Policy implementation in Russia: the local perspective

Leo Granberg and Ann-Mari Sätre1

ABSTRACT. The paper is about local initiatives in Russia in recent years and is based on the presenters’ forthcoming book “The Other Russia: Local Experiences and Societal Change”. Russia still has Soviet-type NGOs, which play a role in local society. Russian leaders have expressed the needs of collaboration not only between administration and firms but also with the local population. Local political representation of people takes place mainly through deputies, who mediate between people and state power. It seems, however, evident that local problems cannot be solved in a satisfying way through these mechanisms. State programmes and private charity funds offer some opportunities for realising local initiatives, as also territorial self-governed organizations (TOS), established in recent years in some regions. The paper handles these questions, takes up experiences from new local initiatives in Archangelsk Oblast, Nizhny Novgorod Oblast and the Karelian Republic, and discusses what type of democracy they represent and what kind of cultural change this might indicate.