Providing Goods and Votes? Federal Elections and the Quality of Local Governance in Russia

Abstract

Does electoral support affect the quality of public goods provision? In this study, we explore the variety of governance patterns on the level of Russian municipalities from 2012 to 2018. We estimate the effects of budget autonomy and electoral loyalty during federal elections on public goods provision and explore whether elected heads provide better services. Our findings suggest that since elected heads have limited capacity to provide better services, electoral loyalty does not uniformly result in improved public goods provision in municipalities.

Notes

1 ‘Federal’nyi proekt “Bezopasnye dorogi”’, United Russia website, available at: https://proekty.er.ru/node/6588, accessed 23 October 2020.

2 Data on local budget implementation of the Russian Federation: ‘Dannye ob ispolnenii mestnykh budgetov ot 18.2.2018’ Ministry of Finance, 1 December 2018, available at: https://www.minfin.ru/common/upload/library/2019/01/main/01.12.2018.pdf, accessed 21 October 2020.

3 For example, see Taylor (2011), Gel’man and Starodubtsev (2016).

4 Ukaz Prezidenta Rossiiskoi Federatsii No. 607 ‘Ob otsenke effektivnosti deyatel’nosti organov metsnogo samoupravleniya gorodskikh okrugov i munitsipal’nykh raionov’, 28 April 2008, available at: http://pravo.gov.ru/proxy/ips/?docbody=&nd=102121454, accessed 23 April 2021.

5 Postanovlenie pravitel’stva ‘O merakh po realizatsii Ukaza Prezidenta Rossiiskoi Federatsii “Ob otsenke effektivnosti deyatel’nosti organov metsnogo samoupravleniya gorodskikh okrugov i munitsipal’nykh raionov”’, No. 607, 28 April 2008; ‘I podpunkta “i” punkta 2 Ukaza Prezidenta Rossiiskoi Federatsii ot 7 maya 2012’, No. 601, 7 May 2012; ‘Ob osnovnykh napravleniyakh sovershenstvovaniya gosudartsvennogo upravleniya’, No. 1317, 17 December 2012, available at: http://pravo.gov.ru/proxy/ips/?docbody=&nd=102161832, accessed 23 April 2021.

6 We use the term ‘local self-government’ to refer to the municipal level that is de jure autonomous from the state power (gosudarstvennaya vlast’), while the term ‘governance’ here refers to the modus operandi of local political institutions, including quality of governance.

7 Federal’nyi zakon No.8-FZ ‘O vnesenii izmenenii v stat’i 32 i 33 Federal’nogo zakona “Ob osnovnykh garantiyakh izbiratel’nykh prav i prava na uchastie v referendume grazhdan Rossiiskoi Federatsii” i Federal’nyi zakon “Ob obshchikh printsipakh organizatsii metsnogo samoupravleniya v Rossiiskoi Federatsii”’, 3 February 2015, available at: http://base.garant.ru/70858528/#ixzz6uOntx0wM, accessed 9 May 2021.

8 The city-manager (contract) model is still in operation.

9 ‘Chto popravki v Konstitutsiyu menyayut v sud’be mestnogo samoupravleniya’, Vedomosti, 24 January 2020, available at: https://www.vedomosti.ru/opinion/articles/2020/01/24/821369-popravki-v-konstitutsiyu, accessed 21 October 2020.

10 Local heads include directly elected mayors, city managers appointed by local legislatures and those selected by competition committees (konkursnye komissii). Basically, the model with appointees selected by competition committees is ‘the improved’ version of ‘the city-manager model’ where there is only one head of the administration, while the city-manager model implies the co-existence of a more symbolic head of the city (glava goroda).

11 ‘Sud priznal zakonnoi otstavku mera Petrozavodska Galiny Shirshinoi’, RBC.ru, 21 January 2016, available at: https://www.rbc.ru/rbcfreenews/56a0a61a9a7947b196a9e34a, accessed 3 October 2019.

12 For example, see Nistotskaya and Khakhunova (2018).

13 Ukaz Prezidenta Rossiiskoi Federatsii No. 607 ‘Ob otsenke effektivnosti deyatel’nosti organov metsnogo samoupravleniya gorodskikh okrugov i munitsipal’nykh raionov’, 28 April 2008, available at: http://pravo.gov.ru/proxy/ips/?docbody=&nd=102121454, accessed 23 April 2021; Postanovlenie pravitel’stva ‘O merakh po realizatsii Ukaza Prezidenta Rossiiskoi Federatsii “Ob otsenke effektivnosti deyatel’nosti organov metsnogo samoupravleniya gorodskikh okrugov i munitsipal’nykh raionov”’, No. 607, 28 April 2008; ‘I podpunkta “i” punkta 2 Ukaza Prezidenta Rossiiskoi Federatsii ot 7 maya 2012’, No. 601, 7 May 2012; ‘Ob osnovnykh napravleniyakh sovershenstvovaniya gosudartsvennogo upravleniya’, No. 1317, 17 December 2012, available at: http://pravo.gov.ru/proxy/ips/?docbody=&nd=102161832, accessed 23 April 2021.

14 ‘Munitsipal'naya statistika’, Federal’naya sluzhba gosudarstvennoi statistiki, available at: https://rosstat.gov.ru, accessed 1 June 2021.

15 Rosstat, data available at: http://www.gks.ru/dbscripts/munst/. The data for the period from 2012 to 2017 have been collected, cleaned and analysed under the research project ‘The State of the Russian Municipal Power in 2010s’ by the European University at St Petersburg commissioned by the Institute for Independent Research in the Field of Education.

16 Intra-city territories, rural and urban settlements are not included in the analysis.

17 The optimal solution to the problem of non-random missingness is to explore the sources of missingness and to use multiple imputation techniques to plug in the missing data. Otherwise, the data loss due to missingness may amount to more than 50% of the whole data. However, this is a considerable task on its own and is not discussed in this essay.

18 ‘Natsional’nyi proekt “Zhil’e i gorodskaya sreda”’, available at: https://www.reformagkh.ru/relocation-about, accessed 23 April 2021.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Margarita Zavadskaya

Margarita Zavadskaya, Researcher, Department of Political Science, European University at St Petersburg, 6/1A Gagarinskaya Street, Room 328, 191187 St Petersburg, Russian Federation; Postdoctoral Researcher, University of Helsinki, Aleksanteri Institute, 33 Unioninkatu, Helsinki FI-00014, Finland. Senior Research Fellow, Laboratory for Comparative Social Research, National Research University Higher School of Economics, Mocow, Russian Federation. Emails: [email protected]; [email protected]

Lev Shilov

Lev Shilov, Director, European University at St Petersburg, Urbanism & Participation Research Centre, 6/1A Gagarinskaya Street, 191187 St Petersburg, Russian Federation. Email: [email protected]