Ending Mayoral Elections has Reduced Effectiveness of Municipal Governance in Russia, New Study Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, December 7 – The shift from elected mayors to appointed ones or even to city managers, a move intended to integrate city leaders in the power vertical and reduce conflicts between them and regional and federal officials, has reducing both spending on local needs and the effectiveness of city governments, the Center for Advanced Governance says.

            When the heads of cities were elected, they devoted most of their attention to meeting the needs of their constituents in the hopes of gaining re-election. That sometimes led them into conflict with regional officials who saw them as potential competitors and federal ones who saw them spending too much money.

            But with the elimination of elected mayors, the appointed ones or city managers have become less concerned about the needs of the population below them and ever more responsive to the demands of those above them, the Center says (znak.com/2020-12-07/eksperty_otmena_pryamyh_vyborov_merov_privela_k_snizheniyu_effektivnosti_municipalitetov).

            If those changes had made the city governments more efficient and effective, there might have been an argument for this change, but in fact, the experts at the Center for Advanced Governance say, there has been a decline in both efficiency and effectiveness, with the needs of the population being increasingly ignored.

            Even before the changes, local self-administration was hardly completely independent, and both the reforms Moscow has imposed and the criminal charges against municipal leaders it has opened have only made the situation worse. Spending on education and other public services has been cut and is likely to be cut further.

            That may help balance the budget in Moscow but only at the cost of further impoverishing the population in the localities. And what is worse, the Center finds, is that the cities are now in worse shape in terms of borrowing and financial management than they were, exactly the opposite of what the Kremlin said would be true with its reforms.

            Not surprisingly, Russians in some places are seeking to retain or restore elected mayors as a way of defending against further cutbacks. The most prominent of these efforts is in Yekaterinburg. Activists have collected more than 15,000 signatures on a petition; but Moscow and the regional powers are opposed, making progress in that direction unlikely.