Quality of public administration: the measurement and conditions for achieving it

The experience in the field of institutional problems of the recent financial, economic and social crisis contributed to a large-scale study of the government role in the modern economy and society. According to most experts and analysts, it has become axiomatic that governments should create the conditions that will contribute to economic growth and well-being of citizens, as well as: • redistribute income more fairly; • regulate the activities of businesses and individuals for the public good; • supply the public with goods and services of appropriate quality and in the required volume. This is to be implemented under the conditions of financial constraints and pressing demographic situation (aging of population). The main objective of the state is to improve the quality of life of its citizens. Accordingly, social policy should correspond to this objective. However, it is very difficult to ensure equal satisfaction of social needs in a federal state. Bodies of the state and municipal authorities are the main providers of public goods (public and judicial services, education, healthcare, public safety, et cetera), distributed over the different levels of government. Each Russian citizen, regardless of their place of residence, must receive equal set of services from the State in line with the Constitution, which is not the case yet. Moreover, the sharp inter-regional differentiation inevitably increases the number of lagging regions, weakening the mechanisms of inter-regional economic cooperation, which trigger the growth of interregional conflicts. It greatly complicates the implementation of a single nationwide policy of socioeconomic transformation. When referring to the comprehensive differentiation of regions in the Russian Federation, it is worth noting that the major differences in the living conditions of the population in the central and peripheral parts, and different regions of the country are perceived by society as violation of the principles of social justice and can lead to the strengthening of efferent trends. The governing factors in this situation are more than diverse. In our opinion, the key factor is "quality of public administration". Since academic community has not developed a common understanding of this phenomenon, we use the recommendations of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and the Canadian Fraser Institute. The revealed components of the "quality of public administration" are decomposed into figures. The quality of public administration is evaluated using the min/max method for the period of 2010-2012. This enables us to identify the key components and indicators that generate the maximum disparity between the federal districts of Russia with regard to "quality of public administration".

Keywords

Authors

References