Contests for Selecting Municipal Heads under Conditions of Inter-Elite Conflict: Rules of the Game and Practices of Actor Interaction

Abstract

Changing the rules for recruiting subnational leaders by abandoning direct elections is one of the instruments of power centralization in Russia. However, conflicts during contests for selecting municipal heads show that attempts to integrate the municipal level into the “power vertical” are not always successful. This article analyzes the procedure of conflict-ridden contests in order to trace the interaction of regional and municipal actors under the new procedures and to assess the role of rules in this interaction. Drawing on media materials and interviews conducted by the author, the article examines two conflict-ridden contests that ended in different outcomes. These cases show that actors, regardless of their status, are forced to follow the rules of the contest and cannot change them unilaterally. However, formal norms are significant not only as constraints, but also as resources in political struggles. The rules encourage regional and municipal elites to seek compromises, thereby allowing the idea of local self-government as an agent of both the state and the local community to be realized even in a centralized Russian state.