Nowadays, in the author's opinion, decomposition of the 1990s regional democracy model is going on. He sees the main symptom of this decomposition in the tendency of growing amounts of "dirty" political technologies being applied in the RF subjects. The heart of the problem, A.V.Dakhin maintains, is related to the character of regional elites' competition. With Nizhegorodskaya Oblast as example, genesis and motion of this competition are outlined. Within the elite analyzed, "systemic" and "non-systemic" figures are distinguished. Prospects are discussed, for development of regional democracy under the conditions of transition from the "parade of sovereignties" to the "legislative alignment" and to restriction of the "self-will liberties" of the heads of the Federation subjects.