Issue 2014 no2 contents:

The article makes a comparison of effectiveness between two Federal programs of public administration reforming in Russia (2003–2007, and 2009–2013). It substantiates the statements: 1) the existing international ratings are not meant for revealing public administration reforming eff ectiveness; 2) effectiveness of public administration reforming can only be evaluated, if reforms are held with the help of the program-target method; 3) the system of effectiveness indicators that was designed for the second Federal program of reforming public service in Russia, is well applicable to evaluate other program-target reforms of public administration; 4) the compared effectiveness indicators show that the first Federal program of reforms is less effective than the second one.

The general conclusion of the article is drawn as follows: the program-target method of reforming public administration makes it possible to measure the dynamics of reforming in objective indicators, reveal progressive changes in public service. These changes are invisible if one separate program of reforming is taken; moreover, a local regress within the frame of one program is quite possible. However every new program as an aggregate of reform undertakings, promotes perfection of public service, increase of its professionalism and transparency.

Introducing performance management principles was acknowledged as one of the directions of the administrative reform in the Russian Federation according to the Concept of administrative reform in the Russian Federation in 2006–2010 approved in 2005 and extended in 2008.

The article reviews the extent of implementation of administrative reform activities on implementing performance management instruments and mechanisms, which were deemed necessary in 2005, from the viewpoint of the principle of a "new public administration model" aimed at orienting all parts of public administration mechanism and all levels towards achieving measurable, transparent results clear to the public, as defi ned by the Russian President. Which corrections and new measures to implement performance management practices should be taken to introduce the "new public administration model"?

To answer this question, the article analyses the extent to which the problems that had determined the need for this direction of the Concept of administrative reform, have been resolved, and the extent of the implementation of the performance management related measures outlined in the Concept. Based on this analysis, recommendations on the development and implementation of further measures are made, so that performance management as a new model of public administration in Russia should be implemented.

The article considers directions and the main results of the budgetary reforms which were carried out within the administrative reform launched in 2004. One of its purposes was to make activity of the public sector more effective, more transparent both during the forming and performance of the state budget. Within these ten years some important steps directed at improving the budgetary process, tax planning and inter-budgetary relations have been taken. In the last 15–20 years the majority of the developed countries of the world have carried through similar reforms, including transition to the result-based budgeting (RBB) that assumes the coordination of information on results of the activity with the distribution of the limited budgetary resources. This has been achieved by using program and target distribution of the expenses and continuous monitoring their efficiency and distributing this information in order to assess the public sector activity.

The authors make a comparison of the traditional (expensive) model of budgeting with the result-based management model (RBM), and draw a conclusion that transition to the RBM has basically changed not only the maintenance of all stages of the budgetary process, but also the concept of management of public expenditures as it demands the use of program and target methods of budgeting and budget forming in a program format.

The program and target budgeting allows to unite all ways and means to achieve the objectives of state policy. In this regard it can be considered as one of the most perspective instruments to increase efficiency of the public sector.

The article considers the results of the latest stage of reforming the Institute of public service in the Russian Federation. It makes an overview and a brief critical analysis of the key milestones of civil service development during 2009–2013. The key trends for the future development are also described. Such trends include lack of an integral system of public service in the Russian Federation and a system of its management; lack of efficient technologies and modern methods of personnel work; imperfection of the mechanisms of qualified personnel selection and evaluation; the absence of a link between the civil servants’ performance results and the size of payments. Conclusions and generalizations are supported by the official statistics data and sociological analysis, by the materials of the researches conducted by the author. Reduction and rejuvenation of personnel and introduction of information and communication technologies do not contribute to the efficiency of the state apparatus all by themselves. This should be proceeded by the choice of the strategy of the reform and an independent model of state service adequate to Russia of today. The translation of public service reform onto the plane of systematic work is defi ned as a necessary condition for increasing the effi ciency of state management. It needs implementing socio-economic challenges by the state.

The article presents a comprehensive analysis of welfare states in Central Eastern Europe and Russia from their foundations in the Soviet period through post-communist transition, with focus on the years after 1990. The article covers the emergence, structure, performance and transformations of these welfare states, including social insurance, health care, labor market institutions, and the gender dimension. Mapping trajectories of post-communist welfare state change, the text considers scholarly debates about the agents of change, including external agents such as the European Union and International Financial Institutions, as well as domestic societal interests and state-institutional actors. The story involves communist legacies and strong elements of path dependency, as well as varying levels of fiscal constraint, policy innovation and path-departing changes. The author finds that post-communist restructuring and retrenchment have reshaped statist welfare systems in market-conforming directions throughout the post-communist region, redefining the boundaries between public and private responsibility for societal well-being. Social insurance has been partially privatized in most states, labor market institutions have been made more flexible, and family benefits have been broadly retrenched. At the same time, post-communist welfare states have shown divergent patterns of change. CEE welfare states have been shaped by the layering of solidaristic communist legacies, conservative Bismarckian social insurance revivals, and the liberal imprint of international institutions. They have liberalized, but retain large elements of public responsibility for welfare and affinities to Europe. In Russia, sharper economic contraction led to deeper retrenchment, liberalization and informalization of the social sector; then, after 2005 Russia more generous statist and paternalist  elfare policies. Post-communist welfare states are distinctive; they do not ‘fit’ any existing Western typologies or models.

The article is devoted to a new history and the current state of personnel management in public administration, i.e., to the serious modernization of the theory of bureaucracy and practical efforts to perfect it. A vast bibliographical analysis of special, mainly American, literature on the subject has been made and presented in the article. The literature of a special concern is the one that assesses the consequences of public administration reforms and the present performance of the American civil service. Comparisons are made with the performance of the analogous Russian system. The major vector of changes is a strive for annulling bureaucracy in the executive power, for searching its new model with limited functions and subordinate to the control of civil society, in particular, the increase of the human capital level in civil service by radical renewing its staff . The epoch of “Big Government” has come to an end. The process of reforming did not appear to be easy: its short-lived consequences had ups and downs, periodical corrections of the way chosen, but the general direction remained unchanged. Broadly, this process is of a considerable interest from the point of view of a general theory of state, since what is happening currently can be characterized as a search of a new type of state that matches better modern realities and demands.

To what extent do attitudes toward money – specifically, the love of money – moderate the relationship between public service motivation and job satisfaction among public sector professionals in China? The authors collected data from full-time public sector professionals who also were part-time students in a master of public administration program in eastern China. After confirmatory factor analyses, the regression results show that a public servant’s love of money moderates the relationship between public service motivation and job satisfaction – that is, individuals with a strong love of money have a significantly stronger relationship between public service motivation and job satisfaction than those without, a finding that supports the “crowding-in effect”. Alternatively, for high love-of-money civil servants with a "steel rice bowl" mentality, high job satisfaction is explained by the best offer (output) for the minimum amount of effort (input), at least within Chinese culture. Such findings are counterintuitive in light of Chinese personal values, equity theory, public servants’ institutional background, ethical organizational culture, and corruption.

Russia since recently has had a growing number of federal grant programs to social service oriented nonprofit organizations working in different sectors from education to healthcare and sports, and in some others. There have also been growing demands to evaluate these programs. Russia’s federal agencies do not have a common approach to imposing co-financing requirements on grant beneficiaries. We use the data provided in the reports filed to the Ministry of Economic Development of the Russian Federation by its grant recipients of F.Y. 2011–012 to evaluate how much the government funding affects nonprofits’ financing by other donors. We also evaluate how co-financing from private donors affects the results achieved by the nonprofit. Basing on L. Salamon’s and R. Steinberg’s crowdingout and crowding-in theories we hypothesize that government spending in Russia helps pool other donors’ resources rather than crowds them out. We processed self-reported quantitative data, presented in the official reports, and performed a relevant ex-post correlation analysis to show that government financing of social service oriented nonprofits in Russia is more likely to have a positive effect on nonprofits’ achieved results and the attraction of extra funds. Public funding helps draw in other nonprofits’ resources, for-profits’ financing, other public agencies’ resources, private donations, and foreign donors’ funding. Some private funding resources are also positively correlated with some of the major results achieved by the nonprofit. Co-financing from Russian nonprofits, citizens, foreign and international organizations, and "presidential grants" is positively related to the results of the beneficiary. The causality of the correlations is still to be researched. In general, we argue about a high level of efficiency attained by service nonprofits that obtained public funding.