Where has all the Regional Power Gone Under Putin?

It has been declared over a decade ago that the ideational variables "moved back to the forefront of the political science agenda,"1 yet in comparative politics the turn to ideas has not widened much beyond the scholars of the EU.2 Only few studies of policy choices of postcommunist elites relied on ideational arguments.3 Recent studies of Russian and comparative federalism, more generally, also frame the analysis of political action privileging interests over ideas and objective over discursive structures.4 In this paradigm power balance and political actors’ incen-tive structures are determined by such tangible variables as institutions, economic and financial resources, ethnicity and geographic location. The less tangible ideas, norms and rhetorical frames are absent.