Crisis of Regional Leadership in Multilevel States

The paper investigates the specificity of regional leadership in political system of Russia. The regional elite in Russia is one of the most important components of the stability of the political system. Due to the peculiarities of the federal structure of the Russian Federation (also including the scale of the territory), the regional leader is one of the key links in the successful implementation of socio-political and economic reforms in the regions. From 1991 to the present day, the role of the regional leader in the system of power relations has changed. Heads of administrations (governors) have gone from popularly elected leaders to controlled functionaries. In fact, this was facilitated by a number of institutional changes and political reforms undertaken over the past 30 years. Today regional leaders and current governors have found themselves in a rather complex system of inter-institutional relations. In some regions the situation is aggravated by the presence of a patron-client system of relations and corruption ties, as evidenced by a number of corruption scandals and criminal cases. On the one hand, leaders of regional elite must effectively solve the economic problems facing the region, ensure the implementation of federal programs, sometimes with substantially reduced funding, to participate in elections and be guided by the opinion of voters, but at the same time, the elite must show complete loyalty to the Center and should not exceed the permitted limits. The president has the right to send the governor to resign, moreover the region can enter the sphere of interests of large holdings and corporations and in this case the governor has no mechanisms of counteraction. In local conditions, it is often impossible to fulfill social obligations and execute federal projects. The ruling élite functioned as an echelon of support for one of the first personages of political establishment, which predetermined the clan character of the relations, striving for isolation, negative expectations concerning recruiting new politicians, who were regarded in the first place as rivals in the struggle for the influence of their patron. The artificial barriers hinder the emergence of new promising persons in the political arena and, in fact, do not solve any of the existing problems. Possible strong candidates do not want to get involved in the elections. As a result, the specific type of the regional leader - “faceless-leader” was formed Such a situation provokes a crisis in the political system of the region, which in the end leads to the development of corruption ties in the power echelons and as a result of the adoption of inefficient decisions, the reduction of the professional level of management personnel. The results of the recent elections in a number of regions showed a critical level of people's trust in the ruling political elite, which was reflected in low turnout and high degree of absenteeism especially among the young people. Today existing system creates “risk zones” from both a political and an economic point of view.