The Russian model of Federalism: Are Centre-Region dynamics changing in Wartime?

Irina Busygina will present the key arguments from her recently published book ‘Non-Democratic Federalism and Decentralization in Post-Soviet States’ (2024), co-authored with Mikhail Filippov. The book is based on many years of research on the centre-region dynamics and compares the cases of Russia, Ukraine, and Kazakhstan. The book examines how the leaders of Russia, Ukraine, and Kazakhstan have managed to exploit federalism and decentralization as useful instruments to help them preserve control, avoid political instability, and to shift blame to the regional authorities in times of crises and policy failures.
The seminar will address the impact of Russia’s war against Ukraine on centre-regions relations in Russia, addressing the following questions: What is the role of the regions in the war? To what extent and how are centre-regions relations part of the resilience of the authoritarian system in Russia? What could be potential tipping points in this relationship? And are there any signs of the erosion of Russia’s centre-regions model?
Irina Busygina is a Research Fellow at Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies at Harvard University. Previously, she worked as Professor of Comparative Politics at the Department of Political Science and International Relations (Higher School of Economics at Saint Petersburg, Russia) and headed the Center for Comparative Governance Studies. Her research interests include comparative federalism and decentralization, Russian domestic and foreign policy. Her recent books include “Russia-EU Relations and the Common Neighbourhood: Coercion versus Authority” (Routledge, 2018) and “Non-Democratic Federalism and Decentralization: A post-Soviet Perspective” (Routledge, November 2023, co-authored with Mikhail Filippov).
After Busygina’s presentation, senior researcher Matthew Blackburn (NUPI) and Research Professor Jørn Holm-Hansen (NIBR, OsloMet) will provide comments and discuss. Moderator is Kristin Fjæstad (NUPI).
The seminar is organised in collaboration with the Norwegian Institute for Urban and Regional research/OsloMet and the Norwegian Russia researcher network (RUSSNETT), financed by the Norwegian Research Council.