How to Improve the Evaluation of Municipal Management Effectiveness: the Moscow and Moscow Region Experience

The authors analyze present trends in the evaluation of management effectiveness in municipal districts of Moscow and the Moscow Region. Our analysis consists of four parts. First, we describe the approaches to public management effectiveness. Secondly, we provide a case analysis of the Moscow Governments current attempts to evaluate the effectiveness of the regular day-to-day management of the Moscow districts (uprava) according to selected criteria and suggest a number of weaknesses of the current effectiveness evaluation strategy. Thirdly, an additional case analysis of the development strategies of selected Moscow Region small towns is provided. Finally, we offer proposals on how to improve the evaluation of Moscow districts' management effectiveness using program-evaluating criteria obtained from selec-ted strategies of municipal development of several small cities of the Moscow Region which are compatible in terms of size and budget with other Moscow districts. This paper argues that some indicators of effectiveness, elaborated for the purpose of evaluating the effectiveness of the implementation of municipal development stra-tegies, can be incorporated into the system of effectiveness evaluation for municipal district management. The usage of quantificators for evaluation can help to produce a better quality of municipal district management, as well as help discover strategic and sustainable changes for the social and economic systems of the districts.