Russian local governmental reforms: autonomy for accounting development?

Abstract

This paper focuses on accounting in Russian local governments. When the perestroika period began in the middle of the 1980s, a process of restructuring and reforming the Russian society started. One intention of reforms was to change planned economy to a more market-oriented one. This process of transformation has affected local governments, especially when it concerns the relations between central and local governments. The process of restructuring the Russian society is described from a frame of reference consisting of the political ideas that are often connected to the Russian reforms, i.e. glasnost, democracy, autonomy and independence. These political ideas were formulated and argued for by politicians at the central level of the Federation. In this paper we discuss whether this ideology at the central level has influenced Russian local governmental accounting norms. Based on information from Leningrad oblast' (county) the paper also includes a description and discussion of changes in accounting in action. The paper ends with a discussion on changes in accounting in Russian local governments focusing on the question whether the central reform ideology has influenced local action and accounting. The discussion illustrates that given big changes in central ideology and local action, Russian local governmental accounting has not changed fast. Slow changes in the accounting norm system, a difficult local financial situation and difficulties in unlearning the old accounting procedures create barriers to utilize local autonomy in respect to accounting system development.

Accounting and accountability in local government: Contributions from accounting history research

“…By so doing they showed that: ... the government's desire to control local authority expenditure originated many centuries ago, that many of the basic principles of the district audit pre-date its introduction in 1844, that the district audit was developed as a principal mechanism for controlling escalating local expenditure, and that the present objective of greater central control has been a consistent theme (p.153). Bourmistrov and Mellemvik (1999) focused on accounting change in Russian LGs since the social reform triggered by "perestroika", portraying the main elements of the accounting norms in force before 1985 (the old accounting norms) and the norms introduced after 1985 (the new accounting norms). The period of analysis was concentrated in the 1980s and 1990s.…”

Tracing changes in central government accounting: a case of Rússia

“…Meanwhile, there is a conspicuous absence of rigorous research efforts on the Russian government accounting system. whereas Russian local government accounting is already covered by Bourmistrov and Mellemvik (1999, there is virtually nothing about Russian central government accounting in CIGAR's publications and in most of international accounting's research networks, workshops, and groups (see e.g., Bourmistrov and Mellemvik, 2005). Such a paucity of knowledge can be considered a valuable source of motivation to expand our knowledge in the field of Russian central government accounting.…”

Russian Public Sector Reform: The Impact on University Accounting

“…Even though the operational environment of the university had undergone noticeable alterations over the 90s due to an up-to-date legislative framework, its accounting and fi nancial reporting system continued chiefl y to rely on the practices and procedures inherited from the Soviet past. As is in the case of one local government (Bourmistrov 2001;Bourmistrov and Mellemvik 1999, 2001, the transformation of Russian society, economy and politics in the 90s had not markedly extended to the budgeting and accounting systems of the educational establishment.…”

“…Meanwhile, there is a conspicuous absence of rigorous research efforts on the Russian government accounting system. Whereas Russian local government accounting is already covered by Bourmistrov and Mellemvik (1999, 2001, there is virtually nothing about Russian central government accounting in most of international accounting's research networks, workshops, and groups (see e.g., Bourmistrov and Mellemvik 2005). Furthermore, the literature is not too vast on those accounting systems regarding specifi c organizations operating under the federal government, including Russian public universities and institutes of higher learning.…”