Book review: Sergey O Shokhin and Ekaterina V Kudryashova, The Legal Framework for Strategic Planning in Contemporary Russia: Monograph

Abstract

Many of the public management concepts that emerged at the beginning of the 20th century are still in use in the 21st century. One of these century-old, but still relevant instruments of public governance is planning. Throughout the process of falls and rises during the 20th century (Minzberg, 1994) modern strategic planning concept evolved into one of the means of efficient public governance in the evergrowing complexity of social processes. Although strategic management is an area of serious academic inquiry, there is still a need for better understanding of its theoretical basis and practical implementation. General approaches to strategic planning are crystallizing out of theoretical discussions fueled by the studies on specific countries’ experiences. In 2022 Shokhin S.O., Kudryashova E.V. published “The Legal Framework for Strategic Planning in Contemporary Russia.” MGIMO Publishing House publishes such book across a range of social science disciplines in various formats and in different languages trying to reach the educated community around the world. The new volume is another attempt to make the Russian administrative practices and scientific findings more accessible for academics and practitioners around the world. This is important for maintaining the diversity of views in social sciences. The book presents a few milestones in the evolution of the strategic planning concept. Some milestones have been forgotten by social science researchers now. For example, in 1922 the country which was mostly relying on plans in its social-economic development appeared on the political map of the world. We speak about the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (the USSR). The publication of the book marks this centennial anniversary. In the first chapter the authors look closer at the historical processes. For instance, they mention the first largescale economy recovery plan in Soviet Russia—the GOELRO—the Government Electrification of Russia plan of 1920. Later this mega-plan transformed into a socialeconomic development plan. The authors highlight the influence of the GOELRO success on the recovery and development plans of European countries later in the 20th century. Additionally, the 5-years plans for social-economic development, and their underlying doctrine of planning are discussed in the first chapter. The historic legal framework for planning is presented in this chapter for the reader including the constitutional provisions, the laws on planning as well as the interaction between different documents with legal, political, or quasi-legal nature (we mean here the special form of documents called “directives”1). This detailed historical overview in the first chapter is very useful, because the authors demonstrate the influence of the historical context on the later developments in strategic planning. After the discussion of historical, political, and international context of current strategic planning in Russia the authors focus on the Federal law N 172-FZ of 28.06.2014 “On strategic planning in Russian Federation.” The authors provide the precise text of the law translated into English with comments from the authors as well. Therefore, there is no need to search for the law provisions in other sources. For example, the definition of strategic planning, given by the legislator. Strategic Planning is described in the Federal law as integrated process including forecasting socialeconomic development, program-target planning and spatial planning, monitoring of implementation of strategic planning documents. The attached text makes it quite easy for the readers to form their own opinion and enter debates with the authors if necessary. The book suggests that the legal framework per se does not guarantee successful communication of strategic goals and does not necessarily ensure the desired achievements. However, sooner or later plans and strategies need to be somehow allocated and defined for the legislative needs and law interpretation purposes. Problems defining the legal meaning of strategies and plans are inevitably faced by the administrations, legislators, courts etc. The law theory has a lot of difficulties to accommodate the modern Book review