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Abstract
The article provides an examination of the role of Russia’s dual (semi-presidential) executive in the budget process. The Constitution gives the president a strategic role, leaving operational budget formation to the ‘government’, chaired by the prime minister, whereas the common view of Russian policy making is of the president’s ‘hands-on management’. The article looks at how the president engages in the budget process, and whether, on the one hand, excessive ‘hands-on’ presidential involvement leads to a disrupted policy process, or, on the other hand, it breaks down the inter-agency deadlocks that are common in Russian policy making. The conclusion is that a reasonable balance is found between the two.
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Notes
1. In Russian parlance what we would call the cabinet is also known as the ‘government’. The Western usage is preferred here.
2. For suggestions that it has, see Aptekar’ and Sinitsyn (Citation2015), Monaghan (Citation2013, p. 1232), and Papchenkova and Liutova (Citation2015).
3. Article 114.1(a): The government draws up and presents the federal budget to the State Duma, and secures its implementation.
4. On the significance of this, see Iwasaki (Citation2002, p. 308).
5. On those thoughts and experiences, see Hill and Gaddy (Citation2013).
6. Nigel Gould-Davies (Citation2016) uses the phrase ‘sovereign globalisation’ to describe the simultaneous determination to control strategic resources while being sufficiently open to the world to exploit them.
7. His response to the threat of enterprise closures at Pikalevo in 2009 illustrates the commitment to the latter (Fortescue, Citation2009).
8. The original figure in the 2016 budget was 3.1%. By the time the budget was formally amended in November 2016 it had reached 3.7%. At a meeting soon after Putin said: ‘the budget deficit should be 3.7% – and that’s where it is. True, there is the risk of a small increase. … Of course, there’s nothing terrible if it gets to 3.8 or 3.9, but all the same we should strive to keep it within the boundaries of the [budget] law’ (kremlin.ru/events/president/news/53237).
9. The MED draft Forecast to 2035, released in October 2016, sees growth 1.5 times lower than the global average well into the future (Kuvshinova & Prokopenko, Citation2016).
10. The Chamber of Trade and Industry is the successor body of the Soviet organisation of the same name. It has generally been seen as more ‘conservative’ than other business associations, and has not featured prominently in recent economic policy making.
11. The passage of the budget legislation through the Duma is the focus of Benjamin Noble’s contribution to this special issue.
12. For a list of the meetings in 2016 for the 2017–2019 budget, with links to Medvedev’s introductory comments and lists of participants, see government.ru/news/24604/.
13. As the language of a nation with a rich bureaucratic tradition, Russian has several words for ‘meeting’. Two are used here. A soveshchanie is a meeting of a group of individuals, rather than of a formally constituted body. They might meet together regularly and in quite a routinised way, or the meetings might be one-offs in response to particular circumstances. A zasedanie is a meeting of a formally constituted body with an established membership.
14. The commission’s full name is Government Commission for Budget Policy for the Coming Financial Year and Plan Period, that is, reflecting the planning cycle but also indicating that the Commission is not involved in long-term planning.
15. For examples from each stage of his career, see Petrachkova (Citation2006), Kuvshinova (Citation2011), and finally, Pis’mennaia, Tovkailo, and Kuvshinova (Citation2012).
16. For examples, see Pis’mennaia et al. (Citation2012) and government.ru/news/1715/.
17. The formal decree formalising his membership seems to have been issued only in August 2013 (government.ru/info/2620/).
18. The presidential administration was represented at the meeting on regional funding by presidential advisor Igor Levitin and that on natural resources and the environment by Vladimir Simonenko, head of the presidential administration’s Expert Division. It had no representation at the rest.
19. For one example of many, see kremlin.ru/events/president/news/50185. One this occasion Medvedev was absent. There appears to be no rule regarding the presence or absence of the prime minister at these meetings.
20. For examples of President Medvedev’s soveshchaniia specifically on budget matters, see news.kremlin.ru/news/12575 and news.kremlin.ru/transcripts/12769. As with Putin’s meetings with members of the government, there appears to be no rule as to whether the prime minister attends these meetings. Under both presidents the practice has varied.
21. One newspaper account of this disagreement refers to an earlier Putin soveshchanie, on 22 September (Butrin, Citation2016b). It is not reported on the Kremlin website.
22. Another meeting on the budget, held on 25 October, is reported in no less pro forma terms (kremlin.ru/events/president/news/53144).
23. Julian Cooper provides more detail on the involvement of the defence sector in the budget process in his contribution to this special issue.
24. The new presidential Commission for Strategic Development and Priority Projects, of which the operational arm is its presidium under the chairmanship of Medvedev, has responsibility for 11 priority areas, most of which could be seen as having a social element. Medvedev has stated that budget planning must be coordinated with the Commission (government.ru/news/23676/; government.ru/news/24873).
25. Representatives of the oil sector were unusually present at a September 2015 Putin soveshchanie on budget formation, clearly because the possibility of extracting extra tax from them to fill holes in the 2016 budget was discussed (kremlin.ru/events/president/news/50344).