Co-production of Public Policy in Hybrid Regimes: The Russian Case of ‘Budget for Citizens’

The practice of citizen’s involvement in the process of formation, monitoring and evaluation of performance of the public budget has become one of the most important forms of cooperation of citizens and government. Of particular importance is acquiring in a digital form of government where the public use of data creates a solid platform for the modern type of "co-production" of public budgets. Compared with the categories of "collaboration" and "public involvement" this concept has expanded understanding of the cycle of public policies affecting the problem of political designs, governance of public policies, the joint formulation and implementation of public values. Modern budgeting based on cooperation transforms designs of budgetary policy, accountability systems, processes of identifying public values and others. Ensure citizen-oriented data relating to the budget here gets particular importance, and share learning of citizens and government for inclusive budget process becomes main requisite for successful collaboration. There are the differences between “co-production” in democratic and hybrid regimes. The hybrid regimes decrease a positive effect of “co-production” and use it for regime’s legitimacy. The paper analyzes the Russian practice of "budget for the citizens", introduced in 2013 at the federal and regional levels, in a context of mixed (hybrid) regime. Transparency of budgetary data, its transformation for the citizens, and budgeting, initiated by citizens, often has imitative character. Co-production institutions have limited and demonstrative effect. But nevertheless they influence on the Russian policy designs for inclusive budgeting and on the level of mutual learning. Contradictions and obstacles for mutual learning citizens and government are explained by hybrid political regime of participation, bureaucratic mechanism of budget accountability, corruptive practices of budget execution, weak network feedbacks and limited citizen-oriented data.