Issue 2015 no3 contents:

Outcomes of the key performance indicators application for the assessment of the public authority performance are ambiguous. Theory of incentive contracts as well as international experience highlight difficulties and possible externalities of KPI setting for the public authority. The motivation system often distorts incentives of the public authorities, and the applied indicators do not correctly reflect the priorities of enforcement for the society. One specific example is the assessment of performance of the Russian competition authority. In the paper we analyze the peculiarities of formation of the ratio of infringement decisions that have come into legal force to all infringement decisions made by the competition authorities applied as one of the key performance indicators. Using the data of the database of judicial reviews of infringement decisions, we show that the assessment of FAS performance based on the share of infringement decisions that have come into legal force, distorts incentives of the authority substantially. It motivates the competition authority for making a large number of infringement decisions with a low probability to reverse but with a low positive impact on consumer surplus and total welfare.

The paper exploits data collected in the framework of ‘Russian firms in the global economy’ (RuFIGE) project, implemented as a part of the HSE Basic Research Program in 2014–2015. The research goals of the paper are: first, to evaluate changes in the business climate in Russia during the period of the implementation of the program aimed at the business climate improvement in 2012–2014; second, since the business environment reforms were initiated personally by Vladimir Putin, to analyze the influence of reference to the politician in the question wording on the estimates of changes in the business climate made by respondents during a survey experiment. The analysis is based on the data of the survey of managers of 1950 large, medium and small manufacturing firms in 60 Russian regions, conducted by the HSE Institute for Industrial and Market Studies in summer-autumn of 2014. The results demonstrate that firms with a longer planning horizon and firms that received support from the state are more likely to give positive assessments of the changes in the business environment. Firms with state ownership, on the contrary, more often evaluate results of the reform negatively. Firms-investors do not differ from other firms in their assessment of the business climate change. Reference to Vladimir Putin’s initiative on improving the business environment leads to a statistically significant increase in the share of positive assessments of the changes for medium enterprises with 101–249 employees, and increases the share of refusals to respond to the question for large enterprises with 500 and more employees.

The article discusses the theme of social licensing of the resource extraction companies. Its purpose is to explore the concept of social license to operate (SLO) from the point of view of expediency of its application as a new tool for municipal development in Russia, and describes the SLO concept that implies the acquiring of local communities’ consent for the operation of the companies. We present causes which determined the emergence of the concept and the reasons for its growing popularity throughout the world. To find out whether the elements of social licensing are present in Russia, results of the case study research of the two mining companies operating in Murmansk region are presented. Data for the study have been obtained from scientific literature, media sources and through interviews conducted by the authors.

It is revealed that the SLO concept is not familiar to the companies and the communities studied. However, elements of the social licensing have been found, and the SLO levels for the companies have been estimated. We come to the conclusion that practical use of the concept in Russia is expedient, since it could benefit both companies and local communities. The SLO concept can serve as a new governance instrument for municipal development working on the basis of establishing trustful cooperation between companies and host communities.

The paper is the outcome of the authors’ participation in the international research project “Sustainable mining, local communities and environmental regulation in the Kolarctic area” (SUMILCERE, KO 554, 2013–2014, within the Kolarctic European Neighbourhood and Partnership Instrument of the Cross-Border Cooperation Program ).

In this paper we consider attempts to transform economic mechanisms of culture that have been made since the recent years of the Soviet era with the purpose to achieve a reasonable balance between the freedom of the initiative of cultural goods producers and the public control of their activities. We highlight the main stages of the reforms in respect to the tasks set in them: the first stage dates back to the period between the end of 1980s and the beginning of 1990s; the second stage is 1990s; the third stage is 2000–2010 years. Having characterized each of the stages, the author has come to the conclusion that the tasks being solved within their frames virtually have remained the same, i.e. enlarging the economic rights of cultural institutions, increasing the validity of the budget funding volumes allocated for them, primarily, through implementing the normative approach and developing alternative sources of financing cultural activities in the country. An analysis of the situation showed that attempts to solve the tasks had failed and the economic mechanisms of culture turned out to be at their start level. Thus, it is suggested that the “motion in a circle” should be unlikely to avoid till the attempts to preserve the inviolability of the public sector are still being made and all reforms are being focused on adjusting organizational and economic terms of functioning of its institutions. The major trends of future reforms are seen to be privatization of a part of the state institutions and their transformation into the status of non-state non-profit organizations (with the state participation being possible), development of competitive mechanisms of budget financing and giving grants.

The research included an analysis of practices and approaches applied in Russia’s regions to define standard/normative costs for the public services delivery and standard costs for the public institutions’ property maintenance when calculating funding provided to deliver public services, commissioned by the state in the cultural sector.

The study was conducted on 83 subjects of the Russian Federation by analyzing open access normative legal acts published by April 1, 2014, by using open access data of the legal reference system Consultant Plus (a consolidated database of regional laws) and the web-sites of higher executive authorities and executive bodies of the Russian Federation’s subjects.

The study reveals that not all of the subjects of the Russian Federation approved local methodological guidelines on defining standard costs (77.1 per cent) and even fewer regions have industry-specific procedures to be used when calculating standard costs (56.6 per cent).

The analysis identified three main approaches used to define the structure of standard costs depending on the allocation of funds to general economic needs.

The analysis also shows that currently the methodology to define standard costs in the cultural sector is in an initial stage of its development and has not yet played any significant role. Most of the surveyed regions use individual standard costs. And a significant part of the regions use in the calculations regular (budgeted) expenses for each public institution, thereby ensuring formal compliance with the requirements of the Federal Law No. 83-FZ. In some regions, they use adjusting factors that in most cases negate the very idea of normative financing and in fact help maintain the budget financing principles with all their shortcomings.

The goal of this paper is to identify and analyze the major trends in the sphere of state and municipal control and supervision in the Russian Federation in 2011–2014. The analysis draws on the authors’ calculations based on the data uploaded in the information system «Monitoring activities of regulatory agencies» by the control and supervisory authorities as well as the results of a survey of medium size and small businesses commissioned by the Ombudsman for the Protection of Entrepreneurs’ Rights under the President of the Russian Federation.

Based on these findings, the authors conclude that in order to ensure an adequate level of protection of the public by the instruments of state control, it is necessary to change the approach to control and supervision activities from the total control to the risk-based control.

The results of this work can be used to develop proposals for improving the regulation of control and supervision activity in the Russian Federation.

The topic of the paper is the history of Russian nomenclature bureaucratic system from the beginning of the 19-th century to the contemporary time. As the Soviet period is the main subject of attention, the earlier times are considered rather briefly, with the accent being made on the 19-th century attempts to modernize bureaucracy, particularly on M. Speransky’s initiative to introduce an education criterion instead of the domineering then length of service, and also on periodical unsuccessful efforts of the supreme authority to abandon or restrict the meaning of the ranks’ scale. Mechanisms, human sources of nomenclature forming in the Soviet period are considered in details, as well as its evolution, status in different periods and negative consequences of the system as such. It was Stalin who created the nomenclature system and manipulated it. Human qualities and motivations of people in different generations of the bureaucratic nomenclature, a socio-psychological portrait of the bureaucratic «elite», anti-nomenclature repressions of the 30s’, «the golden age» of the nomenclature in the later years of the Soviet Union are described in the essay. It is noticed that in spite of all obvious shortcomings of the system, the rank-and-file Soviet bureaucracy as a whole was not too bad and better than its public reputation. The author distances from one-dimensional assessments of Russian officialdom – both negative and idealizing – and offers a more balanced view. The major fault was not of the people but of the very system of nomenclature, which became one of the meaningful reasons for the bankruptcy of the Soviet regime. Applying it to the conditions of the modern dynamic world is completely counter-productive. So, any tendency to «regenerate» nomenclature principles of forming public management personnel seems contradictory to public needs and dangerous.

The paper argues that the existing model of civil service anticorruption reform by importing “best practice” of conflict of interests regulation in the public service does not help to tackle or minimize corruption, but creates a vicious circle both in theory and practice. Corruption studies artificially segment corruption into independent macro- and micro-levels, and research contributing to one of the levels does not improve our understanding of corruption. Failed, long-lasting or, having unexpected results, recent administrative reforms clearly demonstrate insufficiency of “importing the model” as an anti-corruption measure. The model of corruption markets, presented in the article, explains the insufficiency of importing best practice, and demonstrates that the “good enough governance” tactic is able to minimize the national corruption market. The “good enough governance” has a good implication for unsolved problems of the Russian public service: one could never become Singapore by importing Singapore’s “best practice” regulations. Russian “good enough governance” of conflict of interests regulation in the public service might be adapting the experience of Brazil’s anti-corruption reform in the civil service (as the one that solved the same problems with the similar lack of resources). The paper presents a thorough analysis of the anti-corruption reform in Brazil, based on the study of regulations that were introduced by Cardoso and his successors (mid. 1990s-2015) and is structured according to the aims of the reform. Three mutually reinforcing groups of measures were introduced: decreasing politicization of the Brazil civil service, regulating conflict of interests in the most “sensitive” areas (such as public procurement) and ethic regulations. The research conducted has practical implications for the Russian public service – incremental mechanism for reforming the national public service and, consequently, minimizing the national corruption market.

Nowadays Moscow as well as other megalopolises faces some new transport policy challenges such as automobile quantity increase and traffic congestion. These challenges attract attention to the transport policy efficiency. Parking policy is one of the main instruments of the transport policy, which includes not only parking space organization but also parking enforcement.

Parking policy of Moscow is rapidly developing: new parking spaces are being organized; new parking enforcement methods are being set in operation. However, the efficiency of the parking enforcement has not been widely debated. There is no mention of the parking enforcement efficiency in the parking legislation of Moscow, which results in the simplest technical equipment usage methods like usage of the prescribed static routs for the CCTV automobiles.

This paper focuses on the importance of parking enforcement efficiency and the opportunities of making the parking enforcement effective which the dynamic route method provides. Using the dynamic route method allows:

− to reduce the cost of one automobile inspection by 34% and to increase the inspected automobiles share by 1.5 times;

− to reduce the costs of one violation revealing by 64%;

− to reduce the inspector vehicles headway by 2.3 times;

− to increase the enforcement inevitability perception level by 2 times;

− to reduce the quantity of motorists committing parking rules violations by 27%.

The dynamic route method is considered to be an effective instrument to improve parking enforcement mechanism. Some recommendations are given for the adaptation of the dynamic route method.