TRANSFORMATION OF THE REGIONAL POLITICAL REGIME IN MOSCOW OBLAST: MUNICIPAL REFORM AND ITS IMPACT ON THE ELECTORAL PROCESS
Keywords:
subnational authoritarianism, regime transformations, political machines, region-al legislatures, federal elections, regional political regime, electoral authoritarian-ism.Abstract
The article analyzes the transformation of the regional political regime in Moscow Oblast from the decentralized type to the centralized one. Centralized subnational authoritarianism is understood as the implementation of the federal center policy to incorporate regional and local elites into the system of national electoral authoritarianism. The authors examine the institutional context of transformations: the reform of urban development authorities, understood as the process of redistributing rental flows, and the limitation of political autonomy by transforming the procedure for occupying elected offices. The transformation of formal institutions made the political process more predictable, though it led to a number of unobvious results, which included the increase in the importance of informal procedures in the political process. In turn, it led to restriction of the access to political participation. The results of the elections (Moscow Regional and State Duma campaigns of 2011 and 2016, and the governor election of 2018) show that the mayors being ‘old-timers’ managed to provide better electoral results for the ruling party than the newly appointed loyal mayors. The authors conclude that dismantling of old ‘political machines’ has led to the reduction of electoral support for the ruling party in the Moscow region on average. Thus, political centralization, which made the political process more predictable, led to the unforeseen consequences such as the decrease in the ability of municipal authorities to provide electoral support for the ruling party. DOI: 10.17072/2218-1067-2019-1-33-46References
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