This blog post is based on a recent article by IDI Fellow, Alexander Obolonsky (Obolonsky, A. V. (2017). The Crisis of the Bureaucratic State and the Failed Attempts to Overcome it in the Russian Public Service. Croatian and Comparative Public Administration, 17(4), 569–591.) Excerpts are published here with the permission of the Journal’s editor.
The purpose of this paper is to consider several acute problems of political and administrative theory and practice at a time of a general crisis of the bureaucratic state: the current decline both of institutional effectiveness and public trust in executive institutions and persons in power, the paradox of the positive influence of public political distrust on political development, the dependence between trust and corruption, and the attempts of administrative science in several countries to find a new pattern of relationships between state and civil society. Combining these initial prerequisites in a single approach, the author devotes the major part of the paper to the case of Russia; i.e., he provides a detailed description of the several rounds of efforts to create a genuine public service in post-Soviet Russia and analyses the reasons for their dramatic failures and disappointments.
Modern governments face new changes, one of which is most certainly the decline of trust in public institutions, public officials, and politicians. The massive and ever-larger street demonstrations and protests in over a hundred Russian towns and cities in the spring and summer of 2017 were a reaction to corruptive abuses of power, and serve as a remarkable example of both public political awakening and the inability of the authorities to meet the new challenge adequately. The authorities’ reaction to these events is a mixture of fear, brutality, and lack of understanding of what is going on. Ordinary people are becoming increasingly convinced that those in power have other priorities than to serve the public and are ready to oppose them in different ways, even at the risk of being arrested. As recently witnessed during the events in the center of Moscow on Russia Day – a national holiday observed on June 12– and several times previously, during the spring months, most of the young people in the crowd overcame their natural physical fear and were psychologically ready to be detained and exposed to administrative arrests. The clumsy efforts of the authorities to both frighten youth by the brutal actions of detachments of special guards and to distract them by different means of entertainment were unsuccessful and counterproductive in some way. This is not exclusively a Russian issue. Similar waves of “occupy” and other protest movements could be observed in many countries in the period 2011–2017, from the USA to Ukraine, and from the Arabic region to Iran and Hong Kong. It may be said that a rather serious alienation of the people from the state is underway.
It is important to note that the leaders of street protests are well-educated and personally successful young people. Because they are better educated and informed, they understand their human and political rights better and see the possible threats clearly. As a result, they treat governments and public services more critically. Public expectations have grown and demands addressed at governments have multiplied, and because these demands are not being fulfilled, the level of dissatisfaction has increased. The inability of governments to effectively manage painful social problems and to meet the challenges of the new age is becoming obvious to the public and causes people to distrust the bureaucratic system as such. Altogether, it is possible to speak about a general crisis of the bureaucratic state model in general, at least in its traditional forms.
The reactions of different governments to this situation range from rhetorical complaints of how “it is difficult to govern in an anti-government era” to real, serious efforts to reform the civil service and other public institutions. Some scholars claim that this is just a part of the story; i.e., the necessary rejectionist step in constructing a new governance paradigm.
The events of the last 40 years, especially the critical reconsideration of horrible atrocities of those in power in totalitarian and authoritarian states in the 20th century have taught the citizens to be suspicious, or at least cautious, of their governments’ ambitions and expansion. As a result, the civic “desacralisation” of the state, even in countries with a long-term statist and paternalistic tradition like Russia, has become an empirical fact. It may be considered one of the major intellectual achievements of the second half of the 20th century and may be interpreted as a reincarnation of the liberal concept of the role and place of the state in public life.
Alexander V. Obolonsky
Professor at the National Research University Higher School of Economics,
Moscow, Russian Federation
IDI Fellow
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