels, and LSG has been referred to as the “third level of authority,” it continued to be fused into the republic executive hierarchies. Moreover, while the republics would concede to changing other legislation that violates federal laws, they fiercely cling on to their prerogatives to appoint local heads of administrations. At the same time, the local councils have remained weak bodies in many ways also fused into the executive hierarchies.
This paper argues that the republic regimes have employed local government as a political tool much like the Soviet and post-Soviet Russian federal regimes did. This political role, evident in Russia’s other entities, is particularly salient in the ethnically-defined republics. This is because of the republics’ multi-ethnic character and the potential ethnic challenge to the titular regimes from below. As the examples of Adygeya and Bashkortostan demonstrate, local organs have come to play the role of control bodies vis-à-vis the grass-roots. This control is exercised through mechanisms similar to those in the Soviet system. Local governing bodies perform important ideological roles. At the same time, they continue to be hyper-administrative agencies executing many vital administrative and service functions vis-à-vis the local societies. This fact further increases the degree of control the local governing bodies have over the localities. The following sections illustrate the above points based on examples from Adygeya and Bashkortostan.

Case Studies of the Republics
Adygeya
Adygeya is one of Russia’s smallest republics covering a territory of 7.6 thousand square miles. It is territorially landlocked in the “red belt’s” Krasnodar kray, and until 1990 was an autonomous oblast’ administratively subordinate to it. Unlike Bashkortostan, it is one of Russia’s poorest entities, heavily dependent on federal transfers. Of the population of approximately 450.5 thousand people, Russians (including Cossacks) are numerically the largest group comprising 68%, while the titular Adyge – only 22.1%. The remaining 10% of the population is comprised of Ukrainians, Armenians, and a number of other numerically smaller ethnic groups.
Like Russia’s other republics, Adygeya enjoyed as brief period of local government power lasting from 1990 until the end of 1991. In 1992, following Yel’tsin’s recommendations on local government reform, many local soviets were disbanded, and the formerly elected local executives would now be appointed pursuant to the January 1992 decree of the Adyge president, Aslan Djharimov. The decree initiated a series of successive executive initiatives aimed at bringing the soviets under the control of the chief executive and his appointed figureheads. The election of local executives was only re-introduced in 1997 under federal pressure. In March the decree on “The Structure of Government and Certain Questions related to the Activities of Executive Power Organs in Soviet Socialist Republic of Adygeya” stipulated: “Heads of administration of cities, regions, village and town soviets form a unified system of executive power.” The decree empowered the Adyge government to “suspend decisions of executive power organs of the territory of the Republic of Adygeya if they contradict the constitution and laws of the Republic of Adygeya and the Russian Federation, as well as dismiss the officials of these power organs should they violate the relevant legislation.”
The stress on the executive power was subsequently cemented in the Law on the President. This was followed by the establishment of a policing agency, of a Control Group within the presidential administration to “monitor compliance with presidential decrees by ministries, administrations of cities and regions.” A special Provision on Disciplinary Responsibility of Heads of Administrations threatened dismissal of those failing to comply with presidential directives.
In October 1993, Djharimov urged the abolition of the city and region soviets altogether, and their functions were transferred to the republic Supreme Soviet. This was followed by a decree transferring the city and region soviet responsibilities to the appointed heads of administrations. Finally, the local self-government legislation distinguished between “local self-government” and “local government,” mestnoe samoupravlenie vs. mestnoe gosudarstvennoe upravlenie. A “transitional period” law provided for “local government” or appointment of heads of administrations in the cities of Maykop and Adygeysk, and in regions, with “local self-government” proper relegated to the smaller administrative units of towns and villages.
Although mirroring federal initiatives to strengthen genuine local self-government the elected principle was incorporated into Adygeya’s constitution adopted in 1995, the elections did not take place before 1997. When they did, it was only after a hedge decree had been passed stipulating that “heads of city and region administrations... bear personal responsibility for the state of discipline in ... the cities and regions in the Republic of Adygeya.”
Bashkortostan
The Republic of Bashkortostan differs from Adygeya along a number of dimensions, but its local government policies are broadly similar to those of Adygeya. Bashkortostan is located at the junction of the Urals and Volga, Povolzh’e geographic regions. Russia’s most populous republic, it is also one of the wealthiest in terms of natural resource endowment, most notably petro-chemicals. Of the population of over four million people, Russians comprise 39.9%, Tatars – 28.4%, and Bashkirs – 21.9%. The remaining population largely consists of the Chuvash, Mary, and Ukrainians.
In Bashkortostan, local heads of administrations began to be appointed in early 1992. The debates on local institutional reform and the strengthening of the republic executive hierarchy were linked to the question of the adoption of the republic constitution and the prevention of potential political challenge to this and other sovereignty legislation from below. A Bashkir Supreme Soviet presidium decision cited the “need for executive discipline” and the getting away from “local soviets ... as arenas of clashing political opinions and platforms.” The Supreme Soviet then amended the local self-government law to allow “the presidium the right of appointment of heads of region and city administrations and dismiss them at its initiative.” In turn, the heads of administrations of cities and regions were given the right to appoint heads of administrations of the lower administrative-territorial units. While the soviets would still be elected, henceforth the real decision-making and executive authority would lie with the appointed administrative heads. In a further move to undermine the representative organs, the new provisions also allowed the combining of the posts of the soviet chairmen and the head of administrations. The combination of the powers eliminated the remaining controls the soviets might have had over their executives.
The Mechanisms of Control
The administration
How did the “executivisation” of local government after 1992 affect ethno-social and ethno-political dynamics in the two republics? The following discussion of local governing bodies’ set-up, make-up, and functions illustrates how local councils are used as mechanisms of political and ideological control much like they were in the Soviet system.
The post-1991 broad structural reforms substantially affected the lines of accountability – both formal and informal – of the local executive and legislative bodies. These factors in turn influenced the nature of the business of local self-government and the perceptions of its role. Unlike the council members, the heads of administrations (HAs), by virtue of their appointment from above, are now linked into the “formal” structures of accountability and control. These HAs tended to have been or become “tough administrators,” whose credentials as such were stressed. They will have risen through the party and local soviet ispolkom hierarchies, and will have shown their loyalty to the republic regimes in the process. The other executives in the local administrations, appointed by the HAs will have had similar careers as administrators. As late as 1999, local administrations in both Adygeya and Bashkortostan were staffed by such members of the former apparat. Although the criteria for their selection was loyalty, these individuals were largely selected for their apolitical credentials and “professionalism.”
Take Anatoliy Baranov, the deputy head of Ufa administration, an archetype of the apolitical administrator who had risen through the party ranks and soviet administration. Baranov had worked in the obkom for a number of years prior to being elected to the Ufa soviet. He had since been consequently re-elected to the Ufa soviet in 1990, 1995, and 1999. As Chairman of the soviet, he is also a deputy head of administration, which is a full-time administrative post. Baranov has apparently never been involved in big politics – opposition or other – even at the heyday of democratic and non-titular upsurge in the early 1990s.
Baranov’s view of the mission of city government is its service, rather than the political side. The 1990 soviet, he maintains, “has for two years suffered from the malaise of politics, i.e., we, deputies, at the time tried to give a political assessment of what was happening in the country, the republic to a greater extent, and to a lesser extent paid attention to processes happening in the city from the point of view of creating normal conditions for life.” Finally, he concludes, “the soviet started to deal with the stuff that the representative organ is supposed to be doing, i.e., city administration.” Even in its non-partisan form, however, he maintains the council is an inconvenience from the point of view of efficiency: it lacks “technocrats.” Otherwise, “for thirty council deputies we need over seventy real administration professionals.”
Greater powers of the administration vis-à-vis the council were also augmented by the administrators’ increased specialisation and the amount of social services they are supposed to be responsible for. Rather than their diminution compared to the Soviet times, this responsibility has reportedly increased considering the shortage of local funds for the provision of basic services and the mounting social problems. Despite efforts at privatisation, most formerly state assets continue to be in state hands. This means that salaries to local enterprise employees are paid out of municipal budgets. The budgets in turn depend on levels of allocation from republican funds. These prerogatives are substantially wider that those exercised by the municipalities in the West. The views of Baranov, who frequently travels to Ufa’s sister city in Germany, Halle, are typical of local administrators:
When we are, say, in the West and ask a burgomaster or a mayor a question, what do you do if some food products are absent in the shop, he stares and says: “What do I have to do with this? Not my problem.” Here, in contrast, we are responsible for all now... in conditions when in our country the redistribution of property has not occurred, and when the main share of the property remains in state hands... In the West, he [the mayor] is not concerned with how enterprises are working, and firms, companies. It is not his problem. It is the problem of those who work there, who own it, who had found it. Here in contrast we have a headache today about this too, because today we don’t have a real owner, it appears that everybody is the owner.
Baranov’s equivalent in the Maykop city administration, Sergey Stel’makh, maintains in a similar vein: “All the questions in the city have to be regulated by the authorities, only then it means real power, beginning from the birth of a child and ending with the lack of bread in the shops.”
The republic bodies manipulate their control over local budgets as a means of political influence over the administrations: “If the mayor shows independence towards the republic, the republic will say: deal with the salaries yourself,” claims Baranov. The administrations, in turn, manipulate the disbursal of funds to enterprises to achieve the same goal in what has been observed in other regions as well and described as “pseudo-socialist activities.” Enterprise managers in turn manipulate the issue of the payment of salaries to individual employees.
The social expectations of the municipalities’ role are likewise much greater than of those in the West. “In contrast to the West,” maintains Baranov, “when salaries are not paid here, even at privatised enterprises... workers come here, criticising the administration: why don’t you pay us salaries?’ We have to interfere.” This view echoes the observations of scholars of local politics in other regions. In Sverdlovsk oblast’, for example, during a student protest demonstration, “the demands of the students concerning the reform of higher education were directed at the mayor and the governor, even though these officials were not included in the formulation of that series of reforms.” The control of the budgetary tool, as well as the social perceptions of the local governments as omni-powerful entities, facilitate the manipulation of the issue of sanctions for deviating behaviour, since punishments could be tangible.
The local councils
The scaled down local councils continued to be popularly elected. Although power was now vested in the administrative bodies, the councils preserved formal authority over a number of important areas, such as the approval of local budgets. No formal mechanisms for the removal of local councillors had been put in place. Increasingly, however, local council members tended to be part of what may be referred to as both the formal and the informal frameworks of control and accountability. The formal lines of accountability stem from the fusion of executive and legislative power, Bashkortostan being a notorious example of this. Local councillors, as indeed, members of the republic level legislature, could combine executive posts in local administrations with councillor positions in other areas. As full time appointees in local administrations, their primary accountability lies with the bodies that appointed them, rather than the part-time council positions. Aside from those formally under direct control of the executives, one can distinguish several categories of those within the “informal” control networks.
The Ufa council, elected in 1999, is representative of the distinctions between those forming part of the various control networks, one could observe in the scaled down councils, elected between 1995 and 1999. Out of fifty-eight elected deputies, the largest categories are as follows. There are five or 8.6% deputies directly connected to council administrations. 24.1% or almost a quarter, are heads of medical establishments. There are seventeen managers, or 29.3%, in the ranks of heads of enterprises; and eight, or 13.8% heads of educational institutions, mostly schools. The council also has one head of administration of a lower region. Thus, while only six deputies are directly connected to the administration, and form part of the formal executive chain of command, on close scrutiny, the majority of the remaining deputies also form part of executive lines of accountability or are subject to less formal executive control.
The deputy corps could be divided into five categories. The first are those forming part of the common system of executive power, such as the head of administration and other local executives. The second category is the directors of state enterprises. These tend to be appointed by the republic Cabinet of Ministers, or conclude contracts with it. This category is subject to both formal and less formal accountability. The informal one stems from their vulnerability to the tax inspectorate, the police and other “force” agencies, which may or may not be de jure subordinate to the republic or local administrations, but are de facto under the control of local HAs. The next category is the so-called “business entrepreneurs,” and there are several of those in the council. An examination of their activities and affiliations reveals that they tend to perform services vital to the city, and enjoy a certain status within the municipal services private contracts hierarchy. Take deputy Voropaev. He runs an enterprise for sanitary and technical works, and has an exclusive contract with the city to do so. His dependence on the administration is an informal one, as he is subject to material rewards, rather than direct accountability.
The two largest categories after managers are heads of medical and educational establishments. In coding the various categories, I made the distinction between doctors and teachers on the one hand, and heads of the relevant establishments, on the other. The distinction is an important one, and prevents from grouping the latter into the broader “professional” or “intelligentsia” categories. The “colonisation” by these two groups, which has increased in the Ufa council from 1995, to 1999, and is observed in the Maykop 1995 council as well, is an interesting phenomenon. Some local interviewees believe that their electoral success stems from the generally high priority accorded to healthcare and education. School directors and hospital heads are successful at convincing the electorates that council positions would benefit the respective institutions in the form of greater financial and other rewards. According to some views, they may thus represent certain large “lobby” groups in the council aggregating the preferences of their constituencies. However, hospital heads, as a local councillor maintained, are not mere doctors; they are entrepreneurs, “tsars and gods” within their institutions.

Figure 1. Composition of the Ufa City Soviet, 1995

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Although school directors could not be described as entrepreneurs, they are the most powerful individuals within their institutions and enjoy status and prestige in the republic’s educational hierarchies. Considering the amount of gate-keeping and “selectorates” involved in council elections, their high representation is unlikely to be accidental. Rather than reflecting constituency preferences, their election could be more of a top-bottom nature, with the republic elites ensuring that a high proportion of these “notables” get in. Hospital staffs are in regular contact with district constituencies. Unlike in countries with privatised healthcare, in Russia hospitals continue to be attached to districts and one gets affiliated with it according to where one holds the propiska, or residence permit. Those who opt for free healthcare, have to go through the local hospital, rather than the equivalent of the GP of their choosing. I was told that prior to the 1999 Ufa council election, GPs went around their duties campaigning for the election of their candidates. They are likely to also use this regular constituency contact for other means as well.

Figure 2. Composition of the Ufa City Soviet, 1999

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The same holds true for school heads. One gets attached to a school according to where one holds the propiska, although since 1991 some flexibility has been introduced into the system, and there are more privatised schools now than before. However, most people continue to send their children to the official state schools. School heads however, can exercise leverage as to who gets in, is attached to what classes, the grades and so forth. In Bashkortostan, Adygeya and elsewhere, school heads become important in the political process. Schools are used as polling stations during the elections. They are also a convenient media for information and agitation. These two categories are both subject to formal and informal lines of accountability. The appointment of school heads is done through the local administrations’ nomenklatury. Heads of hospitals are appointed either by local administrations or by the Ministry of Health.
What unites all of the above categories is thus (1) their formal or less formal dependence on the executive chain of command; and (2) their key positions within organisations representing business, social, professional and other networks. The lines of accountability continue downwards as we move on to the next level. The most straightforward formal control framework is the control over appointments within the organisation, vested in the respective heads or managers. The second, an informal one, is the control over payment of salaries. Heads of municipal organisations do not control this, but local administrations do. Heads of institutions are media through which the sanctions system gets spread: “We will not get salaries paid if…” These heads, considering their regular network contacts, status and influence, are thus notoriously crucial players in the local political process. Finally, one could also infer that social sanctions might be applied to those within these professional networks who deviate from a general political line, since as a result, the whole organization might be penalised. People involved in opposition activities generally keep quiet about them for fear of sanctions and undermining their associates and family members; those who donate money for such activities do not disclose their identities or professional affiliations for the same reason.
The Maykop city council, elected in 1995 supports the trend, observed in Ufa, of the large proportion of local “notables” or the regular employees within state bodies, controlled by the executive. The council, however, is more diverse in its composition reflecting the more competitive electoral process in the republic. Out of the council’s twenty deputies, the largest single category is comprised of heads of educational establishments, with 20%; heads of hospitals comprise 5%. 10% are managers. Teachers, who are kontraktniki (depend on municipal contracts), comprise 10%, and workers 15%. There is one voluntary association member and three engineers. Four deputies, whom I included in the category of “other” include pensioners and a deputy listed as unemployed.
The council’s 45% municipal employees and managers are subject to the same structures of control as in Bashkortostan. The body has not made one politically sensitive statement throughout its tenure. The communists have a large presence in the council, but their opposition to the republic bodies has been limited to economic concerns. Still, considering its diversity, the council is freer of administrative constraints compared to Ufa. One of its deputies, Stasev, has been active with the opposition group Union of Slavs of Adygeya in 1990-1992, and has continued to cooperate with the Union throughout the 1990s. As the head of a small private enterprise, Stasev is less vulnerable to sanctions than the other deputies.

Figure 3. Composition of the Maykop City Representative Assembly, 1995

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Ideology and agenda-setting

Finally, local governing bodies continue to perform important ideological and agenda-setting functions, which acquire particular salience in the republics’ multi-ethnic settings. Examples from small localities in Adygeya and Bashkortostan, are instructive.
Adygeya
Consider the example of Viktor Chernenko, the head of administration in Severovostochnye Sady, a town located some five kilometres outside of the city of Maikop, and has a population of 3,300, mostly Russians, Ukrainians, and Armenians. Unlike the heads of city and regional levels, Viktor Chernenko is a popularly elected figure as a head of a village district. Republic functionaries like to point him out as a rebel and as a walking case against the election of local heads of administrations even at the township levels. He is known to have fought for a greater budget for the locality and has openly conflicted with the higher Maykop region HA. Chernenko is a renegade, and only one other HA of his kind apparently exists in Adygeya. The fact that he is a renegade, however, is interesting in and of itself as an indication of the submissive status of the other local HAs. Close scrutiny reveals that Chernenko, in fact, operates under a system of tough constraints, both formal and informal, and in many ways plays by the rules of the game. His conflict agenda is strictly within the bounds of “policy” and “administration,” and he has kept politics, and, most importantly, ethnicity, out of local government as best as he could.
The formal constraints include those in line with an amendment to local self-government law specifically aimed against local functionaries like him. The amendment, passed in June 1999, allows regional heads of administrations to nominate local HAs from amongst local council deputies; another amendment threatens the possibility of the removal of popularly elected HAs. Chernenko’s battles with the regional head thus risk his position when he stands for the next term. The local budget, virtually completely dependent on allocations from the Maykop region is the most important informal constraint on his actions. Chernenko claims he is constantly with an outstretched hand: “All the time we go to him [regional HA,] and ask: ‘give, give.’”
According to Chernenko, the regional administration is quick to use this lever of influence. It also fosters the strong sense among the local population that Chernenko’s political conflicts with the higher bodies reflect on their social and material well-being in the locality. “The mentality is such: if the head of the region is unhappy, then who would be the first to suffer? He will definitely deprive us of something, like will not construct a road, will not give for the telephone line, gas, water… such is the mentality of the people. Since he [Chernenko] is not friendly with the regional head that means he will have problems.” Local public opinion is shaped by the one major regional newspaper, subsidised by the regional administration, which reflects the views of the appointed regional administration, and which according to the HA, has tried to organise a campaign against him. Chernenko claims he does not subscribe to it “out of principle” because of its biased nature; he claims the paper refuses to publish his views despite his status as the head of administration of a lower level. He would have loved to have his own, but lacks funds in the local budget to run it.
When ethnically-sensitive issues come on the agenda, Chernenko feels more constrained by the preferences of the republic level authorities, than by those of his constituencies. An example is a local controversy involving the repatriation of ethnic Adyge from Kosovo. A new Adyge village was to be built in Chernenko’s district. As the head of Kirovskiy administration, Chernenko claimed he had jurisdiction over the chosen area, and not the republic bodies. Moreover, he claimed, the local vox populi was supposed to have had the main say over this decision. The republic, he maintained “created a commission and I wasn’t included in it. So they decided all in advance, came here, measured it all and then come to me and say: sign.” Chernenko’s initial reaction was two-fold: to get the people involved, to rally them behind his view; and to point to the ethnic dimension of the issue. In fact, he initially refused to sign the document: “I say: I am sorry, this is against the law, I have to gather people and see if my people want to live nearby. Practically, there is only one Cherkes aul [village] in the district.” Chernenko was thus pointing to the potential problem of close co-existence of the various ethnic communities, implying that it might be conflict-ridden. In practice, neither of these courses of action was pursued.
I asked him if he ended up having a skhod in the end. In response Chernenko laughed outloud: “Who would …[allow] that sort of a thing!,” he exclaimed. Although the HA is not supposed formally ask for permission to hold a skhod, his response indicates his anticipated reaction and the constraints he felt against holding the meeting. When he did indicate to the republic functionaries that he wanted to do it, they explicitly warned him against “inciting ethnic tensions.”
The republic bodies thus resorted to the use of the threat to “ethnic peace.” They also controlled private resources, which the HA lacked, such as the possibility of providing the community with gas. If Chernenko had mobilised the towns that he controlled, he risked depriving the communities of both the private benefits, and hence his own status and position. The result was the suppression of opposition to the titular regime policy from below.
Bashkortostan
In Bashkortostan, not only do local governing bodies suppress potential ethnic challenges from below; they actively project Bashkir nationalist ideologies into the grass-roots. One example of such policies is the town of Chakmagush. It lies some 120 kilometres northwest of Bashkortostan’s capital Ufa. The town’s 10,000 strong population is overwhelmingly Tatar, and Tatar is the predominant language spoken here. Although the official percentage is lower (82%), de facto, its residents claim, as much as 95% of its population are ethnic Tatars.
The deputy HA is Damira Altaforvna Kazykhanova. Kazykhanova is the local equivalent of Anatoliy Baranov in Ufa. She self-consciously maintains the air of “professionalism”; she uses the jargon and has the air, at the very least, of a senior Komsomol functionary, if not that of a middle ranking obkom official. She talks about the need to “work with cadre” and the nomenklatura, the need for professionalisation of local government.
The deputy HA, however, is not just there to “professionalise” and depoliticise local government, or indeed to suppress any potential conflicts from entering or expanding in the public domain. Instead, she combines this function with a self-consciously political and ideological role, albeit one ostensibly concerned with preserving “interethnic peace and the development of culture of those living in the region.” Kazykhanova, an ethnic Tatar, is the head of the Ispolkom, or executive committee of the regional Chakmagush branch of the republic-sponsored Kurultay of Bashkirs. The Ispolkom’s main function, according to her, is to promote Bashkir culture in the region. Its main preoccupation has been the introduction of Bashkir language in the local schools. The instruction until now has been voluntary, although parents are encouraged to send the children for bilingual instruction. Furthermore, she maintained:
The Bashkir Kurultay also pays attention to the study of the genealogical tree. And truly, on close inspection of the genetic tree, one discovers that in the olden times, naturally, it was the Bashkirs who lived here… We even had a scientific conference, it was our work, the Bashkir Kurultay invited scientists from the state university… and people from the central archives, archaeologists… And truly we came to a conclusion that Bashkirs lived here in these villages, and so in the future, should parents wish, especially now that the law is passed… if there is such a wish among parents and children, let them learn the Bashkir language.
She concludes:
Therefore, we have to promote this genealogical tree, the classes of history and culture of Bashkortostan, so a pupil will know his genealogical tree and will think and reflect, and each parent will have to know… not forcibly, but with the help of explanatory work.
Ideological control and projection here is facilitated with the help of nomenklatura, which serves the same function as it did in the Soviet times. The person in charge of nomenklatura, Khafizov Akhmatziya Fayazovich, has the rank of deputy head of administration for cadres. His function: “The selection, placement and upbringing of the cadres.” Khafizov maintains personal files, lichnye dela for top administrative posts in the locality, as well as reserve cadre. These are in turn divided into three categories: those appointed by the decree of the head of administration, those appointed “in consultation with the HA,” and chairmen of collective farms. Although the latter are formally elected, they are usually recommended by the administration as well. “Incidentally,” proudly remarks Khafizov, “there was not a single case when our cadre had been turned down.” Overall, the nomenklatura includes 113 appointive posts ranging from the heads of the lower level soviets, to heads of municipal enterprises and such agricultural service enterprises as Agropromservice and Agropromtrans, to directors of cultural institutions and the regional media and school heads. The latter are scrutinized before the administration’s commissions every year and their re-appointment is coordinated with the HA. Heads of the local force agencies, such as the MVD (Ministry of Interior), although nominally subordinate to the higher agencies, work under the direct control of the HA. “It has to be like this,” maintains Khafizov, since “one man rule, edinonachalie, brings discipline.”

Theoretical reflections

It is now important to step back and reflect theoretically and comparatively on the detail presented in the above sections. On the face of it, the institutional changes that were introduced into local government in 1992 were similar to those introduced in the context of the Reform Movement in America. The preoccupation of those advocating reforms in America was to drive partisanship and politics out of local self-government altogether. The goal was to professionalise LSG by extricating it from local and state-wide machine politics. The reduction of partisanship was to be achieved through the appointment of non-partisan professional administrations, and elections to local councils on an at-large basis. Changing accountability structures, in line with Weber’s postulates, were to foster rational bureaucratic functionaries, as opposed to those accountable to partisan political interests. The effects of these broad changes on public life in Western contexts have been well documented and studied. Reformed local governments ostensibly produced a more efficient and consensual style of administration, with policies implemented with greater facility and less political conflict. This role was arguably particularly salient in the ethnically and racially diverse urban settings, where administrators were discouraged from playing the ethnic card, on the one hand, while on the other, the social constituencies were less likely to manipulate LSG for ethnic purposes.
In the Western contexts, driving partisanship out of local government and the centralisation of executive control have been generally viewed as means to achieve efficient local administration. A city cannot run effectively, according to Banfield without a large degree of centralisation since there would be too many “civic controversies.” As I have discussed above, views along these lines have been actively propagated by executive functionaries in the republics. According to another view, however, the “depoliticisation” of local bodies in fact represents the concentration of political decision-making in the hands of a narrow group of powerful local actors, and the discussion of the republics supports the thrust of this argument. Potential civic or ethnic controversies are not avoided, but are being decided in advance in favour of one, more powerful party in a potential conflict.
One can distinguish two ways in which this result is achieved. The first is the prevention of conflicts and issues from entering into the public domain. According to Bachrach and Baratz, “to the extent that a person or group – consciously or unconsciously – creates or reinforces barriers to the public airing of policy conflicts, that person or group has power.” The second, related method is the employment of the institutional and informal mechanisms for centralisation that “non-partisanship” brings about, for the attainment or enforcement of political, policy, or public agenda-setting aims.
The institutional mechanisms include formal lines of accountability and subordination. The informal mechanisms would involve potential material rewards or other informal sanctions. Banfield refers to these as “structures of control.” He writes: “When two or more actors come under the control of another on a continuing basis, i.e., from proposal to proposal, a structure of control exists.” This would include the Mayor’s control over the city council, the newspaper’s control over “civic leadership” and the Governor’s control over the legislature. According to Banfield, “centralisation of control therefore necessitates a linkage of structures where structures exist.”
The preceding empirical sections have identified the formal and informal structures of control that exist in the republics. The most straightforward structure is the vertical chain of executive power. The president appoints heads of administrations, which in turn appoint the executives within local administrations. Formal executive control also largely extends to the legislature. While in municipalities with strong mayors the mayor de facto exercises power over the weaker representative bodies, here a large percentage of councillors are subject to direct lines of executive accountability in their professional capacities as appointed functionaries. These functionaries, in turn, extend the structure of executive control to those subordinate and accountable to them within the large enterprises or other organizations, which they head.
The executives do not exercise formal control over the social agencies. However, they have jurisdictions over activities and functions crucial for their work. These jurisdictions effectively allow for the silencing of opinions alternative to those of the most powerful actors and for the prevention of their public airing.
The linkage of the structures of control is further exercised through the system of “private-regarding” and “public-regarding” benefits disbursed by the power elite. The first is achieved through the tangible private benefits or costs that accrue to those who conform or deviate. Banfield defines the two categories as follows: (A) “Power which makes its effect by offering gains or losses which the responding actor values for his own sake or for the sake of some small private circle belonging to him (e.g., family, friends).” The second, (B), Public regarding power is: “Power which makes its effect by offering gains or losses which the responding actor values for the sake of something (e.g., value, group, public) that transcends (although it may include) him and his small private circle.” Usually, according to Banfield, power is not spent; it is invested. In other words, it is the threat of sanctions and the constant promise of the flow of rewards, which make the actual regular exercise of sanctions redundant.
We now return to the question of agenda-setting. As examples from Bashkortostan’s and Adygeya’s localities demonstrate, the role of the control of public agenda-setting is crucial for this system of sanctions and rewards, particularly as regards the “public-regarding” aspect of power. Local governing bodies become media through which the information about potential public sanctions gets spread. Individual deviations are presented as threatening the community at large in terms of material rewards. They are also presented as posing a threat to the non-tangible value systems like “ethnic peace” and “social harmony.” This also represents a system of indirect control over the public associations, their public relations, and the resulting levels of social support they might get from those they purport to represent.

Other Republics
Can we generalise from the above two cases to Russia’s other republics? A detailed investigation of local governing practices in the other republics is beyond the scope of this paper. However, factual data on local government make-up and composition, as well as studies of other regions, allow to make further generalisations to the other cases. It also offers possibilities for future comparative research along a number of dimensions.
Figure 4 below contains official Central Electoral Commission (TsIK) information on the composition of local governing bodies in all of Russia’s republics except for Bashkortostan and Ingushetiya, as of 1998. Bashkortostan was not listed in the report, while Ingushetiya has abolished its local governing bodies. The figure below indicates the continued “executivisation” of local councils, as well as the predominance of the managerial elite. State and municipal employees form large proportions of the local deputy corps in all the republics. In Altay, for example, they constitute over half of all councillors, and almost a third in Buryatiya. Heads of enterprises, many of whom, as I have discussed, are dependent on the state in one way or another, constitute close to or over half of the deputy corps in Altay, Buryatiya, Kalmykiya, Mary El and Chuvashiya.

Figure 4. Composition of Local Representative Bodies in Russia’s Republics, 1998

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At the same time, heads of local administrations continue to be fused into local republic hierarchies and to be dependent on the republic chief executives. The Kremlin’s efforts to ensure compliance with the 1995 law on local self-government, which mandates the election of local executives, have resulted in some de jure modifications of local government set-up. In practice, however, the republics have continued to sabotage this requirement and have devised nuanced ways of evading it. For example, according to TsIK’s factual report on local government in the republics, all of Adygeya’s local governing bodies are popularly elected, while those of Tatarstan are ostensibly elected by the councils. Most of the republics in the manual, in fact, appear to have complied with the law by either electing HAs popularly or through the local councils.
A more nuanced reading of the republics’ local governing laws reveals a different picture. Adygeya appears to be a typical example of how the federal requirements are being evaded. As I have discussed above, Adygeya has introduced an elaborate distinction between local state government and local self-government. It can thus justify to the federal centre that all of its local governing bodies are elected. However, the most important local figure, the mayor of Maykop, is legally part of local state government and not local self-government, and is a minister in Adygeya’s government. He thus forms part of the republic’s executive chain of authority. In other republics, popularly elected mayors can be removed at the initiative of or by the republic chief executives or by the local councils, dependent on them. In a number of republics, while local HAs are elected at lower levels, they continue to be subordinate to the republic chief executives at the most important large city, region, or capital city levels. The table below summarises some of the provisions of republic laws that serve to subvert federal LSG requirements, while seemingly complying with them. The data covers the periods from 1993 until 1999, and is compiled based on a search of the Russian regional laws database, Konsul’tant plyus, in the summer of 1999.

Figure 5. Legislation on Local Self-Government and Provisions for Elections or Appointment of Has

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The predominance of “notables” and their dependence on the executive branch is at odds with the normative and orthodox views of local self-government as “government by the people” and “grass roots” rule. The size and numbers of Russia’s municipal bodies also suggest an unorthodox view of their role. In Russia, as in a number of Eastern European states, local government bodies could legitimately be established at very tiny village levels with a population of just a few hundred. Indeed, a very sizeable proportion of Russia’s municipalities cover very small areas. Thus, 18,35% of municipalities have from 100 to 500 voters, and 31,37% – from 500 to 1,000.
In terms of their size, it has been noted, Russian and East European municipalities approximate Southern European countries and France, where local governing units range from approximately 1,600 in France, to 7,000 in Italy. In Northern Europe, the sizes are much larger, while “authorities with under one thousand inhabitants have been virtually organized out of existence.” The average in the British Isles, for example, ranges from 42,000 in the Irish republic, to 127,000 in England. In the other northern European states, it ranges between approximately 9,400 in Norway, to 30,250 in Sweden.
The orthodox take on the choice of the variable size of these bodies across different countries is that they stem from “different principles and values.” Thus, Alan Norton wrote:
The Latin countries value the self-regulating historical community as the basis of their structure of self-government. They are prepared to entrench it as fundamental to their way of life. This is seen as justified by the principle of keeping responsibility as close as possible to the individual and family and educating citizens in the art of self-administration.
The approach taken here suggests a rather different view of local government’s relation to the local communities. One might infer from the evidence presented here that the smaller the unit of jurisdiction, the greater the degree of social control by municipal bodies. Severovostochnye Sady is a case in point, where the head of administration is personally familiar with all the residents in his locality. Such forums as skhody, which might be hailed as normatively desirable paragons of community self-rule, in fact reinforce such familiarity and provide further means for the head of administration to influence decision-making within his locality.
Finally, data on local government make-up and case studies of Russia’s other regions – both republics and the non-ethnically defined entities – indicate that local governing bodies’ control over public and associational life is a widespread phenomenon. These special mechanisms of control reinforce the existing levers of influence over local constituencies, discussed above. The data suggests a top-bottom, rather than bottom-up view of social and political processes in the localities, which differs from pluralists’ assumptions. Even pluralist scholars of Russia’s local government have noted the weak representation of parties and civic groups in the local councils. Figure 4 above reveals that organised social and political interests continue to be weakly represented in the local bodies, and in many cases are not represented at all. Instead, as the following studies demonstrate, local bodies control, sponsor or suppress organised social interests.
Neil Melvin’s study of Omsk revealed the existence of forms of “civic corporatism” in the region. In Novgorod, which Petro hailed as a “Russian Success Story,” the showcase of democracy at a regional level, civic associations are co-opted into a government-sponsored “Social Chamber.” In the ethnic republics, as the Bashkortostan elite-sponsored Bashkir Kurultay shows, often only the regime sponsored nationalist associations are allowed to exist, and their ideologies are projected into the grass roots through the local bodies. These examples of civic and political corporatism at a local government level support the thrust of studies of regional level politics about the generally controlled nature of much of political and social activism in Russia’s localities. Thus, for example, it has been shown that political parties emerge concomitantly with regional institutional elite cleavages and disappear when the elite contests are over. The present study supports the thrust of these arguments, while also suggesting how regional level elite political preferences are enforced at very local, grass roots levels.

Conclusion

Despite a decade of local government reforms in Russia, a path-dependent view of the political role of these bodies is appropriate. Similar to the soviets in the Soviet system, the local governing bodies in Russia’s republics perform important control functions vis-à-vis the grass roots. The mobilisational role of local government has been fostered by the federal centre, which regarded and continues to regard it as an important political and ideological tool. The reforms fostered by the federal centre in view of this role have played into the hands of the republic regimes, which have looked at local bodies as the instruments of the exercise of titular regime power. Like the soviets in the Soviet system, the local bodies are packed with regime loyalists who control industrial, educational, recreational and other networks. They influence these networks with the help of the local bodies’ agenda-setting power and its control over municipal resources, such as salaries. The result is that features normally considered to be indicative of local civic power, such as the numbers of municipal bodies and their small size, only serve to reinforce control mechanisms, rather than empower the grass roots.