The article considers the state, problems and main directions of Russian studies of subnational politics. The first part of the article provides an analysis of some discussion topics of this field of research, in particular, the nature, status, nature of the policy at the subnational level compared with the national level; Questions of interdisciplinary nature of research and their interactions with other disciplines of political science; The problems of formal and informal political institutionalization, the role of subnational political identity and culture in the formation of political actors and their interactions. The second part provides a brief description of the main thematic and methodological directions of research of the Russian subnational policy, shows the main trends in this area of research and its problems.

This study assesses the democratic integrity of Russian regional elections and the degree to which they can be considered to have been, free and fair. In particular, it examines electoral malpractice in the last three rounds of regional assembly and gubernatorial elections which took place in September 2014, 2015 and 2016. In answer to the question, why do popular authoritarian regimes, engage in election fraud, the study argues that high degrees of blatant electoral manipulation send a strong signal to members of the opposition that there can be no political future outside of the ruling party, and it is pointless to try and mount a challenge against the regime.

The article is dedicated to the foundations of electoral clientelism employed by the regional machines in Russia. The author uses qualitative comparative analysis (QCA) in order to analyze the data from 25 regional campaigns in 2015 generated by the PEI expert survey. The degree of clientelism by the Russian regional machines can be explained by the availability of controlled voters’ constituencies. At the same time clientelism resulted from a low infrastructural capacity and inability to prevent electoral competition by the administrative means.

Why some political parties join popular protests, whereas others abstain or even oppose? Using paired case-study comparison between party models of interactions with protest movements in the Russian regions, we examine political parties' strategies towards «For Fair Elections» movement in 2011-2012 and explain these choices through two jointly operating mechanisms: level of party institutionalization and cooptation. We show that despite the symbiosis of the state and political parties and overall parties' loyalty to the regime in Russia, on an organizational level they differ in strategy and degree of involvement in social movement. We argue that the mechanism of party institutionalization explains the switch between involvement and abstention, while cooptation does a better job in explaining the «support/ counteract» choice.

Possessing powers to regulate an urban planning sphere the city government is always an object of initiative groups’ action. However initiative groups’ activities often are targeted to higher authority levels, what witnesses of assumed low quality of cooperation between both sides. In this article we examine what is cooperation bet- ween initiative groups and local authorities on urban planning issues going to be and what are the tools used by initiative group to influence on local authorities in order to solve a problem. Besides we are going to explain why initiative groupes’ activities could be addressed to higher level authorities. An empirical basis of the study are two databases «Contentious Policies of Russian Regions» (CCHPS) and «Perm City Conflicts: Struggle for Space» (CCHPS) as well as a series of semi-structured interviews with representatives of 7 initiative groups acting in urban planning sphere. Timespan of the research is 2000-2016. We find that an interaction between initiative groups and local authorities on urban planning issues often is not often cooperative. Tools used by initiative groups to influence local authorities are intended to be a way to attract public attention and to search a help of higher level authorities.

In 2010 after twenty years of rule President of Bashkortostan Murtaza Rahimov left the post and Rustem Hamitov came to replace him. The change in political leadership led to a wave of elite rotation, both at the regional and municipal levels. In this article, the author explores the question of how significant the transformations took place in the corps of the heads of municipalities after the change of the regional political leader. Author explores this issue with the help of a statistical analysis, based on the biographies of the local elite of Bashkortostan under the leadership of Murtaza Rahimov and Rustam Hamitov. The results of the research showed that after the replacement of Rahimov, some parameters and models for the rotation of local elites changed. At the same time, these changes did not lead to significant transformations of the socio-demographic characteristics regarding the new heads of municipalities.

The article examines the phenomenon of heads of subjects of the Russian Federation, against which criminal cases were instituted on charges of corruption and the like. The phenomenon of «criminal governors» is associated with the political and economic characteristics of «closed access», when a single legal standard does not apply to elites and the population. «Struggle against corruption» in this case is a means of redistribution of rent. The causes and consequences of such a situation are analyzed.

Granting concentrated ethnic group territorial self-rule is considered in the contemporary world as one of the most common way to prevent, manage and resolve ethnic conflicts. Nevertheless, a special feature of territorial autonomies is that the population of autonomous region consists of different ethnic groups. As a result, a functioning of ethnic territorial autonomies is influenced by such feature as a correlation between sub-state boundaries and ethnic groups’ settlements. In the article, the authors present an instrument for measuring of this ethnic autonomies’ feature on the basis of a spatial data of Geographic Information Systems (GIS). It includes the indices of ethnic groups’ segregation and concentration as well as some models of boundary congruence. The analysis, which was carried out on the basis of the Ethnic Regional Autonomies Database (ERAD), allows allocating all ethnic regional autonomies between four models of boundary congruence. In conclusion, the possibilities, which a new methodology provides for comparative studies of ethnic autonomies, are discussed, and their prospects are outlined.

The article focuses on the problem of achieving and maintaining a balance in interethnic relations through the context of ethnic regional autonomy (ERA). In accordance with the author’s approach, the nature of the agency of ERA is one of the factors that determines the «qua- lity» of the balance. Political agency is the activity and possibility of ERA to reproduce and change its status, including the scope and content of preferences. Accordingly, the article discusses the relationship between balance, agency, and system of interaction of regional authorities [entity] and the political community. The relatively «low» level of political agency of ERA does not limit or impede to achieve and maintain the balance in interethnic relations. However the political agency affects the balance characteristics, especially in regards to the deterioration of the ERA status. It should be added, the relatively «high» level of the political agency is a necessary but not sufficient influence for the «quality» of the balance sheet.

The article is focused on the phenomenon of «ethnic and cultural policy» («nacional'naja politika») in Russia in 2010 s. The «ethnic and cultural policy» is viewed as an instrument by which the state bureaucracy compensates the failures of regular administrative control in some social and geographical areas. Due to «ethnic and cultural policy» the legacy of Soviet institutionized ethnicity is still actual for Russia. The phenomenon is studied on the case of Stavropolsky krai using author’s field material.

This article discusses the changes that occurred with the German lands (the first subnational level, Länder) within the federal system in connection with the last two constitutional reforms (the so-called «reform of federalism I» and «reform of federalism II») in 2006 and 2009. At the beginning of the article the main characteristics of the German federal system are presented, then follows the characterization of the position of the lands within the federal system, in particular their legislative functions and powers. Further, the constitutional reforms of 2006 and 2009 are described.

This article examines the problem of measuring the differences in institutional and democratic development between the regions of the country. In 2000, there were two most important projects for measuring democracy at the regional level in Russia: the rating of the Carnegie Moscow Center and the project of the Institute «Public Expertise» and the Mercator Group. In the future these methods could not be applied due to changes in the electoral system and other political and institutional characteristics. In 2000-2010, various social, economic and personal gubernatorial ratings became popular in Russia. In these conditions, in 2014, an attempt was made to return from assessing the personalities or socio-economic development of the territories to the assessment of regional political regimes as such. This was done through a modification of the previous methodology of the Carnegie Moscow Center in the new conditions. Initially, the work was carried out at the Higher School of Economics, then from 2015 it was actually continued within the wider project of the Civil Initiatives Committee. One of the characteristics considered within the framework of this project was an attempt to assess the quality of regional political institutions (officially named in the methodology of the project «Level of Institutional Development and Adaptive Management»), measured exclusively by formalized criteria. The article describes in detail these criteria, the evaluation system for them and presents the results of measurements for four dates - the beginning of 2011, 2015, 2016 and 2017. As indicators, the level of political competition in elections was chosen; Institutional independence of the deputies of the regional parliament; Protection of parliamentary opposition rights in the regional parliament; The influence of the population on the formation of local government through the evaluation of the administrative system of the administrative center of the region.