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Государственная поддержка социально ориентированных НКО: зарубежный опыт
The article features an analysis of a set of measures of government support for socially oriented nonprofit organizations (SO NPOs) enacted in 2009 – 2013 in Russia. The analysis is aimed at assessing this Russian regulatory framework designed to channel government support to SO NPOs by comparing it with tools of government employed to facilitate cross-sector partnership in the delivery of social services in selected foreign countries. For a theoretical framework of the investigation of interaction between government and SO NPOs we rely on the demand / supply model and in particular on the theory of market and government “failure”. The employed empirical material includes full-text versions of relevant Russian Federal norms and regulations, selected matching documents of foreign countries as well as data of sociological surveys of Russian NPOs conducted by NRU HSE. Firstly, principles used by Russian law-makers to define legally the subsector of SO NPOs are investigated. The analysis of tools of government support introduced by the enacted norms and regulations is then arranged by major form of support: financial, transfer of property rights, tax incentives etc. Data is featured on the scope of government support for SO NOPs at the federal level of government and in part at the level of regions. International comparisons follow. Overall the set of measures discussed constitutes a serious positive innovation in Russian government practices vis-à-vis SO NPOs. It shows substantial similarity to government tool kits employed to support NPOs elsewhere in the world. This relates to criteria of legal eligibility for support and to the composition of the tool kit, which includes government subsidies / grants, tax incentives etc. There remains room for expansion of the Russian tool kit. In implementing new legal norms attention must be paid to keeping administrative barriers for access to government support reasonably low, in particular for small NPOs constituting a majority in the Russian nonprofit sector.