INTERNATIONAL INSTITUTIONS AND GLOBALIZATION OF RUSSIA’S REGIONS

Andrey S.Makarychev

Nizhny Novgorod Linguistic University

Policy paper draft

(September 2002)[1]

Introduction

It is widely acknowledged that Sergei Kirienko, the presidential representative in the Volga Federal District, is one of few Russian sub-national politicians who is open to cooperation with the Western foundations. In his view, the state is in no position to tackle with all emerging troubles, relying exclusively on its own forces[2]. In particular, Kirienko was the first of presidential envoys in the federal districts to held an official meeting with Eurasia Foundation. One of concrete results of Kirienko’s rapprochement with the Western grant making institutions was the project of selecting one of the Volga cities to be its ”cultural capital”. The Fair of Social Projects is also one of initiatives of VFD authorities supported by foreign foundations. In 2001 IREX has launched special program of partnership between VFD-based and American institutions.

Social exchange theory

External factors influencing domestic transition might be examplified in both ideas and institutions. Both might have positive as well as negative consequences for transitory states.

There are different forms of external influence over transitory states:

- influence by consent (the bulk of educational exchanges fall into this category). Examples are multiple: the presidential representative in VFD has politically supported the four-year project on ”Implementing and Dissemination of Successful Models of Reforms in the Cities of VFD”[3]. In Nizhny Novgorod oblast, the Center for Social Adaptation of Military Officers was lauchned as a result of Soros Foundation agreement with the local governor[4]. In the city of Dzerzhinsk the trilateral consortium on chemical weapons liquidation was established to include the Tacis program, the federal Ministry of Economics, and the administration of Nizhny Novgorod oblast[5]. Open Society Institute, with full support of municipal and regional authorities, has launched a number of projects such as founding of the pioneering in Russia Center “Childhood Without Violence and Cruelty”, or opening of the first in Russia Internet Center for blind students[6].

- influence by conditionality which is a form of outside pressure (from economic to moral one)[7]. In this sense, foreign aid might be treated as a form of “symbolic domination”[8]. For example, U.S. companies are eager to invest into Russian high tech industry (for example, Sarov nuclear center in Nizhny Novgorod oblast) provided that: a) local scientists abstain from working on upgrading military technologies and producing more sophisticated weaponry, and b) non-military merchandise get market success[9].

By the same token, some Russian analysts deem that U.S. non-governmental institutions working in Russia actively contribute to achieving American long-term strategic goals of creating pro-American lobbies in Russian institutions, both federal and regional[10].

Social exchange theory is a good tool to study the communication between: a) international donors, b) regional recipients, and c) their opponents. By definition, relations within this ”triangle” are asymmetric.

To use the exchange theory, one has to understand what determines the choice of a region…Usually the most important factors are:

- human capital quality, including skilled laborforce, educational level of residents;

- availability of information which might help to avoid risks;

- convenient geographical location of region (proximity to large markets, low transportation costs, climate factors that might increase heating expenditures, specific construction requirements, etc.);

- reform-minded local politicians (it is claimed that probability of foreign entrance is sometimes twice lower in a ”red-belt” region, i.e. with strong Communist domination)[11];

- security of property and enforceability of contracts;

- rules-based economy (that one without a need for special treatment, particular deals, or discretionary decisions by either elected officials or civil servants.

We can’t anticipate that international donors’ actions might have immediate effect on the regional recipients. There is a difference between ”a highly contingent action” (one which is only taken in quick response to an action by another) and ”a less contingent action” (one which takes place after a lengthy time span – for example, sending a market consultant to Russian enterprise[12]). Also important is that longer time horizons lead to less immediate contingency: ”an actor with a higher tolerance for risk is likely to be relatively less concerned about precise equivalence or immediate contingency than an actor with lower risk-taking preference”[13].

Cognitive Interaction

Communicable knowledge is expertise that can be transmitted from one institution to another. Knowledge transfer is important because it creates incentives for policy changes and invests in human capital formation. As Douglas North puts it, the way in which knowledge develops influences the perceptions people have about the world and hence influences the costs of contracting. People’s perceptions that the structure of rules is fair reduce costs; vice versa, their perceptions that the system is unjust raises the costs of contracting[14].

Competitiveness of regions is determined by their ability to organize learning process. Learning is successful if the dominant actors have adjusted their potentials to challenge conditions and are better positioned to cope with them. Learning depends on:

- path development,

- accessibility of “tacit knowledge”.

Arthur Benz and Dietrich Furst deem that “organization of regional governance is the decisive variable to explain the learning capacity of a region”[15]. In my view, non-governmental institutions also have to be taken into account.

The process of learning takes place on several levels:

- cognitive level. Here we find a plethora of actors working with information, ideas, orientations and attitudes.

- political level (“policy transfer”);

- institutional level where actors communicate with each other and form networks (coalitions).

A good illustration of this track is USAID assistance to Russian think tanks. Problems are multiple in this domain.

First, it is highly debatable who in Russia has to be supported. MSI suggests to “make grants only to institutions”. On the one hand, one may agree that grants to individuals are unlikely to foster the development of a viable think tank industry[16]. Yet on the other hand, institutional grants usually serve to strengthen the administrative elite of the given University, with scarce incentives given to middle-level specialists. Clear bias towards making financial commitments to the institutions is a result of lobbying efforts of Ministry of Education, which reflects the corporate interests of University administrations eager to gain “administrative rent” on owrking with foreign funds. These are mainly University rectors that are not interested in fostering small-group and/or individual research.

The second problematic issue is that in terms of effectiveness, the widely spread practice of distributing grant funds beyond open competitions seems to be very controversial. Many foreign grant makers are known for disbursing their budgets to a narrow circle of the Russian recipients on the basis of existing partnership. Of course, this type of sponsorship might be convenient and technically easy, but it provokes a number of negative side effects:

- Russian institutions that are not admitted into a narrow circle of exclusive partners treat this scheme as a non-transparent one, and have all reasons to fell themselves marginalized and disadvantaged;

- Criteria of supporting projects are subject to personal relations between a limited group of people;

- The quality of projects resulting from non-competitive procedures tends to decrease because their managers are not sufficiently concerned about raising academic standards…

Thirdly, international assistance funds are frequently, in fact, in Russian hands. For example, foreign grant-making institutions have delegated to the VFD authorities the function of working with the applicants to the annual Fair of Social Projects “Togliatti-2002”. The MION project (aimed at establishing multiple resource centers in provincial Universities), funded by foreign donors, is being formally conducted under the official umbrella of the Ministry of Education of the Russian Federation.

It might be argued of course that “host country organizations have a better understanding of local conditions and practices”[17]. It also might be expected that deeper involvement of the official structures might eventually give birth to emerging concept of effectiveness that would meet the needs of both Russian and foreign actors.

Yet the practice of transferring to Russian institutions important managerial functions might be a problem, since Russian institutions and individuals usually are not free of pre-given perceptions and stereotypes. They might have their pre-existing commitments and corporate links. Seemingly, this is a wishful thinking to anticipate that “the fact that the program is administered chiefly by Russian professionals and staff… serve to strengthen Russian groups”[18]. It might be the other way around: a Russian administrator might select the team based on very personal and subjective criteria (such as ideological consonance or affiliation with those structures that are important for sustaining corporate interests of the Russian team leader).

The tendency of diminishing the funds allocated for individual grant projects is also disturbing. MSI report suggests that “competent individuals who want to participate in the program can affiliate with a Russian analytical group to do so”[19]. However it must be kept in mind again that Russian academic milieu is very corporatist and clan-like, which makes extremely difficult that kind of affiliation which is proposed. Invitation to participate in a project is usually made on a very selective yet non-transparent basis, hence the entry into the field an extremely difficult task. It is not rare that institutions that have succeeded in getting a foreign grant, are shut off from any contacts with outsiders. Perhaps, one of illustrative examples in Nizhny Novgorod was the local Law Institute at the Ministry of Interior which received a U.S. corporate grant for studying corruption practices. Neither of attempts of outside scholars, including the author of this paper, to get information on the state of the project, gave any results.

Fourthly, by American standards, most regional policy research institutions ”are something of a cross between a think tank and a consulting firm”. Management Systems International (MSI) report has found out that one of major inhibitions for Russian ”think tanks” development is that few of them are advocating for policy changes.

The fifth problem is balancing between academic research and policy advocacy. The deeper Russian recipients are to be involved in public actions aimed at influencing policy process and opinion makers, the more chances that the foreign grant makers will be accused in interfering the domestic affairs and encroaching upon Russian statehood.

The sixth problem is balancing between quality of project supported and quantity of grant recipients. The more people and institutions are funded, the less attention is paid to their academic background and competence.

Levels of Partnership

- Municipal level. In the cities, foreign programs are targeted on strengthening local administration of social assistance. In VFD, the Urban Institute (Washington, D.C.) and the Institute of Urban Economics (Moscow) under the USAID-supported program have implemented two pilot projects of this kind – in Perm (with the key purpose of assisting the jobless in finding employement) and Arzamas, Nizhny Novgorod oblast(school lunch project[20]).

- Regions (subjects of federation). The basic problem at this level is to find the right balance between supporting the NGOs and cooperating with regional authorities. Thomas Carothers deems that it is important to incite Russian civil society institutions to find common background with governmental organizations. However, at least two major problems loom large at this point. First, many of Russian regions are semi-authoritarian political regimes, which complicates the perspectives of communication between public officials and NGOs[21]. Second, as Stephen Holmes suggests, the double control (as soon as the grant recipients are supposed to be accountable to both foreign foundations and domestic authorities) might paralize the project implementation[22].

- Federal district level. FVD is a home to annual Fairs of Social and Cultural Projects financed by a number of international sponsors and politically supported by the presidential representative Sergei Kirienko[23].

- Political parties. National Democratic Institute (NDI) in cooperation with USAID has contributed to establishing of VOICE Association for the Defense of Voters’ Right, which has branches in several regions of VFD (Samara). NDI maintains systematic contacts with ”Yabloko” and SPS (Union of Right Wihg Forces) parties and their regional leaders. Actually, this is one of rare examples of mediation function taken by foreign institutions: NDI claims to perform the role of communicator between these two democratically-oriented parties having hard time to negotiate with each other. In particular, ”the two factions have sought NDI’s assistance in facilitating discussion and development of a joint legislative agenda”[24]. VFD deserves special attention of NDI, mainly since Sergei Kirienko, one of founders of SPS, is also presidential envoy in this district.

- Individual enterprises. Sergei Malov, the representative of the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Nizhny Novgorod, has admitted that only a few of local enterprises have achieved meaningful results in receiving international investments[25].

Who Scores Better?

The basic conceptual problem here is finding correlation between international engagements and domestic development.

At the very top of the civic community index composed by Christopher Marsch are located the regions belonging to the ”red belt”, with strong communist and nationalist voting and minimal presence of international institutions – Belgorod, Tambov and Kursk oblasts, followed by Voronezh, Lipetsk, Smolensk, Oriol, Kostroma, Pskov, Degestan, Stavrolpol, Northern Osetia[26]. Perhaps, more reliable is the index of democracy in Russian regions done by Kelly McMann and Nikolai Petrov. In their findings, democracy flourishes in those regions that are known for their robust international policies, such as St.Petersburg, Sverdlovsk, Nizhny Novgorod and Samara oblasts, city of Moscow, Irkutsk, Kaliningrad, Perm, Yaroslavl, Murmansk, Novgorod oblasts, and Krasnoyarsk krai. Though this index was based on such criteria as level of urbanization, wealth of the region, tempo of economic reforms, democratic credentials of its leaders, and vote for Yeltsin in 1996 election, it turns out that there is clear correlation between the democracy progress and international openness. Also suggestive is the fact that the least internationalized regions are located at the very bottom of the table (Krasnodar krai, Kursk and Ulianovsk oblasts, Primorskii krai)[27].

Criteria of effectiveness

In order to develop the assessing tools, we have to cleraly distinguih between two types of international projects. The first type comprises those of socio-humanitarian background. Criteria to be applied for judging on how effective the efforts of international partnership were are value-based:

- social scope of benificiaries (which groups in the society take advantage of the projects);

- deeper involvement of citizens into community affairs.

- socio-psychological effects (have the target groups experienced the feelings of greater safety and societal security). For example, the Center for Children’s Social Rehabilitation was established in 2002 in Nizhny Novgorod with the financial assistance of the Dannish Red Cross and a number of U.S.-based religious groups[28].

- increased investments in human and intellectual capital[29]. A group of experts has revealed that ”spillovers in higher educated regions rae higher than in less educated ones”[30].

- changes in functioning of participating institutions. Foreign aid might be a meaningful catalist for political change[31] and foster accountability and transparency of local bureaucracies[32]. It is quite telling that in 2002 the International Financial Corporation and the World Bank have launched a new project in Nizhny Novgorod aimed at easing of administrative regulations. It is widely recognized that the local bureacrates are major protectionists, favouring local business and disadvantaging outsiders by introducing unjustifiable bans, making the businessmen purchase additional licenses, or inventing local payments[33].

Most valuable are those project aimed at modifying the functioning of the least reformed and most red-tape institutions. For example, Nizhny Novgorod was the first Russia’s city to become a home to experiment aimed at shortening the terms of pre-court detention. The project was supported by ”Hope” Institute from New York[34].

- consolidation of democratic practices, including: a) identification and promotion of those groups in the society that are prone to forming pluralist liberal principles of political order; b) limitation of the roles of radicals in the process of setting the regional democratic order[35].

Of course, exaggerated anticipations might turn misplaced: there are no convincing proves that economic aid has clear impact on the human rights practices of recipient governments[36]. Yet what could be achieved is incentives[37].

- Greater compatibility with international norms. The most illustrative example is local enterprises’ voluntary acceptance of worldwide quality standards. In Nizhny Novgorod the lead was taken by local Integrated Works of Oil and Fat which was first to introduce the international quality control. The major incentive for this and other factories was to get better deals with foreign contractors[38].

Another example also gives a good understanding of foreign concerns: since 2002 the court of Prioksky city district (Nizhny Novgorod) was invited to participate in the program sponsored by American Bar Association and USAID, which is aimed at making the litigation process more open and less time-consuming. The project stipulates upgrading Internet access to the legal documents and facilitating the application procedure[39].

- appearance of new ways of receiving and processing information;

- appearance of new forms of social and cultural self-realization;

- higher order impact[40]. Professional networking.

What is peculiar in networking resources is that they are indivisible (it can’t be split apart and divided among all parties involved) and spread all across the partnership (it can’t be exclusively managed by a single participant[41]). Networking divests the state of its formerly unchallenged status of exclusive decision maker, and pushes the state bureaucracy to get into dialogue with resourcefull communities of experts and social leaders[42].

Networking is important in coalition building projects. One of examples is creation of coalition ”For Alternative Civil Service” encompassing a number of VFD regions (Nizhny Novgorod, Ulianovsk, Perm, etc).

Emergence of synergetic effect based on appearance of gravitation poles of different initiatives in regional communities; and availability of sufficient number of highly motivatedcgrant recipients[43].

As for commercial and business projects, criteria assessing their relevance have to be interest-based and include a different type of indicators:

- possibilities for mobilizing new resources. Thus, ISCRA (Investment Support Centers in Russia) program, jointly operated by U.K. and Russia, has launched in Nizhny Novgorod a project on increasing enterprises’ profitableness[44].

- program’s impact on labour market;

- stimulation of changes in consumption behaviour;

- appearance of new services;

- changes in housing sector.

Experts of the Moscow-based Centre for Economic and Financial Research have discovered a number of correlations that characterize the impact of foreign capital upon the regional business milieu:

- foreign entry into regional markets increases competition, thus forcing domestic firms to restructure faster, both improving technological prcesses and corporate government;

- too small a foreign share (below 30%) provides little productivity advantage over domestically-owned firms;

- intervention of local authorities in restructuring of foreign-owned firms can scare off investors;

- small firms, with less than 200 employees, rae negatively affected by the entry of foreign firms, while total factor productivity of firms with 200-1000 workers goes up with an increase in the share of foreign presence in the industry[45].

The interpretataive problems are however still there. For example, the World Bank study has called for elimination of non-tariff protection given to specific regional markets inside Russia[46]. Yet another study has found out that ”multinationals tend to invest into more tariff-protected regions, and choose the region with high local degree of market monopolization”[47] (in VFD the most suggestive example would be Tatarstan).

Also very contraversial is World bank report’s suggestion to refrain from creating of ”priority sectors or projects” in regional economies[48]. Formulated in this way, this proposal in fact deprives the regional government of economic freedom and ability to maneuver.

What hinders the achievements:

a) Regional NGOs do not meet initial expectations of foreign grant makers because of a number of reasons:

- they often lack clear constituency and social audience;

- the Moscow-based institutions have more opportunities than those coming from the regions;

- regional NGOs tend to pursue individual – not collective – developmental strategies;

- NGOs struggle with each other for resources;

- A good deal of foreign resources are misused. For example, this was the case of World Bank credit aimed at environmental protection in 1995. Russia’s Accounting Chamber has found out that a number of regional administrations (Rostov and Yaroslavl oblasts, Ekaterinburg and some others) have mismanaged the foreign funds. Experts have also revealed that neither of the Russian official agencies ever thought about conducting effectiveness survey of international projects[49].

The way the resources are being handled by Russian side proves to be a problem for foreign donors. Thus, General Accounting Office has found out that the concerns over well publicized allegation of corruption and misappropriations of U.S. food aid commodities is quite justifiable. It was stated that “the Foreign Agricultural Service did not adequately implement internal controls designed to direct, track, and verify how food aid was delivered at the regional level in Russia”[50].

b) It is widely believed that “Russia’s problems were aggravated by bad Western advice”[51]. Sarah Henderson deems that foreign aid designed to facilitate the growth of civil society in Russian regions has inadvertently had the opposite effect. Rather that fostering horizontal networks, small grass-roots initiatives and civic development, foreign aid contributed to the emergence of a vertical and isolated (although well-funded) civil society[52]. Ariel Cohen of Heritage Foundation finds that massive inflow of international aid “facilitated the delay of much-needed market reforms, hindered deregulation, and allowed ‘crony’ privatization by financiers closely allied with political leaders, thus minimizing the economic efficiency of the reform”[53]. The same conclusion is shared by Doug Bandow of Cato Institute[54].

Patrice McMahon, referring to gender agenda, has found that “U.S. NGOs have discouraged, rather that encouraged, women’s groups from becoming the voice of the female population or an integral part of civil society”[55]. Russian recipients, in her observations, have failed to foster domestic advocacy networks. Their dependence on the international grant makers has translated into a lack of accountability, if not interest, in grass-roots constituency building.

James Richter comes to the conclusion that disproportionate amount of foreign funding in Russia’s regions goes to members of the professional classes with a good international experience. There is always a danger that these non-governmental elites may capture international assistance for pursuing their own agendas. On the other hand, efforts to ensure greater accountability often force local activists spend more energy meeting donors’ demands than grass-roots needs[56].

c) We expect actors to be most innovative if influenced by developments from outside the region. However, if individual actors are externally dependent, their freedom to cooperate in regional processes is strongly constrained.

d) Donors’ attention is divided between meeting Russian needs and pleasing domestic officials. This ambiguity often leads to unjustified optimism. For example, it is well known that the reform of Russian housing sector is one of the hardest issues facing both municipal and regional authorities. Most complaints from the residents in urban areas are due to disruption of energy and hot water supply, depreciation of old real estate, etc. Surprisingly, the report submitted by CARANA Corporation to the USAID Moscow office contains a great deal of wishful thinking. It states that the U.S.-supported Russian Housing Sector Reform Project “was an extraordinarily successful” and “had a pervasive and profound effect on the direction and structure of Russia’s housing and urban development reform. The reform achieved would, most likely, not have been as well conceived and legislation certainly would not have been as well framed without the HSRP”[57].

Project assessment is done predominantly in quantitative terms. For example, Samara and Novgorod are considered to be friendly to American investments, which makes possible for USAID to justify increasing funding for these regions. Yet most academic experts consent that “measuring the contribution to system transition in quantitative terms is virtually impossible”[58].

e) Steven Hook posits that U.S. government has adhered to an election-oriented conception of democracy. Peter Stavrakis’ deems that the reform program endorsed by the West had a corrosive effect, neglecting or undermining the very infrastructure responsible for managing the transition[59] (the case of Nizhny Novgorod). Alexander Domrin, a scholar from the Institute for Legislation Studies and Comparative Law, also accuses the Clinton administration policy of almost unconditional supporting the Yeltsin regime and marginalizing those political sectors in Russia that are critical to U.S. policies[60].

Russians also tend to overemphasize the importance of “creating the layer of new Russian leaders”[61] and ignore the institutions of democracy.

f) Also the distribution of U.S. aid was significantly related to security and economic factors which were more consistent with U.S. self-interest[62].

g) International financial institutions, in Peter Stavrakis’ opinion, were hostile to substantial decentralization. Their reasoning stemmed from their presumption that macroeconomic reforms could have been better implemented by strengthening the powers of the central government[63].

Russian perceptions

There were a few attempts to start measuring the effectiveness of international programs on sub-national level. One of first cities to offer its criteria perhaps was Voronezh. The following set of indicators was proposed:

- membership in international organizations and associations (more specifically, the number of such organizations, amount of financial commitments, the number of public servants participating in international programs);

- development of twin-city partnership;

- sharing experience with foreign partners (numbers of foreign experts attended professional forums in the city under consideration, and consultations held);

- cooperation in spheres of urban economics (number of joint ventures and their employees, foreign trade figures, total space occupied by foreign and joint companies);

- international assistance;

- frequency of international events (fairs, expositions, conferences, etc.);

- information openness (number of international databases available for local administrators, quantity of information shared with foreign partners)[64].

- In the opinion of some Russian experts, “the West has supported Russia’s democrats but undermined Russian democracy”[65]. This was the case of Nizhny Novgorod under the governorship of Nemtsov.

- One of most important failures is ambiguity of the Russian legislation regulating the activities of international grant-making institutions (taxation, relations with the authorities, etc.)

- In the regions, there is a feeling that Russian and foreign experts, discussing certain issues, speak in different terms. For example, Tacis project on diminishing administrative barriers was critically assessed in Nizhny Novgorod media based on a kind of perception gap: seemingly, while in Russia the “administrative barriers” are synonymous to corruption, in EU this notion is closer to “good governance” practice and harmonization of national legislations[66].

- Better coordination between international institutions is needed. Yet this is hardly feasible because of multiplicity of foreign actors and divergence of their priorities[67].

- Foreign NGOs operating in Russia are very rarely involved in public policy debate with their critics. Seemingly, these institutions give priority to corporate consensus and unanimity…

Conclusions

Effectiveness is an interactive, context-based – and thus highly contested – concept, both in Russia and in the West. In Russia, the search for criteria of effectiveness of international participation was heavily inhibited by a number of factors. First, Russian political class was divided: one part assumed as an axiom that the international cooperation is productive and fruitful per se, by definition; while the second group was confident that international cooperation is futile… Second, as a result of mass infusion of PR manipulative technologies, the edge between effective and ineffective became rubbed off.

In the West, political elite is also divided over this issue. In the opinion of those adhering to security paradigm, regionalization brings new problems since sub-national units might enter the sphere of security regulations and challenge Russia’s international obligations in different disarmament programs. Regions are also accused in being keen to become autonomous arms traders.

Yet those sharing the imperatives of democracy disagree. They are certain that regionalization opens new opportunities for creating policentric and pluralist system of governance in Russia.

Taking into account these uncertainties, it is very hard to achieve agreement on the issue of effectiveness of international programs. The importance of purely administrative tools is decreasing: for example, there is no way to oblige an enterprise to introduce the international quality indicators (to be developed further).

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[44] Natalia Gromova. Byt li Nizhnemu karmanom Rossii (Shall Nizhny Novgorod remain Russia’s pocket?) // Nizhegerodskii variant, January 28, 2002. P. 6.

[45] Ksenia Yudaeva, Konstantin Kozlov, Natalia Melentieva, Natalia Ponomareva. Does Foreign Ownership Matter? Russian Experience. Moscow: Center for Economic and Financial Research Working Paper N 5, 2001. Pp. 2, 4, 31.

[46] Joel Bergsman, Harry G.Broadman, Vladimir Drebentsov. Improving Russia’s Policy on Foreign Direct Investment. Washington, D.C.: World Bank, 2001. P. 13.

[47] Daniil Manaenkov. Op.cit. P. 32.

[48] Joel Bergsman, Harry G.Broadman, Vladimir Drebentsov. Op. cit. P. 14.

[49] Elena Subbotina. Kormushka dlia uzkogo kruga (Feeding trough for those of the narrow circle) // Vremia, February 6, 2002. P. 7.

[50] U.S. Food Aid Program to Russia Had Weak Internal Controls. Report to the ranking Minority Member, Subcommittee on Agricultural, Rural Development and Related Agencies, Committee on Appropriations, House of Representatives. United States General Accounting Office, GAO/NSIAD/AIMD-00-329, September 2000. P.4.

[51] David Wedgwood Benn. Review Article: Warm words and harsh advice: a critique of the West’s role in Russian reforms // International Affairs 77 (2001). P. 947.

[52] Sarah L.Henderson. Selling Civil Society. Western Aid and the Non-governmental Organization Sector in Russia // Comparative Political Studies. Vol. 35, N 2, March 2002. Pp. 140-152.

[53] Ariel Cohen. Russian Money Laundering: Questions Congress Should Ask. The Heritage Foundation Backgrounder, N 1323, September 22, 1999. P.2.

[54] Doug Bandow. A New Aid Policy for a New World // Policy Analysis, Cato Institute. N 226, May 15, 1995.

[55] Patrice C. McMahon. Building Civil Societies in East Central Europe: the Effects of American NGOs on Women’s Groups // Democratization. Vol. 8, N 2, summer 2001. Pp. 48-57.

[56] James Richter. U.S. Assistance to Russian NGOs: Securing Global Governance from Below. PONARS Policy Memo No. 223. Washington, D.C., January 25, 2002. P. 3-4.

[57] Ken Kopstein, Daniel Coleman, Larisa Afanasieva, Nicholas Chitov. Evaluation Report “The Russian Housing Sector Reform Project”, Phases I and II. For the Office of Program and Policy Development, USAID Mission to Russia. CORANA Corporation, November 1999. P.32.

[58] Ann L. Phillips. Exporting Democracy: German Political Foundations in Central-East Europe // Democratization. Vol. 6, N 2, summer 1999. P.88.

[59] Ibid. P. 12.

[60] Alexander Domrin. Grustnaia istoria amerikanskoi pomoshi Moskve (A sad story of U.S. help to Moscow), at http://world.ng.ru/printed/dipcorpus/2001-03-22/4_help.html

[61] http://www.osi.ru/web/publish101.nsf/pages/NNov

[62] Steven W. Hook. Building Democracy Through Foreign Aid: the Limitations of U.S. Political Conditionalities // Democratization. Vol. 5, N 43, Autumn 1998. Pp. 164-167.

[63] Peter J. Stavrakis. Russia and the Recomposition of Power: the Paradigm Beyond the Dream of the “Good State”. Kennan Institute Working Papers OP # 274. P. 8.

[64] Kontseptsia mezhdunarodnogo sotrudnichestva Voronezha (The concept of international cooperation of Voronezh). Edited by Igor Zornikov. Voronezh State University and the Regional Center for International Academic and Business Cooperation, 1997. Pp. 56-58.

[65] “Modernizatsionniy vyzov sovremennosti i rossiiskie alternativy” (Modernization challenge of modernity and Russian alternatives) // Universe of Russia. Vol. X, N 4, 2001. P.48.

[66] Petrenko, Larisa. Takie raznie bariery (The barriers are so different), at http://www.monitor.ru/2002/number21/art19.phtml

[67] “Vzaimodeistvie Rossii i Zapada: novie prioritety deyatelnosti zarubeznykh nekommercheskikh organizatsii i fondov” (Interaction between Russia and the West: new priorities of foreign non-commercial organizations and foundations”, at http://www.csr-nw.ru/text.php?code=15&item=stgram