With articles by a high quality set of contributors, including Richard Sakwa, Darrell Slider and Vladimir Gel'man, this book explores the increasingly authoritarian character of Putin's rule, especially in his second term since 2004.

1. Leviathan's Return: The Policy of Recentralization in Contemporary Russia Vladimir Gel'man 2. Between a Rock and a Hard Place: the Russian Federation in Comparative Perspective Michael Burgess 3. Federal Discourses, Minority Rights, and Conflict Transformation Andreas Heinemann-Grüder 4. Unification as a Political Project: the Case of Permskii Krai Oksana Oracheva 5. Putin and the Election of Regional Governors Darrell Slider 6. Electoral Reforms and Democratization: Russian Regional Elections 2002-6 Aleksandr Kynev 7. Russian Political Parties and Regional Political Processes: The Problem of Effective Representation Petr Panov 8. The Representation of Business Elites in Regional Politics: Étatism, Elitism and Clientelism Rostislav Turovsky 9. The Struggle for Power in the Urals Elena Denezhkina and Adrian Campbell 10. Local Self-Government in Russia: Between Decentralization and Recentralization Hellmut Wollmann and Elena Gritsenko 11. Russia's Elusive Pursuit of Balance in Local Government Reform John F. Young 12. Vertical or Triangle? Local, Regional and Federal Government in the Russian Federation after Law 131 Adrian Campbell 13. Municipal Elections and Electoral Authoritarianism under Putin Cameron Ross