Issue 2022 no3 contents:

Implementing client-centered culture is seen as one of the core areas for further improvement of public administration in Russia. Traditionally both international and Russian literature reviews client centricity in the context of public service quality. However, the range of functions which aim at fulfilling public interest and entail interaction with citizens goes far beyond public service delivery. The article aims at filling this gap based on developing and testing a methodic approach to evaluating client centricity of state regulatory enforcement bodies from the citizen perspective.

Based on the empirical data collected through representative sociological public surveys conducted by RANEPA in 2018-2022, the authors evaluate client centricity of state regulatory enforcement bodies through the lens of key governance quality parameters: validity, effectiveness, and efficiency. It is demonstrated that while there are some positive trends in improved validity and effectiveness of the state regulatory enforcement actions, there have been no efficiency gains in this area.

Further improvement of client centricity in regulatory enforcement area calls for simplifying the procedures for citizens to file complaints to the relevant authorities and for improving the effectiveness in reviewing and responding to such complaints. Special attention is required to improve client centricity for distant forms of interaction between citizens applying to state regulatory enforcement bodies for protection of public values (ranging from health and property to environment and personal data) and public authorities (i.e., by post, electronically or by phone).

The article analyzes recent developments in competition policy regarding digital platforms and their ecosystems. The goal is to evaluate the newly adopted laws and their drafts in the light of experience  in regulating essential facilities (natural monopolies in the network industries). We contrast the arguments and suggestions of recent academic and expert publications with evaluation of the effects of non-discriminatory access enforcement. Both ex-post antitrust enforcement and ex-ante regulation regarding digital platforms have their own limitations. Proponents of wider application of ex-ante regulatory rules underestimate and often neglect regulatory cost as well as negative externalities of regulatory interventions. Empirical evaluation of regulatory effects during three decades shows that both costs and negative externalities are likely and relatively high. At the same time, recent academic and expert discussion underestimate the opportunities to develop targeted norms that would provide clients of digital platforms with additional rights and opportunities, and restrict market power of platforms without specific ex-ante regulation.

The COVID-19 pandemic of 2020-2022, combined with the introduction of restrictive sanctions, had a strong impact on the mobility of the population, first of all, it concerns tourism. For a significant part of tourists who usually traveled abroad, there was a need to reorient to Russian resorts and other attractions within the country, which requires the active development of various tourism directions: from traditional routes to innovative niche formats (medical, industrial, stalking, etc. tourism). In recent years, tourism in Russia has become the preferred tool for the development of small, including single-industry cities, where it is possible to develop and strengthen the tourism services sector. Using tourism as a development tool is quite expensive. The state subsidizes the formation and improvement of infrastructure, but, in addition to financing, the development of tourism requires specific programs to increase tourist attractiveness. The unrecoverable costs are inevitably significant, and the results are unpredictable. The dilemmas associated with tourism financing are numerous and complex. This is especially true for tourist single-industry towns, which are difficult to fit into the available categories of state funding allocated for Russian single-industry towns (where the goal is to diversify the economy while maintaining employment in the city). The article examines the framework of state and municipal policy, which must be coordinated at all levels of government and provided with regional and federal support. Achieving this goal also requires clarifying the very concept of "tourist single-industry town" and the criteria for its definition.

This paper aims to explore how regional socio-economic conditions and organizational factors affect the success of place branding activities. The secondary purpose is to systematize place branding practice of the Russian federal subjects.We conducted a logistic regression analysis of place branding success probability versus quality of place branding organisation and regionalsocio-economic conditions.The sample is comprised of 22 federal subjects of Russia within the period of 2010 to 2021. The secondary purposeis achieved through a chronological and cartographic analysis of place branding activities. We confirmed the positive influenceof organizational factors, used as a control variable, onplace branding success, and revealed the relationships between place branding success and some socio-economic conditions ofthe federal subjects of Russia: a positive relationship with the GRP, investment, and migration; a negative relationship with the population. The relationship with the adjacency to regions, already having place brand, was not confirmed.

This study contributes to place branding theory by unveiling the relationship of regional socio-economic conditions and place branding success. Thus, regional conditions are needed to take into account when predicting the place branding results. This is especially important when using branding as a typical development tool because the uniform success across all regions is unlikely.

The study focuses on company towns of the Ural Federal District (UFD). Based on the analysis of the features of these settlements’ development, their typology was built as a tool for identifying the potential; and promising models and scenarios of spatial development were suggested. The research is based on the analysis of statistical materials, regulatory and legislative acts of the Russian Federation, as well as unconnected observations and expert interviews conducted by the authors on expeditions in 2020-2022. The study showed that among the company towns of the UFD region, settlements with a difficult socio-economic situation or with risks of its deterioration prevail. In addition, company towns form single-industry districts in the Sverdlovsk and Chelyabinsk regions. Promising scenarios of spatial development of Ural mono-settlements are considered: «local» (the development of company towns only by the administrations of cities and settlements), «regional» (participation in the development of company towns of forces and means at the regional level) and «federal» (the development of company towns with the help of a purposeful, coordinated state policy at the level of the whole country). For a more visual visualization of the results, the mapping method in the original development was used. According to the results of the study, it is concluded that with synchronized federal and regional support, the classic resource specializations of company towns can develop in the branches of a new techno paradigm. In order to systematically improve the situation in the mono–settlements of the Urals and prevent crisis phenomena in them, first of all, measures are needed aimed at increasing the competitiveness of city-forming enterprises, as well as increasing the social burden of large businesses – owners of city-forming enterprises.