Moscow University Public Administration Bulletin. 2025. 3.

Based on the institutional approach, the article proposes an interpretation of the concept of ’investment environment’ - complex system that provides the accumulation and redistribution of human, material and financial resources and includes a set of investment objects and subjects, the financial (investment) market, investment entities, legal norms and public institutions that ensure self-regulation and regulation of the investment environment, as well as socio-cultural traditions and customs of business turnover inherent in such an environment.

Based on this approach, the article examines the content and implementation of the Russian Government's "Strategy for Improving Financial Literacy and Financial Culture until 2030", considering the fragmentation of the Russian financial market due to socio-economic differentiation, institutional features, as well as the level of human capital and human development in the regions. Arguments are given in favor of the priority of a regional approach in the implementation of the national goals of the specified "Strategy", in view of the property opportunities, needs and socio-cultural specifics of citizens. Conclusions are drawn about the need to analyze and comprehend regional peculiarities, to foster a systematic approach and consistency in the implementation of financial literacy, and to adopt measures to support local financial entities.

Institutional conditions play a critical role in the successful integration of ESG principles into regional governance systems. However, the Russian context has lacked methodological tools to comprehensively assess the readiness of regions to adopt and implement sustainability-oriented management approaches. This article introduces an original methodology for calculating the Institutional Readiness Index for Sustainability (IRIS), designed to provide a quantitative assessment of regional capacities for ESG institutionalization.

The index is structured around three components — Environmental (E), Social (S), and Governance (G) — each comprising three indicators. Evaluation is based on expert analysis of strategic documents, regulatory frameworks, and organizational infrastructure across the constituent entities of the Russian Federation. Each indicator is scored on a three-point scale, and the aggregated index is calculated using weighted components (0.33 for E and S; 0.34 for G). The maximum index value is 6.00 points.

Based on the scaled values, a typology of regional institutional readiness levels was developed: high (IRIS ≥ 4.00), medium (3.00 ≤ IRIS < 4.00), and low (IRIS < 3.00). This typology was subsequently applied to the regions of the Central Federal District to verify the model’s robustness. The results confirmed substantial institutional asymmetries and demonstrated the analytical sensitivity of the IRIS index. Tailored policy recommendations were proposed for each typological group to address identified institutional deficits.

The findings highlight the practical applicability of the IRIS index as a tool for strategic planning, comparative assessment, and institutional monitoring. Future research may include expanding the geographical scope of the analysis, comparing IRIS with alternative sustainability indices, and developing composite models of regional ESG maturity.

The article analyzes the involvement of the regional public chambers of the Central Federal District in the Vkontakte social network and their readiness for a digital dialogue with the population. The main research hypothesis was the assumption that the publications of regional public chambers are a significant platform for the effective expression of public opinion, as well as for a transparent dialogue between the state and society. During the analysis, it was found that in the social network Vkontakte there are publics of 17 out of 18 regional public chambers, the number of subscribers in which does not exceed 1% of the population of the regions. At the same time, residents of the regions do not know anything about the activities of their regional chambers, and there is no purposeful activity to involve users of the social network. There are both leaders in information openness (regional public chambers of the Belgorod, Kaluga, Tula and Lipetsk regions, the city of Moscow) and outsiders in the information content of public sites on the Vkontakte social network (regional public chambers of the Kostroma, Orel, Ryazan, Tver and Yaroslavl regions). The monitoring has shown that there are certain positive relationships between the information openness of the communities of regional public chambers and the activity of their chairmen. For all 6 quantitative parameters: 1) total number of likes; 2) the total number of views; 3) the total number of comments; 4) the average number of likes; 5) the average number of views; 6) the average number of comments) the subscribers of the ROP communities of Moscow, the ROP of the Tula region and the ROP of the Moscow region are the most active. At the same time, according to their own activity (the number of entries), these regional public chambers are in 3rd, 4th and 9th places, respectively, that is, in the first half of the activity rating. A low level of feedback is observed in the ROP groups of the Tver region and the ROP of the Kostroma region, which are on the 13th and 17th places, respectively, in the rating of the asset of the communities of regional public chambers in the VKontakte social network. The monitoring demonstrated a significant potential for organizing a digital dialogue between the population and the state through regional public chambers.

Based on a review of the research literature, the article identifies and analyzes the “instrumental failures” of four key financial support measures for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) – guarantees, concessional loans, subsidies, and grants. It introduces the concept of an “instrumental failure” and develops a typology of conditions that drive government intervention off course: excessive or insufficient guarantee coverage, undifferentiated fees, overly low concessional rates, disproportionate subsidies and grants, a high share of refinancing, and repeated (“serial”) beneficiaries. The study’s practical significance lies in the specific remedies it proposes for each failure —ranging from an optimal guarantee-coverage band of 50–80 percent to floating fees and quotas for smaller firms —thereby providing a foundation for more precisely calibrated SME-support programs and greater efficiency in public spending.

The article examines the theoretical and methodological aspects of political marketing as a complex interdisciplinary phenomenon located at the intersection of theories of mass communications, electoral behavior and market regulation. The author analyzes in detail the historical development of political marketing from ancient forms of propaganda and agitation to modern practices of using digital technologies and social networks in political communication. Special attention is paid to the changing role of marketing tools in the context of the democratization of society and the growing competition between political actors. The dual nature of political marketing is noted, which manifests itself simultaneously as a technology for mobilizing the electorate and as a tool for long-term influence on the political consciousness of citizens and the formation of their identities. An important part of the article is the analysis of controversial issues regarding the limits of acceptable influence on the audience, including consideration of ethical issues and the differences between informing and manipulating public consciousness. Using bibliometric analysis, the author systematizes data on the development of this scientific field, revealing the dynamics of the publication activity of Russian researchers and noting the lack of representation of their work in international scientific databases. It is concluded that it is necessary to involve new approaches from the fields of cognitive psychology, digital sociology, as well as studying the influence of algorithmic technologies and artificial intelligence on political communication in the study of political marketing. The article concludes by emphasizing the importance of enhancing transparency and responsibility of political marketing to society, especially in the context of global digitalization and the mediatization of political processes. A promising area of further research is the study of mechanisms for countering disinformation and the development of ethical standards for digital political communication.

The third part of the article is devoted to the approaches of Russian jurisprudence to conceptualization of the functions of the state, to classification of states and to the explanation of the state origin. The author demonstrates that identifying functions of the state as a component of legal reality or in regard to this reality is quite complicated. He notes that legal theory classifies states in a mainly non-judicial manner, and shows the difficulties in classifying states as legal phenomena. The article considers the problems in theorizing on the state origin, caused by the flaws in the state conceptualization outlined in the previous parts of the article (namely, non-legal understanding of the state, mixing different meanings of the word “state”, extrapolating modern state features over the past epochs).

Digitalization is one of the key elements of the development of the control system. For the local level, the introduction of digital technologies and the formation of a culture of digitalization is heterogeneous, due to the digital inequality of municipalities. The article is devoted to the analysis of the regulatory framework and practical tools for the digitalization of municipal control. The purpose of the study is to identify gaps, collisions and other problematic aspects of digitalization of an administrative and technical nature. Federal legislation and strategic planning documents do not contain provisions that separate municipal control from the system of public control. There are also no separate provisions regarding the introduction of digital tools in urban and rural areas. Based on the analysis of the websites of the cities-administrative centers of the federal districts, the author comes to the conclusion about the incompleteness of providing information on the use of digital tools in municipal control and the average level of convenience of these sites for the user. To assess the effectiveness of digitalization and digital municipal control, it is necessary to develop new criteria that replace the "stick" quantitative indicators.

The process of transit of state power in the history of Russia has repeatedly taken place in conditions of crisis: full-scale or intra-elite. Weak expression of the institutions accompanying this process led to personal struggle between contenders for power. This led to the use of "cancellation mechanisms" of this or that contender. The objectives of this article are: to identify the conditions in which the need arose to use "cancellation mechanisms"; to show the tools of "cancellation"; to point out the results that the use of this tool led to. To solve these problems, the case method was used. The authors selected the most illustrative of the situations of power transit in the USSR. To identify and describe the "cancellation mechanisms", the methods of institutional, semantic and semiotic analysis were used. The analysis conducted by the authors confirmed the original hypothesis about the weakness of the institutions of power transit. In each of the first two cases of transit (the 1920s and 1950s), this struggle between the contenders turned into a "zero-sum game". It ended with one of the "successors" gaining full power and the complete loss of political positions by all the others - their symbolic "cancellation". In the last of the cases considered, M.S. Gorbachev took steps to make it more difficult for "successors" to appear, but was unable to resist the process in which he himself, along with his decorative successors, was "cancelled" by the self-proclaimed successor - B.N. Yeltsin.

The first part of the study is devoted to the study of the processes of formation and development of environmental policy in Russia in the imperial and Soviet periods (before 1991). The features of the emergence of environmental traditions in the Russian Empire, characterized by the fragmentation of regulatory measures and a predominantly resource-oriented approach to environmental management, are considered. Particular attention is paid to the analysis of the system of socialist environmental management in the USSR, including a study of the conceptual foundations of the Soviet environmental doctrine, institutional mechanisms of environmental protection activities and contradictions between the declared principles of rational environmental management and the practice of extensive industrial development. The key factors in the transformation of approaches to environmental protection at various stages of the Soviet period are identified, and the influence of ideological attitudes on the formation of the state's environmental policy is analyzed. The study demonstrates the evolution from episodic environmental measures of the imperial period to the formation of a centralized system of environmental management in the Soviet era.