Federal Policy Implementation Models in Urban Improvement in Russia: Variation Factors

This article examines the implementation models of the federal project "The Development of a Comfortable Urban Environment" in three Russian regions. Launched in 2017, the federal project sought that regional and municipal programs for creating a comfortable urban environment follow the unified approach advanced by the Russian Ministry of Construction and Housing and Public Utilities. Despite the clear and strict project requirements, the regions exhibited variation in the implementation of the project. In this article, we ask what explains this variation in response to the federal initiative and the accompanying technocratic methods to achieve the required indicators. Drawing on the assumption of the principal-agent relations between the federal center and the regions, we study three models of compliance (excessive, minimal, and creative) in three city cases (Petrozavodsk, St. Petersburg, and Yekaterinburg). The empirical analysis demonstrates the significance of political factors in explaining the model of compliance: the stability of the position of a governor and the existence/absence of political conflict in the region.