Трансформация регионального политического режима в Московской области: муниципальная реформа и ее влияние на электоральный процесс

Вестник Пермского университета. Серия: Политология. 2019. Т. 13. № 1. С. 33–46.

Симоянов А. В., Gorodnichev A., Vorobyev A.

The article analyzes the transformation of the regional political regime in Moscow Oblast from the decentralized
type to the centralized one. Centralized subnational authoritarianism is understood as the implementation
of the federal center policy to incorporate regional and local elites into the system of national electoral
authoritarianism. The authors examine the institutional context of transformations: the reform of urban development
authorities, understood as the process of redistributing rental flows, and the limitation of political
autonomy by transforming the procedure for occupying elected offices. The transformation of formal institutions
made the political process more predictable, though it led to a number of unobvious results, which included
the increase in the importance of informal procedures in the political process. In turn, it led to restriction
of the access to political participation. The results of the elections (Moscow Regional and State Duma
campaigns of 2011 and 2016, and the governor election of 2018) show that the mayors being ‘old-timers’
managed to provide better electoral results for the ruling party than the newly appointed loyal mayors. The
authors conclude that dismantling of old ‘political machines’ has led to the reduction of electoral support for
the ruling party in the Moscow region on average. Thus, political centralization, which made the political
process more predictable, led to the unforeseen consequences such as the decrease in the ability of municipal
authorities to provide electoral support for the ruling party.

Keywords: regime transformations, режимные трансформации, региональный политический режим, political machines, политические машины, электоральный авторитаризм, electoral authoritarianism, regional political regime, subnational authoritarianism, субнациональный авторитаризм, federal elections, федеральные выборы