ABSTRACT

Local government reform in Russia has mirrored, pendulum-like, the turbulent national political developments of the two post-communist decades. This chapter analyses local government institution-building in the context of broader regime changes, those of federalism and socioeconomic reforms. In the first section I highlight the key milestones of local government reform and local government’s key features under the first president, Boris Yeltsin. In the second section I describe the radical local government reform of Yeltsin’s successor, Vladimir Putin, focusing on the context in which this reform took place and the key provisions of the new local government legislation. The third section discusses the implementation of these reforms and their outcomes against the background of consolidating authoritarianism. The final section concludes.