Den bilaterala avtalsprocessen i Ryssland 1994-1998: en förklaring till regionernas turording

Författare

• Peter Söderlund

Abstract

Scholars have characterised the relationship between a state’s centre and regions, especially in federal states, as an ongoing bargaining game. The position of the regional political leaders in the bargaining game is to a great extent conditional on the kind of structural resources at their disposal. These structural resources – political, economic, geographic and cultural factors – typify the regions. I would like to maintain that structural resources were of significance in the bilateral treaty process in the Russian Federation between 1994 and 1998. This study indicates that the regions that were able to obtain bilateral treaties at an early stage can generally be characterised as follows: they were wealthy, they were in a favourable geopolitical and geoeconomic position at a remote distance from Moscow, they possessed institutional resources due to their status as republics and they had a large share of non-Russian, especially Muslim, ethnic groups.