Environmental Politics in Authoritarian Regimes: Waste Management Reform in the Russian Regions

This paper studies why some regional governments in Russia address environmental challenges and effectively implement environmental policies while others do not. We focus on the case of the waste management reform that aims to introduce an efficient system of communal waste management throughout the country. Two years after the start of the reform, some regional governments have successfully begun reforming their waste management systems while others have failed to do so. This is puzzling considering the importance of waste management for all regional governments. Using cross-regional data, we test whether the degree of political competitiveness in the region, the level of its economic development, capacity of regional institutions as well as the activity of local civil society can explain the differences in implementation of the waste management reform in the Russian regions. The paper contributes to the scholarship on regional policy-making in Russia and authoritarian policy-making more generally by focusing on environmental management at the sub-national level.