The Vertical Constraints: Centralization and Management Effectiveness in Urban Russia

At present, the direct election of municipal heads has been canceled in most Russian regions, which practically completed the integration of municipalities into single, top-down model of governance. These institutional reforms caused changes in the factors determining the development and management effectiveness of municipalities. We have conducted a comparative analysis of six urban districts in Perm Krai to show that the effectiveness of the municipal administration is mainly stimulated by a constellation of informal, economic, and institutional factors. The presence of a regional actor that exercises patronage and control over a municipality counts as “informal.” An economic factor is represented by the absence of major city/town-forming business companies, which stimulates the city administration to actively raise additional funds through regional development programs. Finally, an institutional factor is the pressure exercised by independent local-council members. The constellation of these three factors determines the effectiveness of a local administration in the context of centralization. We use municipal statistical data, as well as semi-formalized interviews with 39 respondents collected in the six urban districts under study as an empirical basis to verify and prove the stated theoretical propositions.