Article
Российский некоммерческий сектор: особый путь?
This article discusses the objectives and challenges for corporate governance of SOEs in Russia, and provides an international perspective of the performance of SOEs as compared to privately owned companies. Recent trends in the policy and management of state property are described. The problems of corporate governance in Russia are described in an agency perspective, and survey evidence on corporate governance and transparency of Russian SOEs is provided. Particular attention is given to the legal construction of the state corporation. The final section on the performance effects of state ownership summarizes the key contributions in the international economic literature in this field.
In the contemporary global context, there is no universally shared understanding of what democracy is, but democracy still functions as a universal goal. This contested universality can be conceptualized by interpreting democracy as an empty signifier, as a number of chapters in this volume do. Empty signifiers, by definition, accumulate a lot of power. However the notion of democracy has acquired even greater significance in the age of globalization. By reconfiguring the ‘demos’, the world can be both integrated (democracy as cosmopolitan/international) and disintegrated (democracy as national/sovereign). In any specific political situation democracy can be articulated at a specific point in the spectrum between the cosmopolitan and the national, but full consensus is available only around a very broad notion of democracy as the basic goal of development for all countries as well as for the entire world.
After the economic and ideological changes of the 1990’s older people in Russia have shifted to become the most vulnerable, poor and disrespected group in the country’s population. However, despite the slowly recovering birth rate and low life expectancy, the older population is predicted to constitute almost a quarter of the Russian population (24.8%) in 2016.
However, so called “people’s universities” have long been part of the Soviet tradition and were renewed mostly for the education for older people in the post-Soviet era. Mostly they are supported by non-profit organisations and offer informal education on a range of topics and crafts. These programmes have proved to be enjoyed by older learners and are recognised to be major contributors to active ageing in Russia. Nevertheless, their numbers and capacities are not sufficient to respond to the variety of needs and interests of older people. At the same time large formal educational institutions such as universities do not usually consider the older population to be a target audience for their programmes.
Nevertheless, some political steps have been made by a few Russian regions. This article reports on a national survey of University of the Third Age-type provision for older people in eight cities nationwide. For example, in the Republic of Bashkortostan a region-wide governmentally sponsored programme, “Third Age Universities for All”, came into operation in 2011. A small survey of U3A students in one city is reported. It suggests that while the programme needs to be amended in many ways, it sets a worthwhile precedent and hopefully will be followed by other regions.
The role of universities has undergone dramatic changes. Universities no longer only host knowledge, but are now required to develop it further and to contribute to economic growth and support for e.g. companies to strengthen their competitiveness. This is of particular importance for the Russian Federation, where the last 20 years saw the dismantlement of the innovation system of the Soviet Union and ever since has been struggling to close the gap to the innovation-driven economies of Western Europe. When the Russian Federation shifted towards a market economy in the 1990s, economists, sociologists, political scientists and/or management staff educated in modern principles of management were in short supply. To alleviate the situation, the State University - the Higher School of Economics - was founded November 27, 1992 by the Russian Federation Government Decree No 736 to educate future leading professionals in the field of economics and social sciences. Currently HSE is the largest research-led institutions in the field of social and economic sciences in Eastern Europe. Spread over Four Russian cities - Moscow, St. Petersburg, Nizhny Novgorod and Perm. Of particular interest is the Innovation Infrastructure Development Program which puts great emphasize on commercialization of research results and entrepreneurial thinking.
Intergovernmental Reforms in the Russian Federation: One Step Forward, Two Steps Back? is a critical analysis of Russia’s intergovernmental reform program which began in the early 1990s. It assesses the effects of a broad range of reforms adopted over two tumultuous decades during which the Russian Federation experienced significant, and at times drastic, political regime changes, coupled with a similarly turbulent economic growth trajectory. This environment reshaped intergovernmental relations, requiring certain fiscal responsibilities to be delegated to the subnational levels. These reforms, however, were not always accompanied by the kinds of administrative and political structures required to support a truly devolved system of intergovernmental fiscal relations. As this study indicates, in recent years there has been a tendency to recentralize some powers that had been granted to subnational governments under earlier reforms—a trend that may call into question the future of fiscal decentralization in the federation. Moreover, the current global economic downturn has had a significant effect on Russia’ economic growth, largely because of the country’s overdependence on oil, gas, and mineral exports. It is likely that in the present economic climate the political regime will be inclined to further limit subnational autonomy.
This is a review of issues and problems, including cross-border disputes, arising during customs examination and sampling in the Russian Federation and the European Union. The Customs Union of the Russian Federation, Republic of Kazakhstan, and the Republic of Belarus was formed in accordance with the Agreement of 6 October 2007. This article provides some concrete examples of cross-border disputes in comparison to similar problems that have arisen in the EU, particularly in the Netherlands. Based on this review, we will conclude with some suggestions to improve the handling of cross-border disputes arising from customs examinations and sampling.
We address the external effects on public sector efficiency measures acquired using Data Envelopment Analysis. We use the health care system in Russian regions in 2011 to evaluate modern approaches to accounting for external effects. We propose a promising method of correcting DEA efficiency measures. Despite the multiple advantages DEA offers, the usage of this approach carries with it a number of methodological difficulties. Accounting for multiple factors of efficiency calls for more complex methods, among which the most promising are DMU clustering and calculating local production possibility frontiers. Using regression models for estimate correction requires further study due to possible systematic errors during estimation. A mixture of data correction and DMU clustering together with multi-stage DEA seems most promising at the moment. Analyzing several stages of transforming society’s resources into social welfare will allow for picking out the weak points in a state agency’s work.