The Interaction of Grassroots Communities and Local Authorities in Russia
Taking into consideration the underdevelopment of the Russian civil community it is of essential interest to touch upon local communities. Local governments and local communities could provide similar services and as such cooperate or compete with each other. Community initiatives could supplant poorly performing government services, or governments could outsource to communities some of its functions. Today's Russia features both of these patterns which can be observed in community self-government projects. Communities self-government called in Russia TOS (Territorialnoe Obshchestvennoe Samoupravlenie). Such communities are an officially recognized institution. Based on empirical Russian data, collected in the city of Kirov this research shows the prevailing initial incentive to establish TOS. We detected sources of TOS advantages over municipal authorities. We discovered the niches of TOS communities and their efficiency. Also we defined that TOSs are more likely to emerge in communities where people are skeptical about the efficacy of conventional mechanisms of democratic accountability, and prefer to collaborate with municipal governments on specific projects