The article deals with theoretical and methodological aspects of competitive federalism development. It was defined that Russia has developed a national federalism model combining the principles of budget, cooperative and competitive federalism. The authors have concluded that the model of competitive federalism has good prospects. From the methodological viewpoint the bases and principles of competitive federalism are defined: the principles of competition between authorities, subsidiary, origin, exceptionality, fiscal equivalence, that have been supplemented with another two: the ones of openness and transparency.