Issue № 60. February 2017

Institutional Pitfalls and Public Administration Crises

Ph.D., Professor, School of Public Administration, Lomonosov Moscow State University, Moscow, Russian Federation.
E-mail: gkupryashin@gmail.com

The article presents a concept of the institutional forms that aren’t functional for good governance. These institutional dysfunctions lead to clientele, political rent seeking and other informal institutions that are comforting for the political leaders in the short term but undermine their ability to reproduce effective and accountable administrative institutions. A model of how formal and informal institutions interact is proposed and linked to an analysis of institutional pitfalls — its basis, mechanisms and consequences. In contextualizing the issues of institutional pitfalls, the article shows why the combination of institutions is more often engaged in responding to change than implementing reforms. The challenge for the state power and reformers is to overcome political-administrative pitfalls based on the balance of the influential political interest groups and the interests of the top state bureaucracy. Otherwise, the government not only loses its executive capacity, but also the compliance with formal rules, which would lead public administration into a sequence of political-administrative crises.

Keywords

Public administration reform, institutional pitfalls, political market, public administration crises.