More in this issue: Harmonising European Public Sector Accounting Standards (EPSAS) 2 Conferences Announcements 3 Exploring Russian gov- ernment budgeting in its context (continued) 4 Calls for papers 4 15 th Biennial CIGAR Conference (reminder) 3 At the outset of a new millennium, NPM-like reforms had started to penetrate into Russia’s public sector (see e.g. Timoshenko, 2008; Bourmistrov, 2006). The policy package included the structural reform of government agencies, the intro- duction of performance measurement and accrual accounting, just to mention a few. Some researchers have elucidated that recent changes in Russia’s public sec- tor, which were inspired by NPM developments in advanced economies, have not served for enhancing instrumentality, but rather for supporting the legitimacy of the Russian state on the international arena (Timoshenko, 2008; Timoshenko and Adhikari, 2010). Such actions may have pursued to augment a good image of the Russian state for foreign investors and supra-national institutions like the IMF and the World Bank. In their study of Russian governmental accounting, Antipova and Bourmistrov (2011) have claimed that although on-going changes seemingly fit well with Russian top political agenda, they have come into a contra- diction with the existing accounting tradition, giving birth to a hybrid accounting system. Russian context, which is rather distinct from both developed and devel- oping nations (e.g. Pollitt, 2009), along with the presence of strong Russian tradi- tions (Bourmistrov, 2001; Antipova and Bourmistrov, 2011, 2013), could create a space for competing reform paradigms, fostering hybridization. The research we have conducted examines budgeting regulations issued in Russia at macro-level commencing from 2000 until recently. This time span has been known for significant alterations in Russia’s public sector (Antipova and Bourmis- trov, 2013). Document search, supplemented with qualitative interviews, has been the major method of gathering data for this research. The system of norms , de- signed to regulate the system of actions (Bergevärn et al., 1995), is analyzed through the study of ‘talks’ and ‘decisions’ on public sector reforms as proposed by Pollitt and Bouckaert (2011). The public sector discourses framework, which is suggested by Hyndman et al. (2014), is adopted and elaborated on to trace the evidence of four public sector reform paradigms in the system of Russian govern- mental budgeting norms. The study shows that although the Russian context is distinct from that of OECD countries, one may witness similar processes of hybridization and “nationalization” of NPM-like reforms. The existing system of Russian govern- mental budgeting norms represents a hybrid, influenced by the ideas of NPM, other public sector reform discourses, those ideas stemming from the Russian past, as well as a strong rhetoric of Russian officials, aimed at boosting the image of the Russian state as a modern sovereign and independent player. Budgeting regulation in Russia possesses many different elements, including NPM-like per- formance measurement and performance management, a strong reliance on legis- lation that is more reminiscent of Public Administration (PA) tradition than NPM, as well as New Public Governance (NPG) and Neo-Weberian State (NWS) elements like consolidated budgets and reports, participatory budgeting and the role of the state as the main provider of welfare. (…) Continued on page 4 Exploring Russian government budgeting in its context * Important Notice: Harmonising European Public Sector Account- ing Standards (EPSAS) on page 2 COMPARATIVE INTERNATIONAL GOVERNMENTAL ACCOUNTING RESEARCH Newsletter January 2015 , Volume 6, Issue 1 Editorial Board Susana Jorge—University of Coimbra—Portugal (susjor@fe.uc.pt) Marine Portal—University of Poitiers—France (mportal@iae.univ-poitiers.fr) Eugenio Caperchione—University of Modena and Reggio Emilia (cigar2009@unimore.it) Jan van Helden—University of Groningen (g.j.van.helden@rug.nl) www.cigar-network.net Igor Khodachek, Bodø Graduate School of Business (Norway) K. Timoshenko, Bodø Graduate School of Business (Norway)