Too Big of a Government?

BBC Monitoring, via Johnson’s Russia List, reports that  

Russian officials are multiplying at a record-breaking rate. According to the Federal Service of State Statistics data, over the last year [2005] alone, the legion of bureaucrats grew by nearly 150,000, that is by over 10 per cent.

Almost 1.5m people work in the federal bodies of the executive branch of power. This means there is one official per 100 Russians. This is an absolute record for Russia.

The number of government officials is not the only thing that has increased dramatically over the past year in Russia – the salaries of federal public servants increased by 44% (in Russian).  These trends are applicable not just to last year, but previous years as well – as the size of the government and government salaries have been consistently on the rise.  Coincidentally (?), corruption in Russia also grew dramatically over the past several years, as according to the INDEM Foundation’s last year study, bribes alone topped $316 billion in just one year.  And what about other forms of corruption, including nepotism, conflict of interest, self-dealing, kickbacks, etc.?  Although direct taxes are relatively low in Russia, government officials are able to “raise” additional revenues through indirect taxes – i.e. corruption.  (Note that $316 billion in bribes is 2.6 times the budget of the federal government).  The findings of the study have been widely disputed, yet noone denies the astonishingly high levels of corruption in Russia.  For example, a million dollar bribe story hardly shocked anyone in the country, the only surprising thing was that the officials were actually caught.

The most troubling thing in all of this, it seems to me, is the fact that in the USSR there was one public official per about 300-400 citizens.  In Russia today, as mentioned above, it is one official per 100 citizens.  This means that in relative (not nominal) terms of employment the Russian government is 3-4 times larger than the government of the USSR.  Back in USSR?  With continued demographic crisis in Russia and sustained growth in the number (as well as salaries) of public officials, I just wonder how large will the government get?

One thing to keep in mind, is that as Francis Fukuyama argues, it is not the size of the government that makes the difference in achieving economic growth and improving social standing.  It is the quality of the government that does.  For more on Fukuyama’s discussion on the strength vs. scope attributes of a state  and how many people get it wrong see a presentation of his State-Building book.