Andrew Konitzer* and Stephen K. Wegren
†
This article analyzes trends in Russian federalism by examining the rise of United Russia as a party of power. For the first time in post-Soviet history, a pro-presidential party of power has been successfully established, both reflecting and facilitating political recentralization.
This article traces United Russia’s role in this recentralization process and examines the factors that have allowed United Russia to succeed as the central government’s instrument for deepening and consolidating political centralization where other attempts have failed.
The impact of political recentralization has changed the face and nature of Russian federalism in a very short period of time and raises concerns that the political trajectory of
Russia is away from a federalist structure and toward a unitary state.
Among the political legacies bequeathed to Vladimir Putin were a decentralized political system and a nascent federalist structure that successfully avoided the disintegration of the Russian Federation following the breakup of the Soviet Union
(Graham 2002). However, some analysts argue that Yeltsin’s famous 1990 edict to
Tatarstan and Bashkortostan to ‘‘take as much sovereignty as you can swallow,’’ and the ‘‘parade of sovereignties’’ that followed, meant that Russia’s decentralization went too far and threatened Russia’s federal integrity (Slider 2003). Since Yeltsin left the political scene at the end of 1999, a major turning point in Russia’s political development has been political recentralization, with some analysts charging that
Putin is trying to establish a ‘‘unitary state’’ by ‘‘aggressively pursuing an anti-federal policy’’ (Petrov and Slider 2003). Several years before the Bush administration’s stated concern over democratic ‘‘backtracking’’ in Russia, analysts were aware of an erosion in federalism. Indeed, the period since 2000 has witnessed a concerted, and largely successful, effort by the Russian central government to control regional elites.
As one analyst has argued, ‘‘the president’s attempts to rein in the power of the regions and to reassert what he calls the ‘power-vertical’ have made a mockery of
*Austin College
†
Southern Methodist University
Publius: The Journal of Federalism volume 36 number 4, pp. 503–522 doi:10.1093/publius/pjl004
Advance Access publication May 25, 2006
ª The Author 2006. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of CSF Associates: Publius, Inc.
All rights reserved. For permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org.

504 A. Konitzer and S. K. Wegren the principles of federalism’’ (Ross 2004, 155). Thus, political recentralization warrants our attention as a threat to Russian federalism.
This article examines political recentralization in Russia and its effects on federalism since 2002. In particular, recentralization has been directed at tying regional political elites to the center and controlling the number of political parties. A primary aspect of political recentralization has been the rise, expansion and consolidation of the pro-presidential party United Russia, and therefore that party is the primary focus of this article. This development is important because although
President Putin enjoys ‘‘superpresidential’’ powers, he cannot rule alone and is ultimately limited by the sheer size of Russia. Under Boris Yeltsin, efforts were made to establish parties of power, but these attempts ultimately were unsuccessful—an outcome that affected the nature of Russian federalism. Under Putin, a single propresidential ‘‘party of power’’ has been successfully established; a party that dominates the State Duma and that has organs in each of Russia’s eighty-nine regions. This party of power uses its party organizations to enforce the Kremlin’s interests across the federation, thereby affecting the nature of contemporary federalism in Russia. In using the term ‘‘party of power,’’ we follow Golosov’s description:
The parties of power are not parties in power. Throughout the 1993–2003 period, Russia’s presidents were not members of any parties, and the same applies to the majority of other senior officials within the federal executive.
Rather, the parties of power were electoral vehicles. The specific purpose pursued by them is to bring to the national legislature politicians who are loyal to the federal executive. The ultimate rationale for their existence is therefore to provide the executive with certain levels of legislative support without sharing power or responsibility. (2004, 29–30)
With these developments in mind, the central analytical questions this article addresses are: What role has United Russia played in the larger strategy of political recentralization, and why has United Russia thus far succeeded where its predecessors failed? What are the implications of recentralization and the rise of a party of power for Russian federalism? Other analysts have previously examined an erosion of federalism by looking at institutional changes since 2000 (Hyde 2001; Kahn 2002;
Orttung and Reddaway 2004, 298). This article contributes an original analysis by examining United Russia as a strategic element in Russia’s recentralization and erosion of federalism. Thus, our argument is twofold: (1) that under Putin there has occurred significant recentralization, accompanied by an erosion in federalism and
(2) that the development of a party of power has facilitated recentralization and given the executive an additional lever to curb federalism.
This article proceeds in four stages. First, we review the theoretical literature that focuses on the role of political parties in integrating political systems. Second, we summarize the movement away from federalism under Putin and United Russia’s

Political Recentralization in Russia 505 role in the current recentralization process. Third, we examine why this particular party of power succeeded when previous efforts had failed. Finally, we discuss the implications for Russia’s federalism and future political development.
The question of federalism is one of the most enduring issues in political science and one that has intrigued analysts for decades. William Riker (1964, 1975) stands as the single-most influential contributor to our understanding of federalism, but he also is one of the institution’s strongest critics. As Edward Gibson notes, ‘‘in different writings on the subject he suggested that, in order to understand the actual operation of federal systems, we should look not to constitutional structure, but to such ‘real forces in the political system’ as national party systems, entrenched political practices, and political and economic power structures’’ (2004, 6–7). Studies undertaken in the time between Riker’s declaring an ‘‘age of federalism’’ (1964) and Gibson’s (2004) proclamation of an ‘‘age of federal practice’’ showed that Riker’s pessimistic comments were perhaps overstated.
1
As Gibson indicates, federalism does seem to have some independent effect on policymaking due to its ‘‘built-in presumption’’ about the distribution of powers between national and subnational governments and the idea that territorial representation will be balanced against the representation of individuals. However, Gibson also notes that much of the variation between policy outcomes in different federations cannot be explained by institutions alone. Federal structures certainly matter, but policy outcomes are most likely the result of an interactive effect between federal structures and other important aspects of the political system.
One of these important aspects, and a factor that is of increasing interest to students of federalism, is the role of political parties in determining policy outcomes and the de facto distribution of power within federal structures. Researchers such as
Huntington and others have long supported the contention that ‘‘the principal institutional means for organizing the expansion of political participation are political parties and the party system’’ (Huntington 1968, 398). Pointing to cases such as Mexico under the Partido Revolucionario Institutional (PRI) and Mustafa Kemal’s
Turkey, Huntington argues that even single-party noncommunist states successfully modernized their countries, consolidated their political systems, and set the stage for future political and economic development. For Huntington, a party , not necessarily a party system , is sufficient to organize political participation and stabilize societies undergoing political, social, and economic transformations.
Huntington’s assertions about political parties did not focus explicitly on their role in consolidating federal or otherwise decentralized systems, but other analysts drew more direct connections between political parties and the cementing of regional polities into a single national political space. According to Stepan, polity-wide

506 A. Konitzer and S. K. Wegren parties—defined as parties with established organizations in all subnational units and a significant degree of party discipline—can play a key role in ‘‘enabling the demos ,’’ reducing some of the natural fragmentary tendencies of federalism and preventing a small number of subnational actors from undermining centralgovernment policies (2004, 69–70). This work stands in marked contrast to Riker’s earlier treatment of the role of parties in federal system, which, based as it was on the
American federal experience, tended to see decentralized parties as the best means to guarantee territorial representation within the federal state (Riker and Schaps 1987).
The opposing viewpoints expressed by these analysts reflect a fundamental disagreement about the goals of democracy and federal systems, with Stepan emphasizing equality and efficiency over Riker’s focus on the protection of individual rights from the central government’s tendency to support broad populist majorities—or even, the ‘‘tyranny of the majority’’ (1999, 23). These opposing starting points result in equally conflicting policy prescriptions, with Stepan’s emphasis on demos -enabling institutions creating pressures for centralization and
Riker’s approach promoting decentralization.
Shefter also points to the importance of political parties in including disparate social groups and political actors while excluding and ultimately marginalizing others. Focusing on party systems across U.S. states, his approach incorporates a territorial element indicating that political parties are key to exerting more centralized control over a polity’s geographic space. Dividing political parties into ‘‘externally’’ and ‘‘internally mobilized’’ parties, he indicates that internally mobilized parties are those in which politicians who occupy leadership positions attempt to mobilize a popular following.
The leaders of internally mobilized parties undertake such mobilization either because they seek to secure their hold over the government in the face of a challenge by an externally mobilized party or because a major cleavage develops within the nation’s governing class and each side seeks to overwhelm its opponents by appealing for popular support. (Shefter 1994, 5)
The cleavages may be located within national-level governing organizations or across subnational political organizations. In either case, a strong political party can both incorporate and exclude potential rivals from the policymaking process.
For the most part, the existing literature has mainly focused on advanced industrial democracies and has tended to ignore the role of political parties in the federal systems of developing countries or transition states, although some exceptions may be cited.
2
With regard to the Russian Federation, several years ago Stoner-Weiss focused explicitly on the issue of territorial fragmentation, arguing that ‘‘political parties can be an important mechanism by which to better integrate states in the developing world’’ (2002, 125). Among the list of potential benefits accruing to strong political parties in federations, Stoner-Weiss refers back to the work of

Political Recentralization in Russia 507
Martin Shefter, arguing that ‘‘an important task of political parties in Russia and elsewhere . . .
is not just the aggregation of interests within society, and their representation in a national legislature, but also the enhancement of the stability and authority of a political system across territory’’ (p. 127).
Looking at the situation in Russia as it stood in 2002, Stoner-Weiss concluded that
Russia had failed to develop a polity-wide party system and that current conditions would prevent the establishment of such a system for some time to come. Like
Grigorii Golosov and others, she pointed to the poor penetration of political parties in Russia’s periphery and the reluctance of candidates to align with political parties as main causes and indicators of the inability of any single party or set of parties to establish a universal and centralizing presence in the federation. Stoner-Weiss concluded that the lack of polity-wide political parties would ultimately harm Russia, creating and perpetuating a more ‘‘peripheralized’’ federation and contributing to political fragmentation, corruption, and the marginalization of civil society.
This article argues that due to the rise of United Russia as a party of power, those political conditions have changed dramatically since Stoner-Weiss made her observations. In particular, the article demonstrates that political recentralization has gone hand in hand with the expansion of United Russia as a party of power with national reach, which in turn has direct implications for federalism in Russia.
Moreover, one should note that whereas Stoner-Weiss focused on the development of a polity-wide party system , more recently we have seen the development of a single polity-wide party of power possessing the necessary resources to effectively mute the expression of regional interests and assist in the realization of the central government’s continuing recentralization efforts. Hence, we consider the expansion and gradual consolidation of United Russia to be a harmful development for the further establishment of Russian federalism because the party acts as an instrument in the hands of the Putin administration as it dismantles key elements of Russia’s existing federal system and deprives regional actors of the policymaking autonomy necessary for the creation and perpetuation of actual federalism.
3
The following section surveys the evolution of Russian federalism before focusing on the rise and role of United Russia.
Soviet federalism was a unique amalgam that combined ethnic and territorial principles into the state’s administrative structure (Petrov 2004, 214). After the USSR dissolved, the Russian Federation duplicated the previous political entity’s ethnicterritorial federalist structure. Russia’s first decade was characterized by regional legislation that directly contradicted federal laws, efforts by regional polities to pursue independent foreign policies, the planned introduction of local currencies, border controls and tariffs between regional subunits, and other independent policy

508 A. Konitzer and S. K. Wegren initiatives too numerous to list here. Russia also produced a fair share of ‘‘regional autocracies’’—regional and local political systems that deprived citizens of their rights and essentially eliminated most bases for political competition. The divergence in economic and political environments across the federation reached such extremes that many analysts have compared differences in regional political, social, and economic contexts to differences among sovereign states. Although some of these developments resulted from a certain amount of benign neglect by an increasingly incapacitated Yeltsin administration, the 1990s also exhibited its share of efforts by central authorities to establish greater control over the regional political milieu through various, largely failed, attempts to establish a party of power.
Under Vladimir Putin, however, Russia witnessed the successful creation of a party of power that went on to become an important instrument for the federal government’s centralization efforts. The party Unity was the precursor to United
Russia and was formed under the influence of the Kremlin and the Russian oligarch
Boris Berezovsky, who in the late 1990s was an influential official and at one point the deputy secretary of the Russian National Security Council. In the months just prior to the 1999 Duma elections, Berezovsky hired the best consultants money could buy and worked with people in Yeltsin’s presidential administration to create a propresidential electoral bloc named Unity. In the December 1999 Duma election, Unity ran its campaign on three main messages: First, it posed itself as a party of youthful, energetic, professional leadership. Second, it placed major emphasis on Russia’s territorial integrity and national greatness. Third, it firmly and increasingly associated itself with Putin. It is also important to note that Berezovsky used the television station ORT, of which he owned a controlling packet of shares, to promote Unity and to undermine support for other parties, notably Fatherland-All Russia, by unleashing vicious personal attacks on the party’s opponents. After Unity’s successful showing in the 1999 elections, it merged with its largely vanquished opponent Fatherland-All
Russia to form United Russia.
In parallel with these developments in the national party system, the central government undertook concerted efforts to limit the institutional levers of regional political actors. Upon taking office in 2000, Putin quickly implemented a number of institutional changes with an eye toward recentralization. During the early years of Putin’s first term, his federal reforms included (1) the creation of seven federal
‘‘superdistricts,’’ (2) reform of the Federation Council, (3) the creation of a new State
Council, (4) the granting to the president of the power to dismiss governors and dissolve regional assemblies, and (5) a concerted effort to bring regional legislation into line with federal laws (Ross 2004, 157). Although no overall consensus exists among analysts concerning the efficacy of these steps, there is little disagreement that the net effect of recentralization has been significant changes in the balance of power between the center and the regions.
4
Building on these initial steps, a

Political Recentralization in Russia 509 successfully established party of power ensconced in regional governments would allow the central government to implement further reforms from within regions and thus better consolidate its grip on center-periphery relations.
United Russia simultaneously capitalized on its connection to the Kremlin and served as the central government’s tool in further consolidating control over regional executives. During 2000–2001, regional executives competing in regional executive elections already recognized the potential advantage of being identified with the popular president. Throughout the country, incumbents and opponents alike sought photo opportunities with the president or his envoys and mined Kremlin statements for even the vaguest indication that the president preferred their candidacy for a given region. With the rise of the new party of power, similar incentives pushed an ever-increasing number of regional executives into the arms of
United Russia party structures as executives and campaign managers expected the public to identify the United Russia–backed candidate with the president. Thus,
United Russia certainly benefited from its identification with Vladimir Putin, who, until he introduced pension reforms in 2005, consistently enjoyed a popularity rating of 60–80 percent.
In turn, the expansion and consolidation of United Russia’s party structures in Russia’s regions during 2003–2004 provided the presidential administrative apparatus with further leverage over regional executives by controlling their access to various political assets and thereby changing the very nature of ‘‘administrative resources.’’ During the early years of Putin’s administration, control over these resources was effectively ‘‘confiscated’’ by the federal center as it took the power to appoint directors of regional broadcast media away from executives, created seven new federal districts with presidential envoys to watch for election infractions, and forced regional laws, some of which augmented the incumbent regime’s grip on the reins of power, into line with federal standards.
With the federal government controlling a larger portion of potential political resources, the expansion and consolidation of United Russia party structures in the regions now posed a simple choice for regional executives accustomed to employing their administrative resources in campaign competitions. If they aligned with United
Russia, they regained the full use of their administrative resources, enjoyed the support of their region’s United Russia party structures, and could rely on additional backing through federal structures and media outlets. However, those who refused to align with the federal center and the party of power faced the full enforcement of a new array of legal restrictions on the use of state property, personnel, and other benefits of their office (Riskin 2003). Essentially, the establishment of stronger vertical executive power did not eliminate the abuse of administrative resources, but instead made the use of these resources the principal domain of the party of power and its allies. In exchange for their support of the federal center and its party (particularly during key elections), regional executives gained a powerful machine to back their

510 A. Konitzer and S. K. Wegren own election bids and a certain immunity from laws regulating the electoral behavior of incumbents and other candidates.
These events, along with the elimination of popular contests and a move toward executive selection ‘‘by recommendation of the president’’ in December 2004
(in actual fact, a system of quasi-appointment whereby the president presents his candidates to regional legislatures for approval), presented the greatest threat to
Russian federalism in the federation’s entire postcommunist history.
5
Prior to 2004, the Putin administration lacked both overwhelming support in the Duma and sufficient support in the regions to take such a bold move as the elimination of popularly elected executives. After the December 2003 Duma election, United Russia had 305 deputies out of 450 (68 percent of the entire legislature) sitting in the Duma.
Thereafter, for the first time, the Russian president enjoyed the power to push nearly any legislation, including constitutional amendments, through the legislature.
Furthermore, the successes that United Russia enjoyed during the regional executive and legislative elections of 2003–2004 provided the administration with loyal political actors and legislative blocs throughout the federation. Pro–United
Russia executives and United Russia blocs in regional legislatures helped ensure that amendments to regional election laws necessary for the implementation of the new system of quasi-appointments at the regional level would be passed with only a minimal amount of resistance. Since the new changes were signed into law by Putin in December 2004, only two instances have occurred in which regional legislatures challenged the implementation of the laws at the subnational level. In both instances, a weak or divided United Russia bloc failed to present the necessary majorities to ensure an easy passage for the laws. Hence, the implementation of the new procedures for selecting regional executives met with resistance only in those cases where United Russia had failed to establish strong, united legislative blocs.
6
We have argued that the rise of United Russia as a party of power has been a key component of Putin’s recentralization. The interesting question is why United Russia was able to emerge successfully as a party of power with the ability to rein in rogue provincial political elites when previous parties had failed.
7
What were the underlying strategies and conditions? In making this assertion, it is important to note that the literature on party development in Russia agrees that trust in political parties is not particularly high and that party partisanship is low. For example, in the mid-1990s, one study found that only 22 percent of respondents were prepared to identify themselves with any particular party (White, Rose, and MacAllister 1997, 134, 136). A subsequent study a few years later found that 14 percent of respondents had ‘‘strong partisanship’’ and another 15 percent were ‘‘moderate partisans’’ (Colton 2000, 114).

Political Recentralization in Russia 511
Therefore, the success of United Russia, and its importance for recentralization, is not its development as a mass party with many millions of members.
The strategy underpinning political recentralization was to take more control over financial resources, exert influence over regional leaders, and build support in rural areas, which previously were a bastion of electoral strength for the oppositionist
Communist Party. United Russia played an important role in the realization of these efforts. Aside from the party’s above-mentioned linkage to a remarkably popular president, we argue that three main factors have facilitated United Russia’s evolution as the party of power under the Putin administration: (1) centralization was bolstered by Russia’s improved financial situation and an increased flow of monetary resources back to the center; (2) new election laws combined with these other factors to help establish United Russia blocs in regional legislatures that gradually shifted the regional balance of power away from recalcitrant regional executives; and (3)
United Russia benefited from an erosion of support for the Communist Party and made incursions into rural support for itself.
Changes in Budgetary Flows
Russia’s post-1999 economic upturn and a series of changes in federal budgetary relations yielded a major shift in the balance of power between the center and
Russia’s regions. Just as the period from 1999 to 2005 witnessed economic growth and steadily increasing federal-level budgets, it also witnessed the gradual shift of financial resources from the regions to the center. It is estimated that during the
Yeltsin period approximately 60 percent of the taxes collected in the regions was distributed back to regional budgets (Lavrov 1998, 34). Under Putin, the proportions have changed. Writing in 2002, Boris Vishnevskii pointed to a marked effort to shift resources back to the federal center and identified two major stages in this recentralization process. The first occurred in the summer and fall of 2000 following the administration’s public avowal to centralize political power within the federation. A second phase was set to occur in 2003 when the division of budgetary income between the center and regions was set at approximately 70 percent for the center and 30 percent for the provinces (Vishnevskii 2002).
8
As regional executives lost more and more tax income to the center, they were forced, on an increasingly frequent basis, to approach the Kremlin for resources to fund a growing array of unfunded mandates. Commenting on this process, the
Center for Political Technology’s Rostislav Turovskii stated that servility goes along very well with financial dependence. In recent years the government has pursued a conscious policy of financial centralization. For a long time now, regional budgets have not allowed governors to ‘‘break out’’:
They are all in the position of petitioners . . .
a weak and dependent majority within the regional elite is always prepared to support any initiative from the center, even if it conflicts with their objective interests. (2003)

512 A. Konitzer and S. K. Wegren
Although many public finance specialists and economists would argue that the institutionalization and rationalization of Russia’s federal budget is a necessary step toward the strengthening of the Russian state, other critics see this move as little more than a vulgar power grab. Vishnevskii argues that ‘‘the ‘budgetary rope’ is being pulled [toward the center] not due to some objective economic necessity, but because the Center wants to strengthen its own power’’ (2002). As a result of this ‘‘tug of war,’’ vulnerable regional executives now see membership in the pro-Putin United Russia as a means to increase their access to financial resources and gain the necessary finances to meet their regional obligations. Under new laws that allow the president to remove governors of ‘‘bankrupt’’ regions from their posts, access to financial resources are a critical factor in maintaining office. Hence, in yet another respect, membership in
United Russia provides a means to shore up regional executives’ political positions by tying themselves to the party of power.
Changes in Election Laws and the Rise of United Russia Blocs in
Regional Legislatures
Under Yeltsin, regional executives frequently sought to attract popular support using populist, anti-Moscow messages. These tendencies were reinforced by the fact that after regional elections, the central government would nonetheless agree to various concessions in order to establish good relations with newly elected governors (Petrov
2004, 217). Thus, during the Yeltsin era, regional executives maintained a significant degree of political autonomy from both the central government and the regional legislatures that were ostensibly emplaced to balance regional executive power. Weak parties played a key role in maintaining this freedom. In the absence of powerful and coherent polity-wide parties, executives took steps to ensure the dominance of their allies in regional legislatures (usually as independent candidates or candidates from
‘‘governors’ parties’’), thus reducing the opportunity for federal authorities or other outsiders to raise a viable opposition within the regions’ political structures.
Under Putin, changes in federal electoral laws and implementation of these laws in the regions (facilitated and overseen by the federation’s seven presidential envoys) created the institutional bases for the establishment of pro-presidential blocs in regional legislatures. New laws placing more stringent limitations on political party participation required that regional election commissions include members nominated by political parties and stipulated that a portion of regional legislatures be elected through party lists. The latter change, established in point 16, article 35, of the most recent (June 12, 2002) version of the ‘‘Basic Guarantees of Citizens’ Electoral
Rights and Rights to Participate in Referendums,’’ stipulated that no more than onehalf of the regional legislatures must be elected through a system of proportional representation. In an article written for the Central Election Commission, it was indicated that two of the goals for regional legislatures were to ‘‘stimulate the activity of all-Russian political parties in the regions along with their activity in regional

Political Recentralization in Russia 513 elections’’ and to ‘‘limit the participation in regional elections of ‘leadership’ parties, oriented not on the expression of general public interests, but on support for the acting regional leadership" (Lugovskaia 2003, 4). To put the latter goal in terms of Stepan’s work, these legal changes were clearly an attempt by federal authorities to eliminate demosconstraining regional and local parties and establish a polity-wide party of power. Within the Russian context, they were clearly oriented at breaking executive-led regional parties and establishing an opening for the creation of United Russia party blocs in regional legislatures. During
February–September 2003, eighty-eight of eighty-nine regions had either passed or taken under consideration legislation bringing regional legislatures into line with the new laws.
December 2003 witnessed the first handful of regional elections to occur under the new mixed PR-majoritarian election law, with other regions scheduled to undergo their first elections under the new system as late as December 2007. Almost every region that underwent elections under the new laws returned large United
Russia blocs, further augmented by United Russia–affiliated candidates from singlemandate districts (Lugovskaia 2003, 4).
We acknowledge that there are two alternative interpretations when a
United Russia faction appears in a regional legislature or when a governor professes support for United Russia. One interpretation is that the governor simply renamed his own team ‘‘United Russia’’ and that the local branch of ‘‘United Russia’’ will in turn back the governor. In other words, different local interests (the governor being only one) jockey to gain local control of the United Russia label so that they can benefit from it. One such example can be found in the Bashkortostan legislative elections of 2003, in which President (Governor) Rakhimov basically elected his own team under the United Russia banner. In such a case, the United Russia victory was a victory in name only. Although Bashkortostan’s leader was eventually subdued, this had much more to do with the federal government’s (particularly Putin’s federal envoy’s) backing of an opponent to Rakhimov during a gubernatorial election, with both this opponent and Rakhimov having support from different forces within the
United Russia camp.
An alternative explanation, and our argument, is that local United Russia branches are more loyal to the central organization of the party (and ultimately to Putin) than to governors and that most regional executives have effectively bent to the central authorities’ will. This, indeed, is a key mechanism by which the spread of United
Russia has facilitated centralization. With eighty-nine regions to consider, there are of course exceptions to this statement and the central government’s success has still varied to some degree with the power of the regional executive in question. Cases such as Bashkortostan and Tatarstan, where powerful presidents rule over so-called ethnic regions have evinced evidence of bargaining between the region and center and suggest that powerful regional executives may still ‘‘privatize’’ their regions’

514 A. Konitzer and S. K. Wegren
United Russia organs. However, these cases seem to be exceptions. To provide support for our alternative explanation, in numerous other cases United Russia blocs determined whether governors would be allowed to run for third terms (Sverdlovsk,
Irkutsk, and Kirov oblasts), backed criminal investigations against governors
(Kamchatka, Saratov, and Tver oblasts), and pressured governors to include United
Russia members in their administrations (Samara).
If our interpretation is correct, it has significant implications for federalism.
With strong blocs now established in most regional legislatures, the central government and the party of power are able to present political leaders with two options—take on a national party label or face marginalization and opposition within their region. Given the increasing popularity and administrative strength of both
Putin and United Russia, the choice was usually clear. According to Nadezhda
Ivanitskaia (2006), by March 2006, sixty-nine regional executives were card-carrying members of United Russia, leaving only nineteen regional executives outside of the party’s ranks.
The remarkable success rate of United Russia–supported regional executives in 2003–2004 suggests that the decision to align with United Russia party structures could yield significant electoral benefits. Previous analyses of elections during the period from 1996 to 2001 have indicated that an endorsement by any of
Russia’s political parties bore little relation to the change in odds of regional executive incumbent success, and an endorsement by the party of power (whichever form it took) offered little or no leverage to sitting executives (McFaul and
Petrov 1997; Solnick 1998; Konitzer-Smirnov 2003). The election results for 2003–
2004 provide concrete indications of the impact that a United Russia endorsement had on incumbents’ and challengers’ chances of preserving or taking office. Of the forty-three gubernatorial elections held between January 1, 2003, and December 31,
2004, United Russia–backed candidates won in thirty-five for a total success rate of
81 percent. Although critics were quick to publicize cases where United Russia– backed candidates failed to gain reelection, one is still struck by the fact that at no other time in Russia’s post-Soviet history could another party of power claim similar rates of success.
9
With the elimination of popular regional executive elections in December 2004, the importance of a United Russia affiliation is only expected to increase as sitting governors must gain the approval of regional legislatures—many of which are now dominated by United Russia blocs—in order to remain in office.
United Russia and Rural Support
A final factor in the success of United Russia is commonly overlooked but crucially important to the expansion of United Russia’s influence and its rise as the party of power. To date, many analysts have written off rural Russia (where some 39 million people reside, or 27 percent of Russia’s total population) as a bastion of conservatism

Political Recentralization in Russia 515 oriented to support the Communist Party (KPRF). Indeed, during much of the
1990s this conventional wisdom was played out at the polls, as the KPRF received significant electoral support from rural regions. Thus, a consensus emerged among analysts that the KPRF’s electoral reemergence in the mid-1990s owed much to the party’s rural support base (Hough, Davidheiser, and Lehman 1996).
Aggregate-level analyses consistently reveal a cluster of agricultural regions in the southern portion of European Russia (the so-called red belt) that produced the strongest election returns for Communist candidates and parties (Clem and Craumer
2002). Furthermore, survey-based studies suggested that rural voters were more likely than their urban counterparts to vote for the KPRF during the 1990s (Colton
2000; Colton and McFaul 2003, 123, 136). Most analysts attribute these electoral outcomes to the fact that the rural population was considered among the main
‘‘losers’’ during market reforms, and therefore the KPRF targeted the poor and the disadvantaged with its promises of a return to strong state intervention and social equity.
For these reasons the emergence of rural support for United Russia was significant, garnering a degree of support that previous centrist and liberal parties were not able to capture. The process of winning over rural support was facilitated by an improving economic situation in the nation and by the fact that an increasing number of United Russia–affiliated governors were able to exert influence on the regional electorate. At the same time, electoral inroads by United Russia into the rural vote were remarkable because the party was primarily an urban party. The version of the party platform adopted in September 2003 did in fact contain a section devoted to ‘‘support for agriculture’’ (making United Russia one of the few parties to do this), but the section was short and vague and might even be considered perfunctory.
10
Nonetheless, data from distinct waves of surveys provide insight into the characteristics of rural supporters of United Russia.
11
The fact that similar results occurred in three surveys and in different regions lends credibility to the findings. In particular, these data show support for United Russia among the rural middle class and those who are better off, as well as some support among cohorts that traditionally would be considered strong KPRF supporters.
Turning first to characteristics of rural supporters, there are clear indicators that persons who might be termed the rural ‘‘middle class’’ tend to support United
Russia. For example, individuals with monthly incomes of 150 percent or more of the government’s poverty threshold tend to support United Russia. In addition, persons with ten years or more of education tend to identify United Russia as the party that best represents their interests (among those who identified a party at all). The same holds true for persons aged eighteen to forty-nine. These two characteristics broadly fit the profile of persons who have been identified as ‘‘pro-reform’’ by other analysts
(Colton and Hough 1998). Moreover, United Russia’s rural supporters tend to be individuals who adapted to opportunities presented by the package of economic

516 A. Konitzer and S. K. Wegren
Table 1 Rural support for United Russia by income quartile (%)
Monthly household total income quartile
0–25
26–50
51–75
76–100
Unity 1999
15.5
a
22.4
a
34.5
b
27.6
b
Unity 2001
21.9
a
21.4
a
26.0
a
30.6
b
United Russia 2003
17.2
a
15.5
a
25.9
b
41.4
b
Source: Survey data collected by the authors in cooperation with the Institute on Socioeconomic
Studies of the Population of the Russian Academy of Sciences; 1999: N ¼ 382; 2001: N ¼ 800;
2003: N ¼ 382.
Note: The survey question asked the respondent, ‘‘Which political party best represents your interests?’’ a Percentage for which United Russia trails KPRF.
b Percentage for which United Russia leads KPRF.
reforms. This is seen, for instance, in the fact that United Russia’s supporters added more land and had larger total landholdings than did supporters of the KPRF.
To explore this rural support in more detail, we summed total household monthly income and divided it into quartiles, as shown in table 1.
The conclusions suggested by the data in the table are significant for two reasons.
First, levels of rural support for United Russia exceed levels of support for the party nationwide at the same time points, according to data from the respected Russian
Center for Public Opinion Research located in Moscow, which conducts statistically representative surveys throughout the country.
12
Second, the degree of party affiliation for United Russia is remarkable in a country that is widely believed to have low levels of party identification.
In terms of interpreting the data, the table clearly shows that rural supporters of
United Russia tend to come from households that are relatively better off, that is, in the highest income quartile. By the 2001 survey and continuing into 2003, persons in households located in the second highest income quartile also were strong United
Russia supporters. Persons whose households are in the lowest two income quartiles tend to vote either for the KPRF or the nationalist party called the Liberal Democratic party, led by Vladimir Zhirinovsky.
13
The finding that United Russia has successfully captured the most support among high income households and persons who have adapted to new opportunities is important because there is clear evidence of upward income mobility since 1999: the number of households in lower income categories is decreasing, and the number of households in higher income categories is increasing.
This is due to a general recovery in agriculture since 1999, as well as a more stable economic environment in general under Putin.
14

Political Recentralization in Russia 517
Finally, although United Russia is a party that attracts support from those who are better off, there is some evidence of rural support among cohorts that ordinarily would be expected to be main supporters of the KPRF. In this regard, table 1 shows a reasonable amount of support for United Russia even among the lowest-income households. Moreover, according to our survey data, in 2001 rural persons who were unemployed actually preferred Unity over the KPRF, 22 to 19 percent, and again prior to the December 2003 Duma election, 17 to 11 percent.
Russian federalism has evolved significantly in the past fifteen years, from the pseudofederalism of the Soviet period to what might be considered excessive decentralization and federalism run amok during the Yeltsin era. Russian federalism since 2000 has entered a new phase, characterized by recentralization of power to the center and the rise of a pro-presidential party of power in the form of United Russia.
This article has argued that the rise of a party of power has been a key element in the recentralization of power, as party leaders in Russia’s regions help to implement the wishes of the center by reining in previously recalcitrant regional executives.
Within the broader literature on federalism such developments demonstrate that although institutions may provide a certain framework to structure the balance of power within federal states, other factors such as polity-wide political parties play a key role in determining the actual content of those structures.
The development of a party of power has undoubtedly removed much of the rancor in executive-legislative relations that existed during the Yeltsin period. At the same time, it is not clear that Russian federalism and the party system as a whole are served by the rise of a pro-presidential party that apparently will dominate national elections and regional politics. In short, there is a good chance that Russia’s weak party system may become even weaker and regional interests will be increasingly subjugated to the interests of the federal center. The lack of independence of
United Russia and its obedience to the Kremlin’s wishes are detrimental to the process of democratization and the development of genuine federalism. This concern is reflected in the latest Freedom House rankings that assess the development of democracy in Russia. For 2004, Russia was assigned a score of 6 on political rights and a 5 on civil liberties, with both trends moving downward since the mid-1990s
(1 is the best score possible and 7 is the worst) (Puddington and Piano 2005, 107).
It is noteworthy that among postcommunist states in Eastern and Central Europe,
Russia alone is experiencing a deterioration in its democratic foundations, and the analysis herein strongly suggests that the erosion of federalism is a major cause. Thus, we conclude that while Putin claims his goal is to create a strong center so that democracy may thrive, it appears that through the recentralization of power Russia may be moving toward a unitary state.

518 A. Konitzer and S. K. Wegren
The authors wish to thank the three anonymous reviewers who provided comments regarding earlier versions of this manuscript that greatly enhanced the quality of the final version.
1. Riker (1964) wrote of an ‘‘age of federalism’’ during the 1950s and 1960s. Reflecting on the subsequent development of federal institutions in 2004, Gibson argues that although the 1950s and 1960s witnessed a growth of federal structures that oftentimes lacked federal content, the early twenty-first century ushered in an age of ‘‘federalism in practice’’ (2004, 1–2).
2.
In each of these cases, the authors focused on the success (Mexico) or failure (Russia) to establish a single political space through the growth and consolidation of a single dominant party (Anderson 1971; Stoner-Weiss 2002; Golosov 2004; Hale 2005).
3.
We also acknowledge that this line of argument is controversial and that the subject of
Russia’s recentralization is open to alternative interpretations. See Bahry (2005) for one example.
4.
We would note, however, that regional political elites continued to exhibit degrees of autonomy that varied from region to region. The central government’s attempts to implement reforms from the ‘‘outside in’’ were not always successful. This necessitated the Kremlin’s strategy of consolidating centralization from the ‘‘inside out’’ by establishing party of power blocs in regional legislatures. We discuss this further in the following sections.
5.
There is a consensus among most federalism theorists that popular subnational elections are a necessary criterion for ‘‘real federalism.’’ In exchanging popular subnational elections for a system of appointment by federal-level authorities, subnational units lose much of the policymaking autonomy necessary for a working federal system.
6.
In the city of St. Petersburg, deputies refused to approve changes to the regional charter until the United Russia speaker of the house held a third roll call vote to determine ‘‘who will be responsible for the dismissal of the legislature.’’ Although a handful of United Russia deputies defected even on the third vote, the remainder voted as a solid bloc in favor of the federal reforms. The legislature’s ‘‘revolt’’ was in any case doomed to fail as federal laws require the dismissal of regional legislatures that support regional legal initiatives that contradict federal laws (Glebov 2005; Pipia 2005). The other instance in which a regional legislature challenged the new order of selection occurred in Yaroslav oblast, where a weak bloc of United Russia deputies faced off against a coalition centered around the chairman of the oblast Duma’s legislative committee, which sought to block the implementation of the new laws (Solov’ev 2005). Yaroslav oblast’s legislature later presented another challenge to the new order of selection when a group of deputies united around a liberal bloc of deputies who submitted a suit to the Constitutional Court challenging the constitutionality of the system of quasi-appointments. In this case, the United Russia bloc, along with the
United Russia–affiliated governor, opposed the decision of the liberal bloc. At the time of writing, the outcome of this particular challenge remains to be seen (Berdnikov and
Guseva 2005).

Political Recentralization in Russia 519
7.
Previous attempts to create a party of power were unsuccessful. In 1993, the Russia’s
Choice bloc was created. However, the 1993 election campaign was disorganized and conflict ridden at the local level, where at times the Russia Choice bloc ran two or more candidates, with Democratic Choice candidates running confrontational campaigns as single-mandate candidates. This entire process left its mark on the stability and unity of the
Russia Choice bloc and ultimately contributed to the party’s poor showing in the 1993
Duma elections and subsequent marginalization. In April 1995, the prime minister, Viktor
Chernomyrdin, announced the creation of a new party of power, ‘‘Our Home is Russia’’
(NDR). Compared with Russia’s Choice, this party was more successful in attracting the membership of the regional elite, and at one point it counted among its number highranking officials in most of the country’s regions. Nonetheless, the party essentially lacked an overarching ideology and political platform (a feature it shared with most other parties of power) and existed as a loosely knit collection of regional executives and national political actors.
8.
The process, however, did not end there. Vadim Visloguzov, writing in Kommersant Daily in 2004, stated that a new draft of the budgetary code ‘‘relieved the regions of their last remnants of independence.’’
9.
Nonetheless, one should be wary of writing the voter entirely out of the equation during the era of United Russia consolidation. Races in 2004 exhibited less auspicious outcomes for United Russia–backed candidates, and by the end of the year one could understand why the party of power leadership might welcome the elimination of popular contests. Of twenty-one races that occurred in 2004, United Russia–backed candidates won in fifteen. In instances where the party of power’s candidates lost, either United Russia backed highly unpopular incumbents or regional party organizations split, supporting two and even three (Volgograd oblast) candidates. During the last round of regional executive elections,
United Russia’s candidates and party organizations seemed increasingly to resort to eliminating strong opponents from races through legal mechanisms (data drawn from the official Web site of the Russian Central Election Commission, at http://www.cikrf.ru).
10.
In essence, the program made three core promises to the rural sector: (1) to defend rural workers from encroachments on their property and dignity, (2) to create a stable food market through the development of commodity exchanges, and (3) to create a land bank for the distribution of long-term cheap credit to agricultural producers. There was also a statement that every person who wanted a land plot for agricultural production should have the opportunity to obtain one, but no specifics were offered on implementing this goal (United Russia Web site).
11.
One set of data comes from 1999 and 2003 panel surveys of three villages. The three regions include the Belgorod, Rostov, and Tver’ oblasts. The Belgorod and Rostov oblasts are located in the south, where land and climate are favorable for agriculture. The third oblast,
Tver’, is located in the north, in the so-called non–black earth zone of Russia, which is generally not conducive to plant growing. One village was selected for sampling in each oblast, and the same villages were surveyed in each round. In the 2003 panel, N ¼ 382.
Another survey project was conducted during 2001 in five regions (Belgorod, Krasnodar,
Volgograd, Novogord, and the Chuvash Republic). In the 2001 survey a total of 800 rural

520 A. Konitzer and S. K. Wegren households were interviewed. Within each region, four villages were selected, and within each village, 40 households were surveyed, for a total sample of 800 households (160 in each region).
The selection method deliberately focused on remote villages located several hours (by bus) from an urban center. Moreover, a cross section of different types of villages was used: small, middle sized, economically weak, and economically strong. As with the panel surveys, one person from each household was interviewed, although information was collected about other members of the household as well.
For both sets of surveys, a stratified sample was composed from the household list of permanent residents in each village. This list is kept by the village administration for all households within its jurisdiction and is categorized by the demographic type of the household (seven categories).
The surveys stratified the sample based upon the demographic type of family, and then sampled randomly within each category. Using the demographic type of household as the basis for a stratified random sample has been a commonly accepted method since the late 1980s among sociologists and was used in the well-known Taranrog survey, as well as in subsequent surveys during the 1980s and 1990s.
Interviews were conducted person to person by a research team from the Institute on
Socioeconomic Studies of the Population (Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow). The refusal rate by respondents was less than 5 percent.
12.
For example, according to their data, in May 2001 Unity/United Russia was preferred by
11.9 percent of the sampled population, and in May 2003, by only 8.2 percent.
13.
We should note that a variety of factors influence households’ location on the income scale—the age of household members, level of education, occupation, and so on. Lowerincome households tend to have older members, lower levels of education, and to be engaged in manual labor—in other words, characteristics that fit the profile for support of conservative parties in the urban sphere as well.
14.
During 1998–2003 agricultural output increased by an average of 4.4 percent annually, after declining by 40–45 percent during 1991–1997.
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