Book chapter
From a Federation of Corporations to a Federation of Regions
The deepening rift between the system's potential and the challenges of rapidly changing socio-economic conditions make the transformation of Russia's state apparatus a matter of the nearest future; while, barring a radical overhaul, its preservation until 2025 is virtually impossible. Two major trends and resulting changes in administrative organization will determine Russia's political development processes in the coming years: reformatting relations between the authorities and society and reconfiguring arrangements between the federal center and regions. The center-regions relations dynamics is analyzed in terms of long pendulum oscillations with pendulum moving now from the model of 'federation of corporations' to the model of 'federation of regions'.
In book
The analytical report “Russian elite-2020” is the first in a series of papers, prepared under the auspices of the Research Grants Program of the Foundation for Development and Support of the Valdai Discussion Club. This research project analyzes the values, mindset and ideological orientation of post-Soviet elites, as well as the factors that influence their formation and evolution. Based on the results of the analysis, authors composed a portrait of a typical representative of the Russian elite in the 2020s, and forecasted how elite values and attitudes will continue to evolve and what effect they will have on the Russian domestic and foreign policy
This report analyzes the architecture of fiscal decentralization in one hundred and ten countries as well as in major metropolitan areas. In the majority of these countries, local authorities are taking on more and more responsibilities for public investment and the provision of services that are essential for both economic development and the well being of their citizens. If increasing fiscal decentralization has been a global trend in recent decades, there are significant variations across and within regions and countries. Local budgets make up on average 25% of public expenditure in the countries of the European Union but less than 5% in many developing countries. Decentralization in terms of revenue and expenditure autonomy has also increased, however this has been uneven across countries and has seen greater advances in expenditure than in revenues, where sources remain limited and uncertain, especially for small and middle size cities. With accelerating urbanization and important shifts in the global context (climate change, increasing risk of natural disaster, migration, and demographic changes among others), current funding levels are insufficient for local governments to respond to the urbanization of poverty, growing investment requirements and other pressing needs. The economic and financial crisis that began in 2008 only worsened the situation. This book identifies universal challenges facing local government finance, as well as those more regional and country specific. Some of the most common are inadequate sources of revenue, unpredictable transfers and grants, excessive higher-level budget controls, and unfunded mandates. In addition to analyzing these challenges and opportunities, the report proposes recommendations to strengthen the fiscal role and performance of local governments around the world.
This article describes the results of sociological research on estimation of condition and development prospects of federalism in Russia, which was conducted by ZIRCON Research Group in January - May 2011. The opinion of population and elite groups of four regions about the foundations of Russian federalism development, administrative-territorial system of the Russian Federation and its principles, relations between subjects-regions and federative centre is presented. The results of the research indicate that at the moment a request for political and administrative autonomy of the subjects of the Federation is not obviously formulated by either citizens or regional elite groups. Regional identity is not a common phenomenon. The authors mark out necessary factors of federalism development: expansion of economic self-dependence of regions, existence of ethno-national or regional identity of citizens, democratization and decentralization.
In the 1990s, sub-national authoritarian regimes – local-based monopolies of ruling elites – emerged in many of Russia’s regions and cities against the background of spontaneous decentralization of government and competitive electoral politics. In the 2000s, the decline of political competition and recentralization of the Russian state led to incorporation of sub-national authoritarian regimes under federal control and cooptation of local-based actors into the dominant party, United Russia. This paper is devoted to a comparative analysis of sub-national authoritarianism in Russia in light of the experience of local political machines in other countries, ranging from US cities from the 1870s-1930s to Southern Italy from the 1950s-1980s. Unlike the American political machines, which were demolished from below as a by-product of modernization processes, Russia’s sub-national authoritarian regimes were integrated from above into the nation-wide authoritarianism. One might expect further stagnation of sub-national authoritarian regimes in Russia until major regime changes will occur on the national level.
Author reviews Russian legal system based on The Russian Constitution (1993) and also considers functioning of basic political institutions and others associated with them. At the same time author analyses reasons of unsatisfactory functioning of particular institutions from the point of view of the Constitution. In particular, author estimates constitutional status of Russian President and reveals his unproportional impact on other political and even civil societies institutions.
The analytical report “Russian elite-2020” is the first in a series of papers, prepared under the auspices of the Research Grants Program of the Foundation for Development and Support of the Valdai Discussion Club. This research project analyzes the values, mindset and ideological orientation of post-Soviet elites, as well as the factors that influence their formation and evolution. Based on the results of the analysis, authors composed a portrait of a typical representative of the Russian elite in the 2020s, and forecasted how elite values and attitudes will continue to evolve and what effect they will have on the Russian domestic and foreign policy
The paper looks at the impact of imperfect assessment of water discharge on the level of surface water pollution and allocation of environmental budget in a framework of one river basin region. Analysis is based on the partial equilibrium model with unidirectional spatially accumulated external effect in the presence of partial natural absorbtion. The effect of water discharge assessment imperfection on the level of water pollution at every location and social welfare is investigated. It is shown that decentralization accompanied by the improvement in water discharge quality assessment may reduce the welfare loss. However, even under complete elimination of assessment imperfections resource allocation under decentralization is still inefficient.
качество воды, потери в благосостоянии, искажения в оценке загрязнения, децентрализация, Water discharge quality, welfare loss, imperfect assessment, Decentralization