Throughout much of the world, corruption in the civil service undermines state capacity, impedes economic development, and saps citizens' morale. But while its pernicious effects are widely recognized, the roots of corruption remain poorly understood. Whereas most studies on corruption's origins...

A vital aspect of improving governance involves spearheading its strategic dimension and making current policy activities more closely aligned with the goals and objectives of sustainable growth. At the same time, implementation of strategic management is associated with considerable costs for...

This study attempts to assess the link between Orthodox Christian religiosity and the government career preference in Russia and the role of public service motivation (PSM) as a mediator of this relationship. PSM has been previously shown to predict public sector career preference among Russian...

This paper considers two issues. First, it evaluates the changes in Russia's investment climate in 2012-2014 after the announcement of an ambitious governmental program to improve the conditions for doing business. Second, because the relevant reforms were personally initiated by Vladimir Putin,...

The growing attention of governments, international organizations and NGOs to public procurement issues over the last two decades has been accompanied by many studies of the efficiency of public procurement. However, few researchers have considered the costs of procurement regulation for public...

Public procurement cost evaluation is important both for procurement optimization at the company level and for evaluating the public procurement regulatory system. This paper presents a survey-based methodological approach to public procurement cost evaluation at the macro level. Our approach is...

This paper reviews the activity of professional legal organizations as factors in the transfer from limited access order (LAO) to open access order (OAO) according to the theory of North, Wallis and Weingast. By analyzing the experience of lawyers' collective action in developing countries, this...

The relative bargaining power of rulers and right-holders is thought to be a key determinant of property rights, but because it both shapes and is shaped by property rights, it is difficult to estimate the impact of bargaining power on property rights. We take advantage of a natural experiment...

Scholars of performance incentives for regional officials in transitional states debate the appropriate degree of centralization and decentralization of political control. Decentralized administrative systems are said to encourage beneficial jurisdictional competition among regional officials,...

We analyse the professional community of attorneys in Russia in order to understand their potential for collective action in an imperfect institutional environment. In 2013 we conducted a survey of 372 attorneys in 9 regions of Russia. Two main hypotheses are tested: 1) lawyers with strong...