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Research and educational journal
Published quarterly since 2007
ISSN 1999-5431
E-ISSN 2409-5095
Issue 2013 no1 contents:
THE THEORY AND PRACTICES OF THE PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION
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5–30
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The article is devoted to possible directions to improve the information system of revenues, possession and patrimonial obligations by officials and their relatives. It considers history of the introduction of anti-corruption declarations in Russia; analyses the failures of the regulatory approach in use; it researches causes of low efficiency of the president’s decrees implementation; it deals with the problems of under-elaborating the proposed procedure of declaring; it finds out that arrangements of a regular verification of declarations are actually absent. Conclusions and recommendations: the authors believe that we should not put the main functions in the field of anti-corruption declarations on the personnel services. It is expedient to single out three main groups of people who must make declarations: (1) a group of officials; (2) a top group of managers; (3) and the rest of the civil servants. The responsibilities to collect, check and publish declarations, relating to the above mentioned groups, should be useful to line up in the logic of the system “checks and balances” at the expense of the distribution of these responsibilities between government agencies and the provision of mutual observation between them. The authors do not consider it possible to confine themselves to the recommendations for "building up" the existing system. They suggest returning to the basic procedures of submitting, publishing and checking declarations. They also propose that the corresponding legislation should be thoroughly re-elaborated. The article bases on the report "On the development of anti-corruption declaration in Russia", made in the Scientific Research University, High School of Economics. It also includes results of the report discussions in the course of two round-table conferences, held in August and September of 2012. |
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31–47
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The article considers three groups of conditions applicable to Moscow that can promote competition for budget resources allocated by the city: the economic autonomy of the supplier; tuning up for the competition of mechanisms providing budgetary resources; informing consumers of their rights to receive services and of the activities of the agencies providing these services. It studies one of the key problems of the socio-economic development of Moscow, i.e. improving the quality of social services. Financial mechanisms defined by the Budget Code of the Russian Federation are closely studied as a current decision in this article. They are: financing public and municipal contracts and giving different subsidies. The analysis identified some principle shortcomings in the mechanism of financing state contracts, established by Federal law №94-FL to provide budget services. Shortcomings of the mechanism providing subsidies were also revealed. Its main, far from positive, feature is segmentation by forms and types of legal persons. This segmentation impedes competition since each organization may expect to receive only “their” kind of subsidies and to compete with organizations concerned. Conclusions: It is necessary to achieve the comparability of the economic conditions of the grantees; to make amendments in the RF Budget Code; to adopt the financial regulations. It is on their basis that moving from maintaining public and municipal institutions to paying for the services provided appears possible. |
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48–71
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Urbanization processes in Russia are currently viewed as an exclusively unidirectional trend of a permanent growth of big cities, downshifting of towns and outmigration from rural areas. The object of research is households, whose members are distributed with only those for whom the primary exploration of space is a city and the secondary one is countryside. The subject of research is socio-economic aspects of the distributed way of life and its role in the development of rural and urban settlements. The aims of research are: forming and/or clarifying conceptual terms which describe the phenomenon; describing socio-economic features of the research object, its impact on local community, economy and power. Empirical research was conducted in 4 rural settlements of three regions. Methods of collecting information were interview and observation. Conclusions: (1) theories and concepts good for class societies are hardly fit for researches in Russia; (2) the widely- spread view of villages death and degradation is one-sided, which can be explained by wrong prognoses and conclusions drawn with the help of class concepts while analyzing Russia’s official statistics; (3) exploration of a country area is not taking place only at the expense of counter-urbanization and villas that city people have there, but also due to the phenomenon of a distributed way of life, which means that real estate and employment in the city are combined with the conduct of villa economy and partial living in a country area. |
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72–88
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The article is devoted to the definition, systematization classification of various organized settlements of low-rise houses building. The author shows that such a settlement is a complex object and a separate economic and legal entity. Currently, economic, social and law points typical of the settlements have not been studied properly. The author analyses specific risks for the organized settlements of low-rise building construction. They are: legislative "stories" risks of low-rise construction under public-private partnership, concessional lending with the participation of state and regions or with budget co-financing. Management structures of the settlements have been studied by systematizing and classifying them. The author made a comparative analysis of the territorial public self-government with the organization structure of the organized settlements of low- rise construction. It is recommended that the proposals on granting the organized settlements of low-rise construction the organized townships status of territorial public self-government should be realized. This will increase interaction of public administration on the one hand and communities of the organized settlements on the other hand, with the experience of territorial public administration in the RF as well as legislated mechanisms for it being used. |
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89–101
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The article presents main results of the ordinary (next) round of monitoring the application of law FL-294 held in 2012. The subject of monitoring was practice of the application of the Federal law of 26.12.2008 №294-FL "On protection of rights of legal persons and individual entrepreneurs at carrying out State supervision and municipal control" in 2012 in comparison with the results of its application in the years of 2009-2011. In the course of the study the points of assessing the implementation of the Federal law and its influence on the relationships of the public administration and entrepreneurs in the field of supervision and control of the conformity of goods, works and services in Russia were considered. The aim of this study was also to find the optimal balance between restrictions of administrative interference into entrepreneurs’ activity and provision of the essential protection of interests of the consumers of goods, works and services. The results of the monitoring the Federal law №294-FL application show that its implementation in 2012 brought about some positive changes in protecting the rights of legal persons and individual entrepreneurs. Positive trends can be seen in a great many aspects of law-application practice and are confirmed by both the data of statistical observation and by other ones of federal bodies of executive power, monitoring data on the official sites of the bodies which execute federal and regional State supervision and control. As a result of the monitoring were formed recommendations on changing the provisions of the Act and related federal laws and practices. |
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102–122
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The article considers a subjective preparedness of regional administrations for attracting non-governmental providers of social services at the cost of the budget means. It is assumed, that this depends a lot on their understanding the necessity of the action, their successful experience in such attracting, and their clear idea of how denationalization is to be held. It is a pilot investigation based on econometrical and sociological analysis of the poll of deputy governors and ministers of regions, which was conducted in 2012.The results permit to draw a conclusion that the majority of the regions assume to be ready for and understand the targets of denationalization. But conservatism of the bodies of power and different interests of government agencies mightbring about a vicious circle – regions having no experience in attracting, are reluctant to get it. |
THE ANALYSES OF EXPERTS
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127–136
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The article uses the results of the human capital research in the field of public management. They were obtained in the course of the project "Human resources in public and municipal administration: strategies and technologies of development", that was carried out within the frames of the Program "Scientific fund of the Scientific Research University, High School of Economics" in 2013, grant №13-05-0018. On the basis of these developments aimed at establishing a ratio of two approaches to the study of human resources management in the public sector – the theory of professional social filters and the theory of human capital, the paper presents an analysis of the ideas that were discussed at the 6th conference of the trans-European dialogue (Potsdam University, 6-8 February, 2013). The following ideas were expressed: a) the adoption of the Bologna principles in education has not led to significant improvements in education, and at the same time they are employed as methodological guidance; b) observation of various educational institutions in Europe and Eurasia has not found very different incompatible approaches, but the Bologna reform has not promoted their unity so far. The participants were proposed the following strategic principles of education and training for public administration reform: orientation to the public services; exchange of students, including the language, the NCB); focus on routine work; innovation work plus crises; academic affiliation of disciplines (what sciences and areas they belong to). |
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137–162
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The article gives analysis of the current methods to monitor development of e-government technologies development in Russia. The authors provide their own methods of detecting complex problems of e-government development with the expert survey, and its results as well. In the course of the study on a specialized questionnaire 66 experts from administration bodies who deal with the e-government development; experts of IT companies, collaborating with the public sector; representatives of scientific and educational organizations; representatives of non-profit organizations were polled. Three main problems were singled out: "he unattainable deadline (date) is fixed for the targets (tasks)"; "lack of coordination in amending the normative legal basis"; "practice of e-government realization does not conform with the development standards of large information systems". The thesis that the main problems, associated with the lack of apparent success of e-government programs and plans implementation in Russia lie in the legislative and management areas rather than in the technological plane, has been confirmed. Recommendations: 1) a special system of training and improving professional qualification of people dealing with the realization of the tasks for e-government development must be made up: creation of compulsory regular courses of qualification improvement of the professional training type with using psychological methods for team work in providing government services (analogous to the training of sales services); 2) creation of federal, regional and municipal expert communities to work on documents, to hold regular forums, to make and publish their recommendations. |
FOREIGN EXPERIENCE
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163–192
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Political and organizational theories suggest that the turnover of chief executives and other members of senior management teams are likely to be influenced by public service performance. Weuse a panel data set of 148 English local governments over 4 years to test this proposition. The empirical results show that performance has a negative effect on turnover, but that this effect is weaker for chief executives than for members of their senior management teams. In addition, top team turnover is higher in the years following a chief executive succession. The evidence suggests that chief executives can influence top team turnover by attributing responsibility for poor organizational performance to other senior managers. |
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193–205
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The author of the article considers prerequisites for forming the concept of local community building and its main points. He analyzed approaches to building communities on the basis of exogenous and endogenous types of development and identified their characteristics and methods of implementation as well. The article focuses on the importance of the problem which is caused by the necessity to comprehend theoretically phenomena of social transformations within the frames of local collective bodies and to substantiate the appropriate methodology for developing local communities, taking into account national traditions of self-government. The main conclusions: the concept of local community building stipulates the transition of local communities from the objects of government to the subjects of government; getting free from external dependence; creating conditions for an individual to participate in the community life, their self-actualization and self-determination. The concept implies that the source and resources for development are not placed outside the local community but are enclosed in it itself; external government is succeeded by self-government; the driving force of transformations is a local community which firmly establishes itself while changing its environment. |
SCIENTIFIC INFORMATION
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206–224
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The article analyses the corporations’ social responsibility problem that requires an integrated approach, with taking into account legal, administrative, economic and political components. The subject of the article is a public (corporative) reporting institute, regarded: a) as a result of the struggle among various social interests, b) as an inner contradictory phenomenon combining within itself the answers to the social demand and technologies of the corporation positioning. The outcomes of the research: showing corporative social responsibility by preparing and publishing reports on a sustainable development is for corporations a sine qua non, dictated by the economic necessity, rather than a matter of moral choice. 74% of business companies make social reports with a view of their economic considerations. Preparation of public reports on the sustainable development, following preparation of financial reports, has become a market of corporative services on which consulting companies work and compete. The leading consulting companies on the corporative social responsibility (CSR) work both at the finance reporting market and take part in the development of accounting and auditing standards, and offer their services on implementing these standards. Conclusions: improvement and extension of the corporative social responsibility are not said to have made business more responsible, however, rational criticism of methods and practices of public reporting is to promote reforming this institute of social transparence without prejudice developing its positive potential. |
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225–233
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Small towns in Russia are a very special structure of state and public life organizationally, legally, socially and culturally. They have their own specific mode of economy and plans for development. As practice shows, small towns in Russia have a lot of unsolved problems. Analysis of the organizational, legal and socio-economic situation of Revda and Degtyarsk, small towns in Sverdlovsk region, that have industrial enterprises, where the majority of able-bodied population works, made it possible to reveal some typical contradictions, existing there. The article considers the perspectives of development of such small towns and the peculiarities of municipal administration. The author of the article draws a conclusion that monopolization of all kinds of government, including organizations and agencies with different forms of property, brings about stagnation in socio-economic development. Moreover, the total enthusiasm for organizational and legal forms of administering, in the form of affiliations, results in decreasing performance efficiency of bureaucracy. |
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