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As a result of a series of centralization reforms, initiated in 2000, a great number of studies have discussed that the center entrenched its control over regional subjects in Russia. Yet, several regional unrests observed in the recent years demonstrates an urgent need for an overhaul of the Russian center-periphery relationship, to which only limited attention has been paid yet. This study explains this instability by the increase of outsider governor deployments. Exploiting an original dataset of all governors from 1991 to 2019, patterns of outsider deployments and the effect of such deployments on the regional political processes are examined. Although President Boris Yel'tsin initially held the right to appoint and dismiss most governors in the first half of the 1990s, he did not try to dispatch outsider governors not firmly embedded in the regional societies. Whereas governors began to be elected through the popular gubernatorial elections in almost all of the regions since 1995, outsider candidates rarely won the posts of governors. In Vladimir Putin's first and second terms (2000)(2001)(2002)(2003)(2004)(2005)(2006)(2007)(2008), the power balance between the center and regions radically changed in favor of the center. In addition, scholars have argued that the center's dominance over regional elites increased rapidly due to the de facto appointment system of governors was introduced in 2004. Nevertheless, even then, outsider governor deployments remained exceptional cases. Since the influence of United Russia as a dominant party was limited at that time, federal elites had to receive the endorsement of governors, as regional bosses, to secure the stability of the regime. However, after the triumph of United Russia in the 2007 parliamentary election and the advent of President Dmitrii Medvedev, the Presidential Administration embarked on active replacements of regional bosses with outsider governors loyal to the center. Consequently, while the center got capable of controlling regional political processes

Although the political processes in specific regions of Russia have attracted much scholarly attention since the collapse of the USSR, the number of case studies involving the North-Caucasian ethnic republics has been quite limited. Consequently, a rather shallow and stereotypical understanding emphasizing only limited aspects of the politics in these republics has been represented in the academic discussion. Building on information from local news-sources and interviews in Dagestan, this study highlights three overlooked but important aspects: (1) the consociational nature and instability between the regional and municipal governments in Dagestan politics, (2) the uniqueness of electoral mobilization in Dagestan, and (3) the struggle to consolidate the power vertical following Ramazan Abdulatipov's appointment as the governor. The consociational nature of Dagestan politics, particularly in the 1990s, has been discussed by several specialists. While this uniqueness was guaranteed by the legal and constitutional framework of Dagestan, the Kremlin's initiative to force regional governments to revise regional laws to comply with federal laws removed these constraints. However, by scrutinizing the composition of the regional assembly, this study shows that the balance of power among ethnic groups has been maintained informally in contemporary Dagestan. Moreover, an analysis of municipal level elites reveals the independence of diverse actors in Dagestan's politics, which has resulted in an unstable regime. This study also highlights the difficulty of aligning our understanding of electoral mobilization in Dagestan with the general conception of political machines in the non-Russian ethnic republics. Although, as the literature on Russian electoral