Recrafting Federalism in Russia and Canada: Power, Budgets, and Indigenous Governance

Peter H. Solomon, Jr. Recrafting Federalism in Russia and Canada: Power, Budgets, and Indigenous Governance. Toronto: Centre for Russian and East European Studies, University of Toronto, 2005. ix, 124p.

In this rather short, but nonetheless extremely interesting and informative book, scholars from Russia and North America provide us with some novel insights and very useful data on Russian and Canadian federalism. The chapters are all drawn from the workshop, "Governance in Federations: Law, Regional Development, and Aboriginal Communities in Russia and Canada," which was held in Toronto in December 2004. This, the third of a series of such workshops devoted to federalism in Russia and Canada, focuses on taxation, budgets and tlnancial transfers and also the place of aboriginals in federal systems.

After a short introduction and a report on the papers delivered at the workshop by Alexei Trochev, there follows six chapters. The first three chapters are devoted to federalism in the Russian Federation. A major strength of these chapters is that they are all written by scholars who have a detailed knowledge of both theory and practice.

Vladimir Leskin, who is a section head at the Institute of Systems Analysis of the Russian Academy of Sciences, provides an excellent overview of federalism in his chapter on Federal Statehood and Conflict Resolution. Here, I found it particularly useful to have a comprehensive list of the key laws on federalism which have been adopted in the postcommunist period, and his ten theses on Russian Federalism provide an excellent breakdown of the key developments in Russia from Yeltsin to Putin.

Irina Podporina, Dean of the Faculty of Economics at the Moscow State Medical Dental University, provides us with a short but extremely useful account of fiscal federalism and budgetary relations. In her analysis we are presented with excellent data which show that regional variations in economic development are still very high and that programmes to ameliorate such inequalities have failed to provide "all citizens with equal access to basic services and social guarantees" (p. 62). She also gives us an excellent account of the centralization of the budgetary process and the failure of fiscal federalism to stimulate regional economic development.

Leonid Polishchuk takes a very novel approach in his discussion of the presidential appointment of governors, which he links to questions of economic development. He also provides a very illuminating account of the costs and benefits of political decentralization.

The final three chapters discuss the rights of aboriginals within the Canadian and Russian federal systems. Mikhail Todyshev (Vice-President of the Russian Association of Indigenous Peoples of the North) shows how the rights of indigenous communities have been eroded particularly with the adoption of the Federal Law No 122-FZ of August 2004 which is known as the "social benefits reform" law.

Gary N. Wilson, in his fine chapter, discusses the concept of nested federalism in Russia and Canada, and finally Natalia Loukacheva concludes with a short but interesting study of the unique status of the Nunavut territory in the Candian North.

In conclusion, Peter Solomon has brought together a very interesting and informative collection of essays, which I would highly recommend.

[Author Affiliation]

Cameron Ross, University of Dundee