The Changing Role of the State and State Bureaucracy in the Context of Public Administration Reforms: Russian and Foreign Experience

Abstract

The challenge of implementing administrative reform (AR) in the Russian Federation corresponds to international ideas and practice of improving public administration that were conceptually based on the theory of New Public Management (NPM), which supposes the delegation of some state functions to commercial structures and civil society institutes. However, the results of the efforts to implement AR in Russia are not yet satisfactory. An important cause of failure was the fact that the application of the AR model to Russian conditions had not been conceptually worked out to a sufficient degree and, in particular, the question of the role and functions of contemporary government had not been thought through. In essence, the attempt was made to apply a number of sound and rational principles in the absence of many key preconditions that evoke a need for this model.