ABSTRACT
This chapter presents the sub-national regime transitions that have occurred in Russia from 1991 until 2011. It also presents the conceptualization and operationalization of the sub-national democracy. It then demonstrates heterogeneity of outcomes of democratic development in Russian regions. While the differences in democratic development across the regions of Russia are the crucial issues to address, it is also important to outline so-called contextual differences of the regions. In the beginning of the regime transition and the emergence of a new state, the Russian Federation, in the early 1990s, the sub-national regions of Russia became even more different from each other in terms of political development, which eventually resulted in various political regimes. The dynamic change of the level of democracy at the national level of Russia was paralleled by the equally dynamic change of sub-national levels of democracy that often went into directions opposite from the national one.
