Development of Local Self-Government in the Agenda of the Decade (Notes from the 19th Strategic Planning Leaders Forum)

Despite many unfavourable conditions, in October 2021 it became possible to hold the next scheduled the 19th Strategic Planning Leaders Forum in Saint Petersburg in person and in full scale. In 2021, the key topic of the forum was “Strategic Planning Leaders Forum of the Regions and Cities of Russia: Reality 2020 and Agenda for the Next Decade”. Although the theory, methodology and practice of strategic planning remain the key object of discussions at the forum invariably (for almost 20 years), the approaches for the analysis of this topic at the forum do not remain unchanged. Strictly speaking, two stages can be distinguished here: before the adoption of Federal Law No. 172 on strategic planning (2014) and the entire subsequent period. At the first stage, the provisions which we would like to see in the law on strategic planning were mainly discussed. At the second stage, issues of implementation of this law, ways to ensure the relationship of strategic planning documents and the capacity of its “power vertical” moved into the spotlight. However, it was impossible not to notice that already at the 2019 forum, many key issues of methodology and practice of strategic planning began to be postponed. This shift was even more typical for the full-time part of the 2021 forum. The discussion mainly focused on issues of a private nature, i.e. issues that are no less important, but still clearly do not take into account the fullness of the problems of strategic planning practice in the conditions of growing uncertainty, especially in the context of the “agenda” of the coming decade. Frankly speaking, in many positions this “agenda” was not particularly clarified at the forum, which is naturally related to the specifics of the social and economic situation in the country at the turn of 2020-2021. One of the issues which fully integrated the analysis of the existing situation with a view of its further prospects was Russian local self-government.