Urban political regimes: the typology, reasons for formation and possibilities of the actors

The article deals with the reasons for formation and development of various asso- ciations of political actors in cities of modern Russia. Based on Clarence Stone’s approach we define “urban political regime”, elicit its main criteria (monopoly- polyarchy, personalism-impersonality) and identify two main types of regimes: "control" and "coordination." Having considered the "critical" empirical case of es- tablishing "control" regime in a large industrial center (Novokuznetsk), we formu- late a hypothesis on the reasons for its formation: urban scale, dominance of the ma- terials sector in economy and organization of the coalition based on "administra- tive" arena. To test the hypothesis, we have analyzed the situation in a city with op- posite characteristics (Novosibirsk), and further compared the cities with high in- dustrial potential, close to Novokuznetsk, and the large cities with specific economy, close to Novosibirsk. At this stage of the study, the hypothesis has been confirmed: reduction of the diversity of economic actors and urban scale leads to establishing a "control" regime, and increase, on the contrary - to establishing a “coordination” regime. The presence of several independent economic, ideological, power and ad- ministrative centers with comparable resources forces actors to reckon with each other's interests and develop impersonal "rules of the game".