Administrative Reforms in Post-Soviet Russia: Principal Problems and Results

Abstract

The article is devoted to the analyses of main problems and results of administrative reforms in Russia during the transition period (since 1985) from the Soviet administrative system to the actual administrative structure. The basis for it is the model developed by German researches H. Wollmann and S. Kuhlmann and included by them into the textbook «Administration and administrative reforms in Europe» one part of which in Russian translation is published in the 11th and 12th issues of this journal. The core of the book builds the administrative reforms analysis approach consisting of three stages (institutions, processes, final effects) and based on the actual new institutionalism theories. The author of the article sees such approach as a possibility for in depth analyses of the reforming process in Russia and development of a further reconfiguration conceptions for the Russian administrative system with the goal to rationalize its structure, optimize main processes, to get positive final effects. As one of the main difficulties during the reform the author together with other researchers sees in the rational bureaucracy experience absence in Russia connected also with a lack of appropriate normative and administrative culture. The influence of these factors is stressed in the conceptions of the historical and sociological institutionalism. The same negative factors put obstacles in the way of new managerial instruments usage seen as the most efficient and effective modernization stimulus for a rational administration by the new public management model in a frame of the institutionalism based on the rational choice theory. The actual administrative reform results are evaluated by the author in a whole as insufficient and requiring further correction.