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Introduction
Among the long list of problems of post-Soviet society, the difficulties associated with the management sphere draw attention to themselves. The overall mission of the systemic transformations of the 1990s and 2000s, as is well known, had a liberal-democratic meaning, which implied both the spread of market standards and the democratization of political life, and a qualitative change in the management system in the direction of increasing its flexibility. Actually, the course of the reforms and their results caused a mixed response not only in the political, but also in the scientific community. But in relation to the political and administrative component, scientists generally agree that it was not possible to overcome the spirit of the command and administrative system, and the repeatedly increased corruption component became an additional problem appendage.
One of the leading directions in the framework of political and administrative reforms was the transformation of local administrative institutions. It is significant that for all the post-reform time, several regulations were adopted concerning this particular component of management. These are the Federal Law “On the General Principles of the Organization of Local Self-Government in the Russian Federation” (August 1995), the Federal Law “On the General Principles of the Organization of Local Self-Government in the Russian Federation” (October 2003). In one of the first presidential addresses to the Federal Assembly, Vladimir Putin declared local self-government one of the main priorities of state policy. In local administrative institutions, the second Russian president saw almost the main factor in improving the efficiency of the entire system of public power (Grinin, 2011).
Modern Russian social science has a fairly constructive experience of studying the problems of local self-government. A lot of efforts have been made to identify the key reasons for the generally unsuccessful course of local government reform. Its goal of emancipating the power structures formed “from below” , bringing the decision-making process closer to the citizen, at the moment reflects little reality. Of course, the economic circumstances are very significant here - the granting of additional powers to local self-government was not supported by the appropriate material resources (Chirikova & Ledyaev, 2018). In addition, the authors of the collective monograph “Russian Democracy: Development, modern trends and contradictions” reveal many gaps in the content of legislation on local self-government, mainly concerning its vagueness and ambiguity. Studies by Chirikova & Ledyaev (2018); and Melnikov, et al. (2019), tend to focus on the human factor as well. Of course, the analysis of all significant sources of this problem requires the volume of a monograph and possibly more than one. In this article, we would like to focus on the factor of bureaucratization, which in general involves a socio-philosophical level, since it is at the intersection of sociology, law, history, cultural studies, and even social psychology. The purpose of the article is to analyze the trends and prospects of the bureaucratization of local self-government in modern Russia. According to the designated goal, our research includes the following tasks. First, the consideration of historical prerequisites and clarification of the essence of bureaucracy as a social phenomenon; secondly, the definition of the Russian political and administrative specifics; thirdly, the analysis of the current state of affairs associated with the participation of the bureaucratic component in the dynamics of local self-government institutions. Works of Kastoriadis (2003); Tikhonov (2004); and Isaev (2009), describe the specifics of the Russian administrative sphere in its historical formation.
METHODOLOGY
The theoretical and methodological basis of the present study is the evolutionary approach of L. Grinin's statogenesis, the work on the analysis of the current state of the bureaucratic phenomenon of Isaev (2009). Kastoriadis (2003), and also the theory of structuration of Giddens (2005), from the position of which the formation of a certain political and managerial tradition in specific social, political and cultural conditions is successfully explained.
In the course of collecting empirical material, the questionnaire served as the main tool, while the results of the questionnaire were processed mainly by quantitative mathematical methods. In general, the article uses general scientific and specific methods such as deduction and induction, analysis and synthesis, comparison and generalization.
Development
Actually, the phenomenon of bureaucracy is directly related to the emergence of the state apparatus, acting as its integral feature. The field of administrative management (with which the category of bureaucracy is identified), being separated from the source of political decisions, is a necessary attribute of the state. To put it another way, if an element of voluntarism and subjectivity is absolutely unavoidable in the framework of politics, then the administrative sphere presupposes a strict framework of actions defined and regulated by specific legal norms and regulations. Hence, the understanding of the bureaucracy and its current state cannot be separated from the consideration of the processes of state development (statogenesis) as a whole. In the works of modern political anthropologists and historians, statogenesis (the formation of the state) is considered as the dominant evolutionary line of politogenesis (Ivanova, et al., 2019).
In the socio-philosophical interpretation of Grinin (2011), the formation of a political sphere within a particular society as an autonomous sovereign region is considered as a political genesis, which is naturally associated with the concentration of political power in the hands of certain specific groups or social strata. And in fact, such a sphere immediately put forward claims to supremacy. From the point of view of Grinin (2011), the historical component of the leading line of political genesis involves three stages that differ in the characteristics of relations and interactions between the structures of the state and society. This is an early, developed and mature state (Early state, its alternatives, analogues). Even in the period of the genesis of the state, the allocation and professionalization of purely administrative functions is recognized as the most important condition, and those societies that did not strive for this in due measure came to a standstill (ancient polis).
The early state is interpreted as a kind of “unfinished” state, since the state and public institutions are not yet fully adjusted to each other. At the same time, the existing gaps were the result of both the rudimentary nature of central government and the strength of traditional foundations, often compensating for the structural weaknesses of the central government (the institution of localism in the Moscow Kingdom). In such conditions, the society still widely enjoys relative autonomy, largely preserving its own traditional structures of management and self-management plan. This author notes numerous cases when the emerging early state apparatus was poorly separated from self-government.
The developed state is already characterized as a more natural form of social organization, within which the state and society are more or less mutually accustomed. The central apparatus, which has concentrated the main powers of power, greatly expands its ability to control public processes. Moreover, it is quite appropriate to consider internal centralization as a necessary condition for finding adequate “answers” to external “challenges” . So, during the “fire revolution” (the end of the XV-XVIII centuries), only a centralized state could successfully implement its principles and form an army that meets the “spirit of the time” . The stability of the “gentry democracy” prevented the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth from constructively solving this problem, which ultimately led to the loss of political independence.
A mature state is already understood as an organic form of power organization, “outside of which society (and the population) cannot be in principle” (Ermolenko, 1998). That is, at such a stage, society and the state are a kind of unified whole, and their similar state is attributed mainly to the influence of the conditions of industrialization and capitalism. It is within the framework of a mature state that the success of any scale of political transformations is conditioned by taking into account the “ontological foundations of statehood and supreme power” (Shevchenko, 2008), and their underestimation leads to the inevitable failure of reforms.
It should be emphasized that the central apparatus of a mature state implicitly acts as a factor that exerts a much broader influence on social behavior, and not necessarily concerning only the sphere of central power and management. It is quite appropriate to turn to the theory of structuration of the modern classic of sociology, Giddens (2005), which emphasizes the principle of “double inclusion” of individual behavior and social structures. Social institutions are formed as a result of individual actions, but on the other hand, these same institutions have the opposite effect on the behavior of the individuals who created them. In a word, “the structural properties of a social system act both as a means of production of social life as a continuing activity and at the same time as the results produced by this activity” (Chirikova & Ledyaev, 2018). Hence, the development of state structures pushes society to reproduce and internally disseminate the historically formed model of political relations. This is facilitated by the behavioral conformism inherent in the vast majority of individuals who generally accept the translated rules of the game and assert them as a behavioral norm.
Bureaucratization becomes a means of influencing a mature state on society. The quantitative growth of civil servants was absolutely inevitable in the course of statogenesis, despite the fact that the nature of the processes of the latter correlates with social dynamics in general. Thus, in the Kingdom of France, during the period of active centralization (from the XVI century to the middle of the XVII century), the number of officials increased almost sixfold - from 8 thousand to 46 thousand (Early state, 2006).
It is immediately necessary to recognize the ambiguity of bureaucracy as a social phenomenon. The universalism of the bureaucracy and its direct connection with the functional essence of the state were mentioned above. Nevertheless, even M. Weber, who proposed the description of the bureaucracy as an ideal type (apparently, such idealization was the result of the closest and most effective administrative system of the German state), did not deny the dehumanizing prerequisites inherent in the bureaucracy, which could later be translated into large-scale destructive consequences.
The dialectic of the development of the bureaucracy was successfully expressed by the modern statesman and jurist Isaev (2009), pointing out that the bureaucracy is characterized by “not only its numerical and quantitative growth as a spontaneous and unpredictable process, but also the loss at a certain stage of its development of the ability to effectively self-control and rational planning” (Grinin, 2011). There are many examples from political history when the increase in the number of civil servants was disproportionate to the expansion of managerial needs, despite the fact that such an increase objectively contributed to administrative red tape. It is significant that already such strong managers of the XVII century as A.-Zh. Richelieu, J.-B. Colbert, for reasons of optimization, sought to reduce the administrative number. Nevertheless, the abolished positions, as a rule, were revived in a new way, often called differently (Poltarykhin, et al., 2020).
At the same time, the growing scale of bureaucratic institutions makes it increasingly difficult for them to adequately perceive reality. The social philosopher K. Castoriadis notes that the bureaucratic universe is imbued with the imaginary from the very beginning to the end. The bureaucratic consciousness produces symbols that have little correlation with the surrounding reality, since this reality itself is interpreted by the bureaucracy only in the plane in which the components of the former can be rationally regulated. Corrections of partial fragmentary links come to the fore, but the problems of integrity bases are ignored. The whole diverse world of administrative and bureaucratic thinking is reduced to a set of formal rules, and the “phantasm of organization as a well-oiled machine” is replaced by the phantasm of a self-organizing and self-expanding machine.
It is natural that the tendency of the bureaucracy to stability encourages it to focus on rituals and procedures. As a result, the latter preserve all the variety of actions, leading them to structural crystallization and functional routine - monotonous performance of the same actions and tasks. Hence, a kind of administrative tradition is formed, which gains stability, while sacrificing rationality. According to the idea of Isaev (2009), the trend inherent in the bureaucracy to build up its own structures also requires a corresponding quantitative expansion of functions without any consideration of real expediency. This naturally contradicts the need to save energy, indicating by no means an increasing efficiency. Thus, we can assume that the desire for total rationalization inherent in the phenomenon of bureaucracy at some stage begins to play the opposite role, and the bureaucracy itself acquires the features of internal self-denial.
The tendency of quantitative growth inherent in the bureaucracy is organically connected with the “power instinct” inherent in the state, which was pointed out by the astute French researcher A. Tocqueville (Poltarykhin, et al., 2020). Probably, bureaucratization acts as a means of implementing this instinct, contributing to the expansion of control mechanisms, which are becoming more and more total sense. According to Tocqueville (2008), the result of the strengthening of French absolutism is the emasculation of regional and urban self-government. They are virtually nullified even where the traditions of “provincial freedom” (Languedoc province) were relatively recently strong (Penskoi, 2010). The trend of bureaucratization is universal for modern times. It also has a serious impact on the institutions of self-government, which is illustrated by the dynamics of even a very effective Scandinavian model. Experts state a distinct bureaucratization of local government structures, which contributes to the alienation of ordinary residents from self-government (Isaev, 2009).
Thus, recognizing the bureaucratic component as an attribute of the state that determines its managerial functionality, we emphasize that within this phenomenon itself there are initially prerequisites that, at the stage of a mature state, often lead the bureaucracy to functional self-denial or, to put it in Hegelian terms, turn into its antithesis.
The logic of Russian political genesis has an even more pronounced state character, which is quite understandable, taking into account natural and historical conditions. From our point of view, the key factors are three objective factors, the first two of which have a permanent meaning, while the third one has been updated in the last two centuries. First, a huge territory. Secondly, the intermediate position between the West and the East, which did not exclude the possibility of external bilateral threats. Third, the political and geographical (geopolitical) positions, which, with the light hand of the Anglo-Saxon international theorists, made Russia the main rival of the Western world they represented. These circumstances predetermined the inevitability of a rigid vertical of the national statehood, which required a large number of civil servants. The authoritarianism of the Russian government is most likely vital for the immediate tasks of the Russian society. After all, the territorial vastness itself, multiplied by the self-consciousness of the Russians as a “big people” , determines the imperial essence of the national statehood.
From the point of view of the philosopher Shevchenko (2008), the ontological archetype of the Russian statehood has the following features:
Sole power, as well as a rigid power vertical.
The sacred meaning of individual power.
The state administrative apparatus as a tool for implementing political decisions taken by the sole authority (Shevchenko, 2008).
In such conditions, the bureaucratic apparatus naturally acted as the backbone of the national statehood, without which this statehood could not exist in principle. According to Spiridonova (2008), the Russian bureaucracy is “a specific matrix of Russian power” (Lapin & Chelpan, 2003). In the course of the historical process, the natural expansion of the bureaucracy worked to increase its political weight, while at the same time alienating from it the first person who personifies the supreme power. “The further Russian history went from Peter I to Nicholas II, - writes V. Shevchenko (2008), - the more difficult it is for the political will of the first person to force the bureaucracy to work for the unconditional implementation of his decisions”.
In relation to the domestic socio-political environment, it makes sense to talk about a special political and managerial tradition, which is the result of a kind of synthesis of cultural processes and political genesis. The myths of the collective (national) consciousness associated with power relations and the perception of the state, as well as the formed stable forms of political behavior transmitted “from above” , are an integral element here. Paternalism, one of the characteristic cultural archetypes of the Russian mentality, which involves the interpretation of the relationship between the state and its subjects by analogy with family ties, does not cease to exert a powerful influence here. At the same time, the authoritarian component, fixed in the primary cell of social relations - the peasant family, comes to the fore. Paternalistic attitudes were strongly supported and sanctioned in the sacred plan by the Orthodox Church (Giddens, 2005).
The political and managerial tradition, from the methodological standpoint of the theory of structuration, involves considering the processes of bureaucratization, not only as imposed by central structures, but also having a noticeable counter-response. The institutions of a mature state, being organically united with society, influence the behavioral model, including non-political spheres. The point is that bureaucratization concerns not only the areas of management, but also extends to education, culture, medicine, etc. There is a popularization of the social type of a careerist-a bureaucrat who relies in his social behavior on the strict implementation of orders issued from above, without taking into account their real functional expediency. Actually, Russian bureaucratization is a component of a steady trend of increasing control “from above” over virtually any manifestations of grassroots activity, and not necessarily managerial.
At one time, the critical arrows against the Soviet system in the 1980s and 90s were largely related to its bureaucratization. It cannot be said that such a vision was unfair, although the political actors of the Soviet period saw the problem of bureaucratization and sought to solve it primarily through the mechanisms of democratic centralism. At the level of local self-government, this involved the introduction of the principle of double subordination, implying horizontal subordination on the one hand, and vertical subordination on the other. But, as practice has shown, double subordination did not so much resist bureaucratization, as it led to a narrowing of the autonomy of local administrative bodies (Mogunova, 2008; Spiridonova, 2008).
Nevertheless, in the modern Russian Federation, the problem of bureaucratization has not only not been solved, but has noticeably worsened, since the linear dynamics of bureaucratic structures, assuming their consistent growth, is quite preserved. According to Shevchenko (2008), in the course of pursuing its own group self-serving goals, the post-Soviet bureaucracy does not seek to serve as a means of “implementing radical, deep reforms that carry for it great overloads and new dangers”. Meanwhile, the objective dynamics - the involvement of Russia in the global post-industrial economy actualizes steps in terms of increasing managerial flexibility, which is hindered by the sprawling administrative structures. In Western countries, this problem is partially solved by creating structures of the European Union, but in Russia, the main efforts are aimed at forming control institutions that are authorized to interfere, including in local processes.
Thus, with regard to the experience of the domestic administrative sphere, we can conclude that bureaucratization has here a set of determinants that strengthen it. This concerns the objective conditions that have predetermined the need for a rigid power vertical based on a system of controlling bodies. The subjective fuel for the strengthening of the political and administrative press is the mental characteristics embodied at the cultural and civilizational level by the values of paternalism, etc.
The obtained theoretical calculations were tested in the framework of the study of the problems of domestic local self-government. Here we tried to present a comprehensive picture, consisting of data from our own surveys of residents of rural settlements in various districts of the Krasnodar Territory within the framework of the project “Sustainable Rural Development” , as well as secondary studies conducted for 2018-2020.
Initially, it should be noted that local officials, being objectively closer to the population in contrast to other branches of administrative power, are characterized by residents of settlements in a more favorable way than the same employees of regional structures (Melnikov, et al., 2019). However, the independence of local government institutions, sanctioned by the Federal Law № 131, remains more at the level of theory. Thus, 38-43% of the surveyed employees of local administrations of the Krasnodar Territory believe that the implementation of the above-mentioned Law “On the General Principles of the Organization of Local Self-Government in the Russian Federation” has completely failed (the answer is “as commanded, so commanded” ). A little more respondents (44-48 %) admitted that there were only fragmentary shifts towards the independence of local authorities, and only 9-18% noted as a result of the Federal Law № 131 the real independence of local authorities appeared.
At the same time, employees of local administrations are under the powerful bureaucratic pressure of higher-level government structures. In fact, all the interviewed local employees share the point of view about the excessive documentation sent down from “above” . On average, each local official has to answer about 300 documents every month. As for the meetings held, which are usually unnecessary, only less than a third of the respondents (about 30%) consider the time allocated for them “tolerable” . But the remaining two-thirds are sure that there are much more such events than they should be. Hence, it is necessary to draw a conclusion about the obvious bureaucratization of the direct activities of local self-government structures.
At the same time, bureaucratization is a means of subordinating local authorities to regional ones. This thesis is carried out by well-known researchers of the problems of management levels R. Turovsky, A. Chirikova, V. Ledyaev, etc. As R. Turovsky notes, the relations between regional and municipal actors are asymmetric. After all, the current Russian governors have almost all possible mechanisms of influence on the local government, using it as a politically dependent entity with a limited set of functions. “Taking into account the information asymmetry, the control of regional authorities over local self-government and its formalized reporting are sufficiently developed to minimize the possibilities of its own game” (Seltzer, 2014). In this context, the common practice in modern Russia of appointing a local head of “his own person”, rather than a real nominee from the population, fits perfectly. Some authors refer to this phenomenon as a “Varangian parish” in the local leadership (Tikhonov, 2004; Kosenchuk, et al., 2019).
The consequence of such a circumstance is the alienation of the population from its leader. Thus, the largest group of respondents (43%) sees the head of the settlement as an appointee of higher authorities, almost a third of the total number (31%) considers him to be focused primarily on personal interests, rather than the needs of the settlement. And only 21% are inclined to see the head of “one of us” , trying to really make the life of the villagers better.
Distancing people from the local head is supported by a generally negative perception of higher-level government structures. Three-quarters of respondents (74%) point to the priority of the interests of bureaucratic groups in state policy, almost two-thirds (62%) noted that the latter is built around the interests of large entrepreneurs and about half (51%) indicated the support of the security forces as the main reference point of the government. Socially oriented positions of domestic policy, such as “defending the aspirations of ordinary people” or helping those living on the verge of poverty, collected 5% and 9%, respectively. Thus, in the minds of the modern inhabitant of the domestic village, the current Russian government has a bureaucratic and class-police character.
Another consequence of the administrative press on the part of higher authorities is the passivity of local employees, which is noted by most studies (O. Roy, A. Chirikova, etc.). Although, in fairness, it should be noted that bureaucratization is not the only factor in this circumstance. No less important are financial dependence, legal uncertainty, especially land legislation. At the same time, the very fact of the passivity of local leaders, sometimes, is dominated by the constructive side. Thus, in the work of Chirikova & Ledyaev (2018), gives a number of excerpts from interviews where respondents (local leaders) say that when receiving instructions from above, you should not rush to fulfill them - there are a lot of orders coming down, there is not enough time to fulfill them all, and a considerable part of these orders is subsequently canceled. In this manner, one of the local heads did not comply with the instruction to reduce rural schools and was right, since this initiative stalled in the near future (Tocqueville, 2008; Seltzer, 2014; Yumashev, et al., 2021).
The workload of reporting really prevents the employees of the local administration from turning to the residents and dealing with the problems of settlement development. According to surveys in the Krasnodar Territory, people are poorly informed about the activities of local administrations, interact with them rarely, and then, mainly, about obtaining certificates. Only 11% stated their participation along with the local authorities in the processes of solving local issues, 42% believe that such a situation is possible only in the West, while 39% noted that “for the first time they hear that the residents of the locality have the right to participate in solving local problems” .
The above material suggests that the bureaucratization of local administrations in general emasculates the principles of democracy that are inherent in local self-government, working to alienate the population from participation in self-government. This prevents the residents of the settlement from forming a collective identity, integrating them on the basis of common interests, and indirectly contributes to the perception of state structures as generally alien, or even hostile. If we take into account the fact that we are talking about rural residents, then we can assume in this a certain threat of erosion of the soil basis of national-state legitimation. Hence, we have to state the very modest results of Federal Law № 131, and one of the factors hindering the expansion of local independence, which it was aimed at, was bureaucratization
Conclusions
The bureaucratic component is an organic component of the state, which determines its managerial functionality. Nevertheless, within the bureaucracy itself, there are initially prerequisites that, at the stage of a mature state, often lead the bureaucracy to functional self-negation or, in Hegelian terms, turn into its antithesis. We are talking primarily about the trends of quantitative expansion of administrative structures in spite of managerial expediency. This generally constrains a variety of public initiatives, reduces the potential for flexible response to the challenges posed by the changing social reality.
With regard to the Russian experience in the development of the administrative sphere, it should be noted that there is a set of determinants that strengthen bureaucratization. This applies both to the objective conditions that predetermined the need for a rigid controlling power vertical, and to the subjective characteristics embodied at the cultural and civilizational level in the values of paternalism, etc. A significant role was played by the historical experience of the constant existence of the political and administrative press, in view of which a certain managerial tradition was formed, which is reflected in the social behavior of the majority. Hence, it is necessary to state the trends of bureaucratization at all levels of the Russian administrative vertical.
The bureaucratization of local administrations generally works against the stated goals of Federal Law № 131, predestining its very modest results. Administrative pressure emasculates the principles of democracy that are inherent in local self-government, alienates the majority of the population from participating in solving pressing problems. This prevents the formation of a collective identity, the integration of the inhabitants of the settlement on the basis of common interests, and indirectly contributes to the perception of state structures as generally alien, or even hostile. If we take into account the fact that we are talking about rural residents, then we can assume in this a certain threat of erosion of the soil basis of national-state legitimation. Without solving the problem of bureaucratization, the goals of Federal Law № 131 will inevitably be emasculated.
