Issue 2015 no5 contents:

The planning of the territories’ development as well as the analysis of their capacity for an effective cluster policy have recently been blocked by the absence of appropriate instruments to support strategic decisions in the area of public management. At the same time, many such instruments exist on the level of business sector planning. Strategic management provides various tools allowing the development of the best plan for a company’s development, and the means to evaluate the plan’s implementation. Modification of the Analytic Matrix of McKinsey, as will be shown, could be a possible variant for the evaluation of the territories’ development. The selection of test-region for the implementation of proposed technology was based on some of the principles described. According to these principles, the test region for a McKinsey-type matrix of territorial strategy elaboration was selected, i.e. Kamchatka region. For Kamchatka region, the best criteria for development are specified, namely the fishing (and fish products) industry, plus the shipbuilding (and repair) industry.

“Permeability” is one of the most important characteristics of borders. It is a commonplace that that borders not only divide, but also connect the two territories on either side. Otherwise, the permeability of borders has a large effect on the development of the border areas. Our examination tests this hypothesis using the example of the West Transdanubian Region. During the State-Socialist regime, this area under the shadow of the impermeable Iron Curtain became a typical periphery, where the ruling power hardly sent any resources for development. After the democratic transformation, the Austrian-Hungarian border became semipermeable border, whose connecting and filtering functions slowly came into equilibrium. Finally, after the accession to the European Union in 2004, and, even more so, the Schengen Area in 2004/2007, dominance of contact functions led to a completely open border. In order to better understand this process, our examination tries to quantify the general development level/dynamism of West Hungarian Border Area micro-regions/districts on the basis of Regional Statistical Yearbook of Hungary in 1994, in 2004, and in 2013 – in comparison with the similar data of whole Hungary. We perform this task by using one of the most widespread data reduction methods, Principal Component Analysis (PCA). Although the PCA justifies a positive correlation between the permeability of the borders and the development level/dynamism of the West Transdanubian microregions/districts, we point out significant intra-regional developmental differences between the micro-regions/districts as well, that depends on, in part, their proximity to the border and their degree of urbanization.

The article discusses the problem of the applicability of modern public administration theories and practices outside liberal democracies. The theory and practice are not universal; they do not apply to the conditions of the most numerous type of state in the world, namely nation-states, with «hybrid» political regimes and a mixed system of economic, social and cultural relations. The type of political and socio-economic development of these states cannot be defined in some fields; it is extremely resolute in being temporary and transitional. This is especially true in societies with clan and patron-client relationships, where these prevail at each level of the civil service hierarchy. By using the examples of Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, the author shows that this type of relationship gives rise to corruption, but also performs a number of important functions in the social sphere, and could sometimes be used as capital modernization by the authorities. Russia, described in the article as a country with ruined social mutual aid traditions, demonstrates that clan relationship traditions continuing in a number of Central Asian countries may cause less damage than full social atomization. The paper is aimed at formulating a hypothesis of the feasibility of convergent approach in public administration theory development for further research. The core idea represents the counter convergence of the theories and the real conditions of governance in various nation-states with hybrid regimes. The article is based on the author’s own research and the public administration department’s student studies, performed under his supervision.

To provide sustainable development (and not just growth) of urban areas, experts and regional authorities should jointly follow the principles of Sustainable Development (SD) that were originally proposed by the fundamental work Limits to Growth(Meadowset al., 1972) which described global, national and inter-regional strategies, plans and dynamics for urban development. As a result of SD, a new (more sustainable) type of urban strategy, ecopolis strategy, can be proposed.

We will present an example of such an urban ecopolis strategy. It was elaborated for Moscow Region city Korolev, combining architecture, planning and design, ecosystem restoration, evaluation of risks and calculation of resources required for strategy implementation. The ecopolis strategy for Korolev city (“E Korolev project”) was produced over several years by a special task force – a joint Italian and Russian team along with the city council of Korolev (Kavtaradze, Casu, 2011) – which concentrated the project around key elements of ecopolis strategy, as described in the article.

Modern state governance in Western Europe has undergone signifi cant changes in the past thirty years. The horizontal shake-up triggered by new public management was complemented by a vertical shake-up of governance systems, fuelled by the European integration process and the increasingly prominent role of the regions both in economic development and in democratic renewal. The devolution process in the UK represents one of the most significant constitutional reforms of the British governance system, with deep political, administrative and policy implications. Drawing on a nine year old longitudinal study of the unfolding of the devolution process in the UK, this article explores the challenges and opportunities offered by the new political spaces created by devolution. The argument put forth in this paper is that devolution, whilst acting as a catalyst for differentiation and innovation both at process and output level, has lacked strategic vision in the re-shaping of the policy framework of the UK, thus exposing serious limitations of the current governance system, especially in terms of public scrutiny and accountability of the new governance frameworks, but also in terms of long term sustainability.

The problem of the administrative, economic and social sustainability of a group consisting of neighboring regions with close ties has no clear solution yet. Should closely-tied regions in the long run form a centralized system of administrative bodies, compress their budgets into one, and construct unified social programs, or not? To answer this question, in the article we describe a case that represents the paramount form of cooperation amongst closely-tied regions. It is the case of the socalled multi-structured region, or “matreshka-style” region, where all the relationships culminated.

Analysis of the history and the present conditions of inter-regional cooperation, its areas and forms, in a unique multi-structured region of Russia, namely the Tyumen region 1, shows that such centralization has its limits, and instead of “rough” centralization, more sophisticated procedures (programmed forms of economic cooperation, legally introduced forms of administrative coordination, structured distribution of management functions, combination of partially connected inter-regional budgetary processes) should be elaborated to provide the sustainable development of closely-tied regions.

There is a critical spatial component in the emerging cooperative Russian planning model for economic growth across the federation. Although in Russia, as in the EU, this spatial modeling for joint action and cooperation has not entirely displaced the older model of competitive fiscal federalism and public policy doctrine of the 1980s, the newer cooperative model, emerging from the globalization of supply chains and cross-regional externalities, encourages integration rather than competition within larger functional macro-spaces. It embraces both cross-regional and cross-national pooling of human and other resources. There has been considerable Russian research on regional integration (Shishkov, 2001; Butorina, 2011; Kolesov, 1996; Kulikov, 2002) and internationalization (Vardomskiy, 2002; Kosolapov, 2005; Belousov, 2011; Skatershchikova et al., 2002; Tsygankov, 2004). This paper contributes to the existing research by developing a new database to map the strategies of regional authorities. In this paper, we develop three case studies to show program development and implementation of bilateral and multi-lateral strategies. Our information represents a complete survey of selected regions from the material available at this time, showing design and strategy, and some implementation. Our survey is the first attempt we are aware of that traces the new cross-regional arrangements.

The main purpose of the study is to refresh the theory of institutional and organizational learning by applying knowledge from anthropology to public administration. Empirical evidence drawn from South Korea’s capital city supports the applicability of Margaret Mead’s typology of knowledge transfer among generations. Similar to human beings, once grown-up and developed, cities are ready to give lessons to their teachers. First-hand and secondary data from the lesson-drawing habits of Seoul Metropolitan Government (SMG) explains learning paths from the United States and other developed countries and back. The study also illustrates an integral component of learning from peers, when SMG benchmarks best practices from cities in other developing countries.

Supported by the example of American-Korean relations, SMG’s case confirms previous theoretical propositions that the old-established channels of learning are hard to break when they are rooted in history and culture, and, thus, in line with the tastes of the electorate and the private preferences of governmental offi cials. Meanwhile, the study also shows that the era of knowledge transfer exclusively from parents to children is over. Seoul has applied enormous eff ort/completed enormous work to establish itself as a benchmarkable model internationally.

The study has a practical application as it offers an outline of programs and instruments that can be used by an agency for successful benchmarking from abroad. The study is original in the way it combines organizational theories, comparative public administration and anthropology. Being of an exploratory nature, the current research tests Mead’s typology that can be further applied in different countries.