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4 E. Eur. Const. Rev. 52 (1995)
Federal Bargaining in Russia

handle is hein.journals/eeurcr4 and id is 320 raw text is: EAST EUROPEAN CONSTITUTIONAL REVIEW Why have Russia's republics received better treatent than its oblasts and krals? Federal Bargaining in Russia Steven L. Solnick What sort of state is Russia becoming: a loose con- federation of regional units, a true federation, or a unitary state? Or, are asymmetries between the 57 predominantly Russian oblasts and krais and the 21 ethnic homeland republics producing a state in which 23 million Russian subjects will live in a federation and another 124 will live in a unitary state (Ilya Glezer, Moscow News no. 7, 1992). The brief answer, of course, is that it is too soon to tell. But it is not too soon to examine two key outcomes of the first four years of post-Soviet con- stitutional development: the persistence of asym- metries between oblasts/krais and republics and the recent reliance on bilateral treaties between Moscow and individual regions to resolve jurisdic- tional disputes. These phenomena can be best understood not as a consequence of evolving con- stitutional norms or of latent ethnic conflict, but rather as the product of ongoing political bargain- ing between federal and regional authorities. Some definitional issues A federal state-according to the definition devel- oped by William Riker-consists of two levels of government ruling the same land and people, each having at least one area of action in which it has guaranteed autonomy. In contemporary Russia, these political and administrative aspects of feder- alism have been at the heart of the struggle over state structure since the collapse of Communism. In return for their acceptance of the 1992 federa- tion treaties, for instance, several republics won special deals. Bashkortostan demanded a special appendix granting it additional control over its for- eign trade, while Sakha gained additional property rights over natural resources. Since 1992, other republics and regions have pressed for the right to control appointments or election of subnational officials (especially appointments to the judiciary, procuracy, media, and, more recently, election of regional governors), to limit inter-regional trade, unilaterally to adjust tax rates, establish territorial citizenship, to nullify federal legislation, and even to control the stationing of conscripts drafted from their territory. Measuring federalism poses a difficult method- ological challenge. Some researchers have adopted a constitutional-legal approach, emphasizing the pow- ers granted to the center or regions in various consti- tutional documents, as well as the development of an independent judiciary and constitutional court. While these approaches illuminate important mech- anisms in the overall struggle over federalism, they are an imprecise guide to the actual delineation of power between national and subnational levels. Article 72 of the Russian Constitution, for instance, enumerates a list of shared responsibilities that-combined with the exclusively federal powers listed in Art. 71-leaves hardly any residual func- tions in the clear and exclusive purview of subna- tional governments. A federal law to clarify which shared powers reside at the regional level has consis- tently failed to clear the State Duma. Some regions have reacted to this impasse by claiming certain exclusive rights in their own republican constitu- tions or oblast charters, but it is far from clear which have acted on these claims. Many have been using the passage of their own constitutional documents chiefly as a step toward forcing Moscow to enter into ad hoc negotiations. These negotiations have already produced seven extraconstitutional bilateral treaties- delimiting spheres of power, beginning with Tatarstan in February 1994 (see Table I). The Constitution of Tuva, for instance, distinctly contradicts the Russian Constitution on 12 points, according to Vladimir Suge-Maadyr, Tuva's

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