№ 4 - 2001
Zakharov A.A.
”Executive Federalism” in Contemporary Russia

To introduce the problem of the federative model that has shaped in Russia at present, A.A.Zakharov - C. Sc. (Philosophy), author of a number of publications on contemporary Russian parliamentarism - analyzes the two main interpretations of federalism existing in political science. The first, prevailing in European countries, conceives of it as a certain type of interrelations between political formations of different levels, and the second complies with the doctrine defended mainly by North-American scientists looking upon federalism as a form of citizens’ self-organization, of coordinating individual interests. The author deduces that as for Russia’s federalism, it acquires, under the conditions of immature civil society, an “inferior”, “half-and-half” character defined by a term borrowed from the Canadian researcher Watts: “executive federalism”. The author holds that the “executive federalism”, for all its obvious drawbacks, now presents for Russia the closest possible approximation to a federative ideal, for it is an adaptation of the federalist idea to the requirements of semi-democratic and semi-market society.