Municipal strategic planning in Russia between financial crises

Abstract

The article provides an overview of the five-year phase of the municipal strategy development in Russia from 2010 to 2014, based on the expert analysis of strategic planning documents using the method of formalized description of the content of municipal strategies. The article presents the generalized results of the analysis of 40 long-term strategic documents and pointed out that examined strategies of this period vary widely in shape and approaches to planning. Examined documents were compared with the results of analysis of earlier documents. The conclusion is that the content of the strategic documents was gradually transformed in the direction of strengthening the properties which are recognized as the attributes of a «good» strategy within the consensus of the expert community: ambitiousness of strategies were increased, priorities in the economic bloc were shifted towards the selective economic strategy, the number of strategies from exceptional attention to the implementation were increased significantly. Particular attention was paid to the analysis of the main objectives and mission set forth in the strategic documents.