Ellie Martus - Russian Environmental Politics: State, Industry and Policymaking

Protecting the environment is a key issue for Russia, with its vast wilderness areas and its economys reliance on extractive industries, which have the potential to cause massive pollution. This book explores how policymaking works in Russia, focusing on the important field of environmental policy. It argues that, contrary to the prevailing view that the presidency dominates the policy process, with Putin making all major decisions or at least being the arbiter between conflicting parties, policy is in fact made a range of competing interests, including the bureaucracy and influential industry and industrial association lobbyists, with relatively little intervention from Putin. The book shows how, although Russia does not have a strong civil society, environmentalist views are represented through the institutionalized bureaucracy. The book concludes that policy decision-making in Russia is quite dispersed and not overcentralized.

Ellie Martus completed her doctorate at the University of New South Wales

Editorial Committee:

Roy Allison, St Antonys College, Oxford

Birgit Beumers, Department of Theatre, Film and Television Studies, University of Aberystwyth

Richard Connolly, Centre for Russian and East European Studies, University of Birmingham

Terry Cox, Department of Central and East European Studies, University of Glasgow

Peter Duncan, School of Slavonic and East European Studies, University College London

Zoe Knox, School of History, University of Leicester

Rosalind Marsh, Department of European Studies and Modern Languages, University of Bath

David Moon, Department of History, University of York

Hilary Pilkington, Department of Sociology, University of Manchester

Graham Timmins, Department of Politics, University of Birmingham

Stephen White, Department of Politics, University of Glasgow

Founding Editorial Committee Member:

George Blazyca, Centre for Contemporary European Studies, University of Paisley

This series is published on behalf of BASEES (the British Association for Slavonic and East European Studies). The series comprises original, high-quality, research-level work by both new and established scholars on all aspects of Russian, Soviet, post-Soviet and East European Studies in humanities and social science subjects.

111Soviet Postcolonial Studies

A View from the Western Borderlands

Epp Annus

112Russian Environmental Politics

State, Industry and Policymaking

Ellie Martus

Ellie Martus

First published 2018
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2018 Ellie Martus

The right of Ellie Martus to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe.

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A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

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A catalog record for this book has been requested

ISBN: 978-1-138-73719-8 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-315-16643-8 (ebk)

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This research project was mostly conducted during my doctoral studies at the University of New South Wales, Australia. I would like to sincerely thank my supervisor, Stephen Fortescue, for his advice and unfailing encouragement during my PhD and beyond. I could not have managed without his knowledge and enormous insight into the Russian policymaking process. Besides Stephen, I would like to thank my co-supervisor Joanne Pemberton for her support throughout. I would also like to thank the School of Social Sciences at the University of New South Wales for their support whilst writing this book.

is derived in part from an article published in Post-Soviet Affairs, 33:4, 276297, DOI: 10.1080/1060586X.2016.1209315.

Transliteration in this book is based on the British system, with the exception of well-known names which appear in their most common form. All translations from Russian sources into English were done by the author.

How are decisions made in Russia? Which actors are involved? What impact do these actors have on policy outcomes? These are important questions for our understanding of the Russian political system and how it works. The widely held view is that the powerful Presidency dominates the policymaking process. According to this narrative, Putin takes pride of place throughout the process, either as an arbiter of competing forces with policy initiation coming from elsewhere, or more directly by shaping the strategic agenda. It is argued that the centralisation and personalisation of the political system have led to the manual control (ruchnoe upravlenie) of the policy process, whereby Putin is heavily involved in even minor decisions (e.g. Monaghan, 2013; Petrov, Lipman and Hale, 2014). This perspective corresponds with our understanding of Russias executive-dominated political system. However, when it comes to examining the policy process, this approach has the tendency to overlook the important role played by competing interests in influencing policy outcomes. Studying the policy process is about opening up the so-called black box to examine how demands are translated into outputs. Doing this in the Russian context gives us an indication of just how contested decision-making can be. The environmental policy process is no exception.