Issue ? 47. December 2014

The Duality of Territorial Structure of the Russian Federation and its Constituents

Ph.D., Associate Professor, School of Public Administration, Lomonosov Moscow State University, Moscow, Russian Federation.
E-mail: leksin@spa.msu.ru

The article examines the existing legal issues associated with the duality of territorial structure of the Russian Federation and its constituents. Both on the national and regional levels of government two independent systems of territorial organization coexist. In addition to division into constituent units Russia comprises the so-called federal districts and other territorial entities that do not possess legal personality. For constituent units of the Russian Federation coexistence of municipalities and administrative-territorial system is common. As shown in the article, such dualism is not Russia’s specific feature, but is quite typical for contemporary governance. The author substantiates that most of the problems attributed to the Russian territorial organization, though being related to the mentioned duality, are caused by other reasons and require more complex solutions than either elimination of this duality, or converging the different components of territorial organization into a self-consistent system.

Keywords

Territorial organization, federal state, territorial entity, constituent unit of the Russian Federation, municipality, administrative-territorial system.