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The influence of administrative procedures on the incentives of bureaucrats, supervisors and citizens
One of the measures implemented as a part of administrative reform in Russia was the introduction of administrative procedures — special rules for providing government services that specify the process, the timing, the sanctions, etc, which can be used by bureaucrats for coordinating their activities, and by their principals (higher ranking bureaucrats and citizens) to control their agents. The main idea behind the administrative procedures was to increase the transparency of bureaucracies that provide government services, to simplify the control over bureaucrats, to prevent corruption, and, consequently, to increase the quality of government services. But after a few years since the introduction of administrative procedures we still face the problem of low accountability of bureaucrats. Thus, the main goal of the paper is to show whether administrative procedures can solve the problem of bureaucrats’ opportunism, and if they can, what are the key determinants of their effectiveness. To answer the question we provide two simple models of interaction between bureaucrats and citizens, and bureaucrats of different ranks, and describe the links between the models, to show how the introduction of administrative procedures influences the outcome of the interaction between the agents. We also define the set of parameters that can make administrative procedures a real means of control over bureaucrats and thus lead to better quality of government services.