Power in the mono-industrial company town

The article is based on the outcomes of empirical research conducted in 2011-2015 in five small Russian towns including mono-industrial company town in the Perm region. The main corpus of empirical data was obtained by indepth face to face interviews with local politicians, public officials, businessmen, local and regional experts. Configuration of the most influential actors in the town substantially differs from what we discovered in other local communities where actors representing the local executives dominate. The most influential actors in the mono-industrial company town are: the head of the town, the leadership of the city-forming enterprise, and the leadership of the district administration; there are significant differences between the experts in the evaluation of their powerful potential. Other actors — municipal and regional legislatures, small business, civic organizations — are the actors of the second level of influence, while the head of the executive branch in the town whose position in other local communities usually guarantee the leadership of its incumbent, did not have sufficient personal resources and was in fact dependent on the head of the town. As in other towns, open conflicts occur only between actors representing different branches of the local government. The most significant conflict was between the town and district municipal structures caused not only by traditional disagreements over the distribution of functions, but also by opposite positions taken by the parties on the question of reforming the system of local government. Relationships between the local governments and legislatures were less conflictual, although the presence of solid “plant” fractions in the town and, especially, in the district legislatures largely determine the urban agenda and the specifics of the local political process. The most significant coalition was formed between the town authorities and the leadership of the main enterprise; in most situations the coalition successfully implements its own interests and with certain reservations can be considered as the basis of urban regime in terms of C. Stone. However, the informal component substantially prevails over the formal. The local community does not have any serious formal organizations, designed to protect the interests of business and contribute to the optimization of its interaction with the municipal power structures. It seems natural in the current (authoritarian) Russian context, narrowing the possibility of political action and building coalitions between equal and autonomous actors in the public space.