Finding Problems for Policies in Moscow’s Local Policymaking: What are the Problems of Active Citizens?

Section S06: Agitated Polities, Changing Policies, and Policy Process Research Panel: Multiple Streams Perspectives on Policy Change (Chair Reimut Zohlnhoefer) Finding problems for policies in Moscow’s local policymaking: what are the problems of active citizens? Caroline Schlaufer Abstract The Multiple Streams Framework has been mostly applied to analyze policy agendas and changes in pluralistic democracies in Western Europe and the United States. However, applications to explain agenda setting and policy change in authoritarian or hybrid polities are only emerging and remain rare. This paper uses the Multiple Streams Framework to examine how Moscow’s local government links policy solutions to problems. Drawing on previous MSF studies in other authoritarian settings and on the Russian public policy literature, I assume that in the context of the Russian Federation, policy communities are restricted to governmental actors. Non-governmental actors, on the other hand, can mostly be active in the problem stream, framing conditions as problems in an attempt to bring them to the attention of the local government. Due to the weakness of non-governmental actors in an authoritarian setting, I hypothesize that Moscow’s local policymaking is driven by governmental policy proposals that search for problems. Therefore, in the context of Moscow’s local government, windows of opportunities for policy change are more likely to open in the political stream than in the problem stream. To empirically test my hypotheses, I examine the case of the “active citizen” program, an e-voting platform launched in 2014 to allow citizens to participate in Moscow’s urban policymaking. Methodologically, I draw on quantitative content analysis of the governmental “active citizen” website and of the website of the major non-governmental group. The contents of the websites are systematically coded to identify policy proposals and public problems; this analysis is combined with qualitative interviews. The results are expected to show that the “active citizen” program is driven by pre-existing policy solutions proposed by governmental actors that only ostensibly responds to public problems raised by non-governmental actors. In conclusion, the paper discusses the question of how a public problem may reach the governmental agenda in an authoritarian regime and, if necessary, proposes adaptations of the Multiple Streams Framework for a more systematic application in authoritarian regimes.