Civic participation as a factor of the modern stage of the administrative reform in Russian regions

The article analyzes the opportunities for civic participation to affect the regional dynamics of measures to improve public administration in 2016-2019. Based on the provisions of the concepts of authoritarian responsiveness and regional political regimes, the author suggests that the civic participation could be a significant factor of a policy process in regions highly dependent on the federal center (as an ally of federal authorities interested in reform’s success); in regions with less transparent bureaucracies (due to higher effectiveness of informal interactions with the state in non-democracies); and in regions with extreme levels of political competition (with diverse impact). As a result of a cross-regional statistical analysis of panel data, the author draws a conclusion that in the case of the current stage of the Russian administrative reform, civic participation was a significant factor of the policy results per se, since it was directly related to the essence of the policy; and in the regions with less transparent bureaucracies, where there were more opportunities for informal contacts. In turn, the expectation that the civic participation can be used as an ally by federal authorities was not supported by the empirical results - the interaction effect between levels of dependency and civic participation was not significant while the dependency on the center was significant factor alone. The hypothesis about role of political competition leading to significance of civic participation also was not supported. This signifies that political competition cannot lead to the elites responsiveness in non-democracies.