Monitoring and Evaluation

The unique feature of the pilot project «Local Self- Governance and Civic Engagement in Rural Russia» is a very rigorous measurement of the results. We used the opportunity of the pilot project to try to answer some key questions concerning Russian rural decentralization, such as:

1. What characteristics of the locality and its population are related to various characteristics of good governance, such as openness, accountability, and professionalism, and fiscal autonomy?

2. What characteristics of the locality and rules of self–governance make local governments more responsive to the needs of their constituencies?

3. How does assistance in reform implementation – in this case training and consultations – affect how well both households and local governments adapt to the new decentralization regulations and practices?

This three year learning program on local governance in Russia was initiated by the World Bank in 2006 and together with the Government of Russia we are developing indicators of rural municipalities’ effectiveness and instruments to assess the progress of the decentralization reform.

Decentralization of government functions has been an important trend both in Europe and Central Asia (ECA) and in Russia. In Russia, Federal Law No. 131 (On the General Organizational Principles of Local Self-Government in the Russian Federation) was passed in 2003 and came into implementation on January 1, 2006. This Law provides the necessary framework for a more demand-driven local development. However, empowering clauses of the legislation have not been supported either by institution-building policies or by financial/fiscal incentives necessary to jump-start bottom up demand driven development and economic diversification.

More focused and targeted attention to local governance reform in rural areas has been hampered by the lack of consistent and comparable data on the changes in service provision in rural areas and the level of households’ satisfaction with local government. In turn, lack of good qualitative information precludes the creation of indicators of the effectiveness of performance of local administrations.

There are very few studies (none in Europe and Central Asia) that rigorously assess the quality of specific service providing institutions taking into account both the perspectives of service providers and service recipients.

To address this need for evaluating the impacts of decentralization reforms, the Government of Russia and the World Bank are jointly developing indicators of rural municipalities’ effectiveness and instruments to assess the progress of the decentralization reform. The World Bank initiated a three year learning program on local governance in Russia in 2006. The project team has leveraged the Government of Russia and the Bank’s contribution to attract other internal and external resources. These resources supported the design and fielding of more extensive and sensitive research tools, and also created a framework for fundamental and applied analysis of the effects of decentralization and local governance effectiveness.

The Measurement Exercise has 3 goals:

• Answering fundamental questions about decentralization, filling empirical void across Europe and Central Asia, understanding the underlying contextual (historical, geographic, economic, social) reasons of the effectiveness (lack thereof)  of reforms and good governance in general
• Providing a practical measurement instrument to spur competition among provinces, increase transparency of public activities
• Measuring the effects of the intervention in Russia

The goal of the multi-year measurement exercise is to provide information to the Russian Government on the current state of local governance in rural areas and to assess the effects of the local self-governance reform on the effectiveness of local governments, social service provision, and the lives and livelihoods of the rural population. The Bank brings its global experience in measuring the effects of decentralization (for example, the study State Rural Decentralization in India, analytical services to support decentralization policymaking in Indonesia or Local Level Institutions Study in rural Indonesia). The Bank can also draw on the unique data set and experience accumulated during the implementation of the grant “Local Self-Governance and Civic Engagement in Rural Russia”. Since grant implementation and the collected data spans from the pre-municipal reform state of affairs to the new local governance legislation, the Bank’s experience in Russia is unique and a useful resource for further understanding and better, more targeted policy making.

Design of the evaluation

• Purposefully selected provinces
• Randomly selected districts (3  t1, 3 t2, 3 controls ), 45 settlements per province (27 controls, 9 t1, 9 t2)
• Overall 24 districts, 120 settlements
• The study is dynamic 3 waves of analysis (baseline, at the end of the intervention, 1 year later, testing sustainability) 
• Dates 2005 (pre-reform) - 2008

Research instruments

Subjective:

• Household level survey (2000 households, 20 respondents per locality)
• Local government survey (about 800 respondents 2 -3 per settlement 6-5 per district)
• In-depth interviews (by interest group + randomly selected respondents)

Objective:

• Locality card (district- and settlement- level)
• Historical data