Making room for volunteer participation in managing public affairs: A russian experience

Abstract

In 2018, the United Nations Volunteers organization recognized that the governmental support for volunteering is a superior public management practice, offering the much-needed fuel for the integration of volunteering in politics, law-making, and social planning at the government level. The present article analyzes the current situation of governmental support for volunteering at federal, regional, and local levels of public administration in the Russian Federation as a precondition for making coproduction of public services possible. The analysis is based on the scrutiny of documents, a questionnaire survey of Russian volunteers, and an expert poll of public servants and nonprofit organizations (NPO) leaders. The analysis of the state policy of support for volunteering is carried out with respect to the following parameters: the awareness and evaluation of national measures of the governmental support for volunteering, as well as the evaluation of informational, financial, consulting, and organizational measures to support volunteer organizations by regional and municipal civil servants. In a country such as the Russian Federation, where volunteering is a relatively young social phenomenon, public administration needs not only to provide support, but also to administer transformation processes toward sustainable development, relying on the partnership and resources volunteers bring for effectively managing public life.