Bureaucracy, contracts and networks: case of ministry for economic development of the Russian Federation

It is still an open question how to organize public governance in order to increase the efficiency of the public sector. One of the aims of Russian administrative reform is to introduce corporate elements into the governance structure of public agencies like Ministry for Economic Development of RF (MED RF). This article explores characteristics of hierarchical, corporate and network governance structures in order to define current governance structure in MED RF. The analysis is based on the transaction costs theory and on formalized interviews of bureaucrats in MED RF that had been conducted by request of LIA. We show that the behavior of the bureaucrats of horizontal departments of MED RF demonstrates the hierarchical elements of the governance structure, while the behavior of the bureaucrats of vertical departments also reveals corporate and network elements. Moreover, the behavior of the bureaucrats that work in different positions shows the characteristics corresponding to different governance structures. The corporate elements are more common at the low levels, the mid level is mainly hierarchical, and the network and corporate elements prevail at the top level.