In the early years of its existence, the Russian Federation adopted a system of differential treatment of its regions in order to cope with the great degree of diversity present in them. This paper examines the Russian Federation’s asymmetric federalism by evaluating the system’s role, significance and effects on the Federation’s development. The study incorporates a detailed description of the asymmetric federalism over time along with the benefits and costs incurred by its implementation. It also stresses the importance of the system within the process of nation-building in the Federation over the last decade. The paper concludes that asymmetric federalism helped significantly to glue the country together in the early years when national preservation and unity were the main issues in the Federation. However, as the separatist threats significantly decreased and the political friction and economic difficulties of the asymmetric treatment of regions became more pronounced and obvious, most of the country rightly demanded a simpler, more transparent and fair approach to intergovernmental fiscal relations. Asymmetric federalism, therefore, contributed to the Federation’s 1998 debt crisis and had eroded national solidarity and a national purpose. Thus, the early cure had become poison.
Download Info
To download:
If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the
proper application to
view it first. Information about this may be contained
in the File-Format links below. In case of further problems read
the IDEAS help
page. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS
site. Please be patient as the files may be large.
References listed on IDEAS Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:
Cited by: (explanations, Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.)
Haaparanta, Pertti & Juurikkala, Tuuli & Lazareva, Olga & Pirttilä, Jukka & Solanko, Laura & Zhuravskaya, Ekaterina, 2003.
"Firms and public service provision in Russia,"
BOFIT Discussion Papers
16/2003, Bank of Finland, Institute for Economies in Transition.
[Downloadable!]
Other versions:
Pertti Haaparanta & Tuuli Juurikkala & Olga Lazareva & Jukka Pirttila & Laura Solanko & Ekaterina Zhuravskaya, 2003.
"Firms And Public Service Provision In Russia,"
Working Papers
w0041, Center for Economic and Financial Research (CEFIR).
[Downloadable!]