ABSTRACT
The role of regional and republican actors in the policy-making process and in their relationship with the state in Russia is something fundamentally new. In the 1990s the professed commitment of the central authorities to finding democratic and federal forms of arranging relationships between the centre and the regions marked a radical break with imperial and Soviet traditions. Russia moved towards becoming a genuine federation where the classic trinity of executive, legislative and judicial authorities is joined by the spatial element whereby the territory of the state is given a defined political status, unlike that in a unitary state. Geography has always played a prominent role in Russian affairs, but now territoriality took the form of a complex regionalism. Radical decentralisation was counterpoised with a weakened central state that, having lost its imperial status, struggled to find its proper role.
