How institutional reforms (don’t) work in Russia

The State Control Reform has signalized the new circle of the Administrative Reform in Russia. The analysis of its history shows that the declared aims of the “Dictatorship of the Law†building and the victory of the formal institutions under the informal were not achieved. Moreover, the activity of informal institutions has become the “way of life†for Russian political-administrative system, and the Administrative Reform with its continuous redesigning of the institutions - just the shell for it. To describe this phenomenon a special thesaurus is needed, and there are some attempts to create it. The new challenge for the researches is the 2015-16 years’ attempt of redesigning of the key informal connections and networks in Russian policy from the top of the system. The question whether it is the change of the trend or just its continuation - is a subject of further analysis.