№ 2 - 2000
Gelman V.Ya.
Democratization, Structural Pluralism and Unstable Bi-Centrism: The Volgograd Region

A well-known author from St.Petersburg discusses factors of diversification of Russia’s regional political development, and presents a «generating hypothesis» elaborated by himself on the basis of empirical analysis. He considers that synthesis of the structural and procedural approaches in the research of transformational political processes in Russia’s regions requires new theoretical constructions. As for the region investigated, the major factors that have conditioned particular features and consequences of the regime’s transformations, were the said regime’s resource characteristics and the specific circumstances of the shaping of new formal institutions, first of all local government and universal competitive elections. In the period of 1988 to 1999, transition took place in the region, from a monocentric regime of late Soviet type to an unstable bi-centric regime with structural cleavages both on the level of the elites and on the societal level. These cleavages were transported to the field of electoral competition, which creates conditions for successful democratization.