Personnel reshuffling didn’t lead to any political changes
By VK
This week, the composition of the new government was finally revealed. Only one third of the ministers retained their positions. However, experts believe that from now on the most important decisions will be taken by the Kremlin and not by the White House.
Grigoriy Dobromelov, executive director of the Political Research Institute
I would like to stress three aspects. First of all, the new government is a government of ‘alternatives’. I think this label will get attached to it very soon, and not only due to the young age of some of its members, but due to the career history of the new ministers. They used to be functionaries, but of the second rank. Imagine if instead of the usual Barcelona players in the most decisive moment of a game (and you know that the current economic situation isn’t so good at all, and we need serious systematic reforms) the substitute team goes on the pitch. And this new team has to make serious changes.
So I think that the main criterion was not the age, and the long pause before the announcement of the new government is very revealing in this regard. They had 8 months to finalize the list after Vladimir Putin became official presidential candidate until Medvedev was announced as the new head of the government. Or at least there were the two months after Putin won the elections. I don’t know if the list was being finalized in this period or not, but I know that some key ministerial candidates were finalized at the last moment. Some of them didn’t know that they would be invited into the cabinet till the very last moment. So what was the reason for that? Some say that a number of serious politicians refused to work in this government. So it was not the issue of young people heading the government, it was more an issue of a compromise, or even an issue of who would agree to take up the post. That’s the first thing.
But from my point of view, the structural changes that occurred are more important. The third order of Putin concerning the new composition of the government is the most important thing here. I don’t agree that there’s any continuity from Kozak’s reform. This reform is de facto buried, as its main idea was to separate the executive and the control functions within the government, but it is fully repudiated by the suggestion that the deputy ministers will be able to become agency heads at the same time. So the control functions are once again subjected to the executive ones. There’s no logic to this decision in the framework of the abovementioned reform.
The next thing is the redistribution of powers within the government. Rostourism is transferred to the Ministry of Culture. The new Minister of Culture is more close to some historical or ideological paradigms than to the culture per se. It means that the main cultural objective of the new government will be support of the state’s image and ideology, and it is a PR-manager that they’ve chosen for the position. The new Ministry of Culture combined with the Department of Tourism will play an image role from now on.
The Department of Youth Affairs is given to the Education Ministry. And this, on the contrary, depoliticizes the ‘youth agenda’. It becomes more about education and science, more about human resources.
The following aspect is also very important. It’s about what’s happening to the Ministry of the Regions. The institution of plenipotentiaries is de facto duplicated within this ministry. And what’s happening to the institution? It wasn’t all that important before, but now, with the new appointments, it starts to look really strange. And the plenipotentiaries within the institution are not equals. There used to be only Khloponin, who was ‘first among equals’, but now Ishaev is also a government member. So the institution of the plenipotentiaries is de facto diluted. The changes don’t have a systematic character. They happen only by chance and bear no logic for constructing an efficient administrative model whatsoever.
Yes, as far as human resources are concerned, several decisions have been quite successful. For example, appointing Maxim Sokolov as Minister of Transport. But there’s the question: why didn’t they appoint Asual to this position, who was also responsible for transport in the Petersburg city government, like Sokolov. Sokolov was in this government as the investment manager, and Asual was the head of city transport. So the logic of this appointment also escapes me, even though the candidature by itself is very promising.
And the last thing I would like to say is about the possible division that the media and some experts will draw between the Government and the Presidential Administration. It is clear that Mr Putin Is not used to throwing away valuable people, he usually keeps them. So it is quite obvious that he will try keep ex-members of his government as President or PM close to him within the new structure. It is absolutely clear that they will have certain control over the Cabinet. I think that the Cabinet will have only technocratic functions. Its main purpose will not be strategic planning, but the implementation of actual programs. And strategic planning will go to the Presidential Administration. The main question here is will the Government still have a political say due to the new appointments of Vladislav Yuryevitch and Mr Govorun, who wants to be responsible for the regional agenda, as well as for electoral issues. How they manage to keep the balance of interests here, we’ll see in a short while, but it is obvious that there’s a certain conflict potential here.
Mikhail Remizov, the head of the National Strategy Institute
They say that unpopular economic reforms are on today’s agenda, and they have been saying it for a long time. However, according the current agenda, we have the realization of Putin’s very popular pre-election promises at hand. And they will have to be carried out by the new government, as it is the addressee of the first 11 Presidential orders, signed right after the inauguration. These ideas are truly popular. No one’s against a better life, new industrialization, Far East development, promotion of middle-class interests, to make all those who culturally belong to this class its members according to economic standards, etc. All these developments were promised and even stipulated in the presidential orders, so we’ll see in a few years whether they are realized or not. Literally in a few years, each order has its own terms of realization. But we should have a good memory not to forget to follow the realization of the orders and the dynamics of the respective indicators. The priorities are set correctly, but we need better instruments to implement them, and a stimulating policy of state expenditure could become such an instrument, as well as a more active industrial policy. We lack traditional liberal recipes. Our liberals and neo-liberals are not talking about lowering the taxation, but they mention cutting the expenses for privatization. As if this would make us all happy. Europe is gradually rejecting such policy. called a policy of ‘phlebotomy’ by Paul Krugman, as they try to ‘drain’ money from the ‘sick’ economy, just like they used to drain blood from a sick person. But it is a very risky procedure, that’s why they are more inclined towards active stimulative measures from now on. It would be very good if we adopted this practice. However, I should say that both these economic credos have been discredited. The first one, ‘dirigism’,. was discredited in 2007 when they made absolutely correct decisions in accordance with this policy, but the results of the creation of state corporations were still deplorable. All the attempts to create clusters of scientific industry, aircraft-construction and so on failed. There are some successful points, but in general it was a failure. So I agree that both approaches are discredited, and this is the major problem for our government. So it is only logical that it is a government of technocrats. For example, Mr Belousov, whose views we’ve discussed, is not at all a dogmatist, and that is actually very good. Because usually the demarcation line separates partisans of various dogmas, on the one hand, and pragmatists on the other. In the situation of a crisis of economic ideologies it is only logical to create a technocratic government.
As for the political aspect, there was significant staff rotation, a lot of resignations and new faces, but there’s almost no actual political reconstruction: in fact, the deputies took a step up the ladder; they even didn’t change their branches of activity. And their former CEOs left for the Administration and got positions from which they will be able to influence the decisions of their former subjects. And secondly, there’s the return to the traditional model, in which the Presidential Administration takes the lead in the area of strategy, and the government is occupied with practical implementation of their decisions. And the third thing is that Medvedev could still be perceived as a strong PM. The very pause in the formation of the government tells us that the new government is a coalition one, only the coalition isn’t between the political parties; it is between the clans of influence. It was only natural to expect such a government where the lobbies’ representatives would be unchangeable, and they could be more influential than their formal CEOs. But it turned out differently. The new ministers are young technocrats, and their career success is due personally to the President and the PM, so they will more likely to be loyal to them and not to any ‘groups of influence’.
Therefore they are perfect subjects for Medvedev, he could become a real leader for them, a true team-leader. And the fourth point is that this new government proved that there’s no minister who cannot be removed. One of the negative traits of the previous government was the seemingly eternal posts of ministers, and not only because the ruling tandem blocked new personnel appointments trying not to break the balance, but because certain ministers de facto became the only guarantors of stability in their respective branches. But now, when this is gone, we can hope for better personnel decisions and a higher level of ministers’ responsibility. And the last point: the most important thing that happened in these days is that the idea of the state corporation for Far East and Eastern Siberia development was buried and a decision to create a special ministry for that was taken – in my opinion this decision is more in accordance with the concept of Russia’s sovereignty and statehood. This decision would allow to stress the importance of the region (along with the North Caucasus) as well as to join the executive and the presidential chains of command to lobby investment project for the Far East development. In my opinion, if the state corporation idea would have been realized, it would endanger Russia’s integrity, I think this concept is rather frightening.
Evgeniy Minchenko, the Head of the International Institute for political expertise
I believe that all the new ministers are rather good professionals. I have seen Manturov, Novak and Medinsky at work, they are efficient professionals. At the same time, I believe that despite what you’ve said about some ideological aspects behind the new appointments, there were none and a lot of them were backed by different lobbies and influence groups, and not by actual administrative needs. I have two examples. Why did they create the post of the Minister of the Far East and East Siberia development? Because they had to bury the idea of the respective state corporation that was being created especially for Mr Shoigy, but then he got appointed to the Moscow district. So there was a risk that a person from a different influence group would head the corporation, and in order to prevent that from happening they’ve just buried the corporation. And to avoid questions like: “But you’ve been telling us how important the Far East is, so why..?” they decided to create the Minister for these affairs. The post of the Minister for communication with the open government, I believe, was created in the same way: there was a strife to appoint Abyzov the Energy Miniser, but when they failed to do so, he became minister without portfolio. A lot of appointments were made following this logic. It’s hard to describe the structure of the executive power for now as we: a) will the representatives of all those law enforcement agencies retain their places, even though they are not formally included into the government: I mean the FSS, the Drug Control, federal Service for punishment execution and so on. Plus I believe the Russian Financial Monitoring agency will get new powers, and it will answer directly to the President. So I think it would be very interesting to know who will actually head this agency. And it seems we will be surprised by the new position of Igor Sechin: his position in the government is destroyed, his people didn’t get there too, and he didn’t enter the Presidential Administration. I believe he’ll have to get certain compensation, and a good one. We’ve got a lot of wonderful pre-election promises, and now the new government will have to carry them out, but I believe that the very essence of the government is conservative and inertial. There are two main reforms at hand: one doesn’t trigger much argument, it is the pension reform. Another one triggers quite an intense strife: it is the new round of the ‘big privatization’. There are two lines of conflict here: first one between those who want to conduct the privatization as soon as possible, as they are ready for that and it would be beneficial for them, and those who want to postpone it. Both parties make some arguments referring to the common good but we should understand what it really is about. And the second aspect of the conflict is the actual strife for the funds and actives, and I think this strife poses a serious threat to our whole administrative system. You remember that a similar strife let to a number of serious political crises and conflicts in the 90s. So I think that Putin will have to use all his negotiator talent to pull this off.
