Quantitative Assessment of Governmental Effectiveness in the Russian Regions in the 2000s
Student: Timshina Natal`ya
Supervisor: Andrey S. Akhremenko
Faculty: Faculty of Politics
Educational Programme: Bachelor
Final Grade: 7
Year of Graduation: 2014
<p>The empirical study of the issue of governance effectiveness has attracted the attention of researchers only in the last ten years. Andrey Akhremenko explains the popularity of this issue with a range of reasons. Firstly, the issue arose following the development of new institutionalism. Secondly, the popularity can be explained by the emergence of new waves in the sphere of governance. Thirdly, a notion that realization of the «right» policy is impossible without effective governance has gotten the attention of the society. In the modern scientific literature we can see that there is no single approach to measuring the effectiveness of federal and regional governance.</p><p>Thus <strong><em>theoretical topicality</em></strong> of the research theme can be explained by the necessity of unbiased, transparent methodology that can help to assess governors’ effectiveness.</p><p><strong><em>Practical topicality</em></strong> is formed by the needs of the two levels of control. First of all, federal government needs to know whether their instructions are implemented well or poorly in the regions. It is important because the attitude to the regional power often extends to the national level. Secondly, the necessity of control is connected with the return of regional governors’ elections. Citizens have the right to know whether their taxes are spent effectively or not. This knowledge can help them make the choice between candidates in the elections.</p><p><strong><em>The goal</em></strong> of our research is to check the relation between effectiveness of decision making units in different regions and incumbent’s election results. To pursue the goal it’s necessary to implement the following <strong><em>objectives</em></strong>:</p><p>1) to consider theoretical approaches to the assessment of decision makers’ effectiveness; to analyze Russian scientific research on the matter and ratings of regional governors’ effectiveness and to describe their strengths and weaknesses;</p><p>2) to justify the choice of the method of analysis;</p><p>3) to check the validity and of our results at each step;</p><p>4) to quantify the effectiveness of decision making units in different regions using the super-efficiency model of Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA);</p><p>5) to explain the connection between estimates of the effectiveness of regional decision-making units and the election results of regional heads.</p><p>Systematic approach is the <strong><em>theoretical basis</em></strong> of the study. Under this methodology we rely on the research of David Easton who considers system as a «black box» where it’s worth to study system’s reaction on certain inputs.</p><p>From a <strong><em>methodological point of view</em></strong> the research is based on Data Envelopment Analysis and regression analysis. DEA rests on the idea of Pareto optimality which posits that it is not possible to improve one parameter without the degradation of others. Thus the most effective actors are located at the production-possibility frontier.</p><p>Within this scheme we can go to the field of inputs and outputs where the first vector will describe resources and the second vector - results. It’s possible to postulate that the fundamental criterion of effectiveness is the ratio between results and expended resources.</p><p>We use <strong><em>data</em></strong> from the Russian Federation Federal State Statistics Service. The dataset includes economic and social indicators such as education, health protection, security, financial state. All available indexes of 79 regions in 2000s are included in sample.</p><p><strong><em>Empirical analysis</em></strong> doesn’t let us to find the unambiguous connection between the effectiveness of regional decision making units and the chances of the head of region to be re-elected. In that case voting in favour of incumbent can be explained with the other factors: the lack of elections’ competition, the fear that the new head of the region would be worse than the previous, low expectations.</p>
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