The article deals with questions of theory and methodology of analysis of regional political regimes in modern Russia. The author proposes to study regional political regimes with resort to considering three «axes»: «monopoly - oligopoly» («consolidation - competition»), «the center - the regions» («autonomy - dependency») and «democracy - authoritarianism». For each of these axes a set of corresponding variables has been elaborated, that allows to estimate and to compare regional political regimes, making apparent the extent of autonomy of a regional political regime within the national one, the structure and the methods of power relations. The proposed methodology makes possible cross-regional (within Russia) and cross-national studies, as well as more detailed regional case studies.