Description

Concerned with the question of why governments display varying degrees of success in implementing social reforms, (judged by their ability to arrive at coherent policy outcomes), my dissertation aims to identify the most important factors responsible for the stagnation of the social benefits reform in Russia, as opposed to its successful implementation in Kazakhstan.

I argue that the effectiveness of policy implementation was ultimately determined by the capacity of state actors to act cohesively and form such a policy coalition that would advance the reform’s original objectives despite unstable institutional structure and/or unfavorable socioeconomic and political conditions. In case of Kazakhstan, the successful implementation of the social benefits reform was the result of bold and skillful actions of Kazakhstani authorities who successfully used the existing conditions to advance the reform’s original objectives. By contrast, in Russia, the failure to effectively restructure its social welfare system had a lot to do with weak political and institutional capacities of the Russian state under Yeltsin and the lack of commitment to reform on part of the key political actors. And when the reform was finally launched, the poor quality of its content and the failure of the government to form a broad and viable policy coalition required to properly organize the implementation process and gain the support of the people resulted in massive public protests and subsequent reform stagnation.

Situated on the crossroads of the theory of the state, the welfare state theory and the theory of the public policy process, this study intends to refine the existing theory of state capacity and add important details to the central puzzle in the literature on public policy, that is, when and why policies change. The proposed study aims to illustrate that states may be capable of successful policy implementation even in unstable institutional contexts or unfavorable socioeconomic conditions provided that they are led by bold and determined state actors, who are willing and able to effectively navigate and overcome the political, bureaucratic and socioeconomic hurdles in an effort to form coherent policy coalitions and bring about the desired policy change.