Local Strategic Planning: The Case of Russia

Abstract

This chapter is meant to highlight the peculiarities of strategic planning in the Russian Federation. The great variety of cultures and traditions of social and economic conditions of Russian regions is compensated by the standardization of Federal legislation on strategic planning and strict requirements about the structure of regional and municipal strategy as well as procedures of strategy preparation and realization. This situation turns strategic planning in the Russian Federation into a stratified and bulky bureaucratic process, with elements of methodical arbitrariness and an abundance of control and supervising functions. At the municipal level, additional difficulties of strategic planning are caused by a dependence on subsidies of most municipalities from federal and regional funds that are allocated “from above”, by a multilevel system of municipal management. Recently the process of strategic planning is resulting in uneven resource allocation and considerable financing deficit at the lowest levels (rural settlements). Nevertheless, strategic planning in the Russian Federation in general induces municipalities to think more carefully about their core purposes and tasks to find the proper proportion of allocated resources and results of their use.