Economic and Political-Economic Factors of Regulatory Activity in Russia: Analysis in the Context of the Rule-Making Initiative Subjects

Abstract

The paper examines the sources of the regulatory restrictiveness of regulatory framework in Russia using the methods of statistical and linguistic analysis of legal documents. The research database includes federal laws, decrees of the President of the Russian Federation, orders and resolutions of the Government of the Russian Federation, orders of federal executive bodies adopted within 19962018. Based on the analysis of regulatory documents, a chronology of a change in the priority directions of increasing regulatory rigidity in Russia in 19962018 was built. Regulatory requirements are as a rule concentrated in a small number of official documents. Regulatory policy priorities are changing with inertia, priorities of earlier periods are inherited. Stable increase of regulatory rigidity in the financial sector was one of the priorities of the rule-making activity in Russia throughout the entire study period. The paper argues that the increase of Russian regulatory framework rigidity recently was largely due to a significant increase in regulatory rigidity in the public sector: these processes developed after the start of the global financial and economic crisis of 2008–2009. The paper reveals an increase in the regulatory rigidity of documents of public authorities near boundaries of electoral cycles in Russia. Steady growth of the regulatory rigidity multiplier appears to be among the main causes of the “regulatory guillotine” reform in Russia