|
Research and educational journal
Published quarterly since 2007
ISSN 1999-5431
E-ISSN 2409-5095
Issue 2014 no5 contents:
|
7–28
|
Provision of antipoverty and other social services by nonstate organizations is growing in importance in both the United States and the Russian Federation. The history of such provision in the United States may offer insights for the emerging system of nonstate provision in Russia. To illuminate these points, we provide historical overviews of both contexts and then we examine data from two surveys of social service organizations in the United States: the Multi-City Survey of Social Service Providers and the Rural Survey of Social Service Providers. We fid that nonstate actors strengthen social capital in poor neighborhoods and often link poor persons to public agencies. Nonstate actors strengthen other local institutions through programmatic partnerships and collaboration. However, financing arrangements of nonstate welfare provision may favor efficiency over concerns about equity, sustainability, and predictability. In addition, the primacy of nonstate provision leads to a welfare state that is more varied geographically than might be anticipated otherwise. Such variability appears to disadvantage highpoverty and predominately minority communities the most. Finally, politically, nonstate welfare provision may occur with little public discussion, debate, or reflection as it evolves over time. These findings invoke important questions for Russian policy-makers as they seek to develop an equitable and efficient means of providing assistance to their population. |
|
29–56
|
In the new millennium, in Russia and the West alike, criminologists regularly complain about a diminishing role for experts in the making and administration of criminal policy – in the West, because of pandering to the public (penal populism), and in Russia, a failure to take a systematic approach to crime control. In both places, this paper argues, these appraisals are based on idealized and unrealistic images of the way criminal law developed in the past. In North America, criminal policy-making has never conformed to a rational model as favored by some specialists in public administration. In Russia, the European ideal of a major role for criminal law scholars has been confined to periods of codification and has not served as the norm most of the time. In both parts of the world, it is essential that scholars study how criminal policy develops, in order to understand the current situation and find ways to contribute to its making. |
|
57–75
|
This paper analyzes the development of forms and methods of interaction between government agencies and the experts’ community, public organizations, and citizens under the influence of a whole host of factors, including a transition to networked forms of administration; the production and exchange of big data; the dynamic development of information and communication technologies; and the development of the need for various interest groups, members of the mass media, and citizens to comment and influence government decisionmaking. The goal of the paper is to demonstrate that open government and increasing citizen activity is a two-way street. The paper uses the results of the monitoring by experts in 2014 of the implementation of principles and mechanisms of openness in federal executive agencies. One of the paper’s tasks is to show that government bodies today face the extremely difficult challenge of not merely informing citizens about decisions that are made but also maintaining the smooth operation of mechanisms that are able, given the current level of social development, to ensure that the interests and expectations of as many stakeholders as possible are taken into account. The paper also analyzes issues related to streamlining the current mechanisms of openness. The authors regard these technologies and mechanisms of openness and public participation in government administration as interconnected elements of a new, nascent model of public administration. |
|
76–95
|
In the early 1990s, post-communist state actors struggled for the first time with trying to get people to pay taxes. They sought to create new systems of revenue extraction for their quickly changing transition economies. Their immediate concern in devising means of revenue extraction was to break out of the inherited fiscal constraints of the old regime – weak administrative capacity and narrow revenue base. This required finding accommodation with society. Post-communist states cultivated tax compliance in a variety of ways: some states relied more on consent-based strategies, while others adopted more coercive strategies. Poland developed a distinctively non-coercive approach to building capacity and consent, which enhanced the fiscal capacity of the post-communist state. Poland’s strategy of “legalistic consent” as the basis for its new system of revenue extraction proved a smashing success. The fiscal capacity of the post-communist Polish state was suffi ciently strengthened to overcome the crippling initial domestic fiscal crisis and to withstand the fiscal shocks of two international fi nancial crises in 1998 and 2008. |
|
96–111
|
This article examines the mix of policy instruments used by the Russian government in the sphere of housing development. The analysis is based on an influential framework for the study of public management and policy design – the “tools of government” – which distinguishes nodality (information), authority, treasure, and organization-based tools. The article also utilizes a distinction between “substantive” and “procedural” tools. It first surveys substantive tools used in Russian housing policy, including the Agency for Home Mortgage Lending, two state foundations for housing construction and rehabilitation, and mortgage lending banks, among others. Discussion then moves to the use of procedural tools, such as consultations between the government and business associations of the construction industry, and the organization of professional forums and conferences. The third section explains the use of the specific “mix” of government policy tools with reference to the structure of the “policy subsystem,” that is, the community of actors involved in this policy field. The conclusion relates the use of government instruments in Russia – predominantly treasure and authority for substantive tools, and organization and authority for procedural tools – to the use of similar instruments by other governments. |
|
112–129
|
This paper examines Russia’s 20 years of experience with budgetary reforms. The authors focus most of their attention on the introduction into Russian budgetary practice of special-program methods, which is a key feature of the ongoing budgetary reform in the country. The main phases of the reform of the budgetary process are analyzed, from the formulation of programs for socio-economic development and the first attempts to apply the tools of program budgeting (the formulation of special federal programs) to the preparation of the federal budget on the basis of government programs and the transition to a program-based budgetary format for constituent entities of the Russian Federation. |
|
130–147
|
This paper examines the contradiction between the accountability and cost effectiveness of regulatory policy at a time when the “delegation” model is dominant. Using the banking sector as a case study, it shows the relationship between formal and informal practices during volatile international and domestic market conditions. The authors analyze the practice of regulation by the Bank of Russia (Bank Rossii), the central bank of the Russian Federation, of a minimum level of capital and risk management at a particular commercial bank. The analysis is based on regulations and consolidated statistical data from the central bank and reporting data from lending institutions. The authors’ principal conclusions show that, given the closed nature of the decisionmaking process, banking-sector actors set up unofficial interaction channels in addition to legal ones, and this intensifi es distrust in the market. Hence the capital ratio standard that is used in the reporting documents of lending institutions is not an accurate indicator of a bank’s financial stability. Given the weak institutions, the tasks of cost effectiveness are better served by a hybrid model of accountability that is based on a balance between delegation and hands-on participation. This model limits the actors’ ability to unilaterally influence the regulator and thereby reduces the systemic risks of the banking sector. |
|