RUSSIA

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POSITIONING ACADEMIC PROGRAMMES IN PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION IN RELATION TO THE DISCIPLINES TO WHICH THEY ARE MOST CLOSELY RELATED

A basic problem encountered during efforts to reform public administration training was that, in Russia, there were virtually no programmes or curricula focused on public management for a long time. A significant number of officials were trained in various ideological schools, whose programmes were based on communist ideology and appropriate ideals.

Current reforms and the liberalisation of Russian society requires a wide range of state and municipal managers, lawyers and experts in the field of market economics and business. The present situation is aggravated by the fact that among civil servants, the relative weight of experts with diplomas in the field of jurisprudence is 3.7 %, in the field of economics management, 20.1 %, and, in the field of state and municipal management, 0.6 %. The lack of legal, economic and administrative education among the majority of officials, especially those at the municipal level, is obvious. Therefore, while creating new educational programmes in PA, these circumstances had to be taken into account.

New programmes in public management were created on an interdisciplinary basis, that is, on disciplines such as economics, legal studies and management. The earlier programmes in public management (1993-94) were predominantly based on legal disciplines. After this period, an attempt was made to balance the representation of legal courses with other disciplines. The curriculum of programme of the Urals Academy of Public Administration in 1994 may be taken as a typical example. The ratio of economics, legal and administrative blocks was as follows:

• Legal disciplines – 15, including: municipal law, constitutional law, civil law, family law, housing law, agrarian law, theory of the state and law, administrative law, organisation of state and municipal service of the Russian Federation, labour law, law of welfare, international law, civil process, ecological law, criminal law;
• Economic disciplines - 9, including: economic theory, history of economic doctrines, finance and credit, marketing, regional economies, economy of enterprise, state and municipal regulation of economy, bookkeeping and auditing, basis of business;
• General administrative disciplines – 7, including: management theory, management, bases of state and municipal management, information control systems, theory of decision-making, culture of management and organisation of management activity, personnel management.

The 1997 curriculum of the same programme was considerably more balanced, with legal studies offering eight fields, economics seven, and administrative ten. At the same time, it is necessary to include certain disciplines in connection with strengthening regions, including: financial and economic bases of local self-management, innovative management and technical regional policies, municipal marketing, regional economic policy in the system of self-government, management of regional security markets, banks in a market economy and economy of organisations.

Courses directly concerned with public management can be summarised as follows:

• the History of Public Management in the Russian Federation;
• Systems of Public Management;
• State and Municipal Management of Foreign Countries;
• Regional Studies;
• Geopolitics;
• Municipal Management;
• State Regulation of the Economy;
• Sociology of Management;
• Organisation of State Service.

It is important to note that these disciplines are studied in relation to the development of public management, i.e., first students take the History of Public Management course, which explores questions and concepts of civilisation and public management, basic models of state management development and their specific features. Closely connected to this is Systems of Public Management, which considers public management as a complex system with certain internal structures and external factors affecting the development of public administration.

Municipal Management explores the urgent problems of municipal management and various models of organisation of municipal management. In the Sociology of Management course, management is considered in development, and students have the opportunity to read outstanding management scholars such as F. Taylor, E. Mayo, P. Druker and G. Fayol, among others.

In the Regional Studies course, students explore principles of territorial organisation, regional development, historical aspects, regional political life and other topics. The next discipline, State and Municipal Management of Foreign Countries, challenges students to compare the organisation of state authority in Russia and in foreign countries. Lastly, while studying the Organisation of the State Service in the Russian Federation, students learn the rights and duties of civil servants, terms of getting posts in the civil service, and other related issues.

At present, there does not appear to be any perceptible change in the relative weight of the disciplines mentioned above. It should be noted that, in preparing civil servants, more attention should be paid topics such as:

• the constitution and basic federal laws regulating the service;
• Russian and foreign information sources on the civil service;
• the basic problems of selecting civil servants and solutions for personnel management problems;
• the development of managerial studies to improve state management.

The educational programmes outlined above include several disciplines that not only cover the theoretical bases of public service, but also have an applied character as the purpose of the most programmes is to improve professional skills. In developing new educational programmes, the relative weight of several disciplines is nearly equal; the dominant approach to programmes in public management is interdisciplinary. Special attention is paid to expanding basic courses to include modern state and municipal management theory and practice and introducing modern training techniques (business and computer games, case studies, role-playing games, etc.).

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