Int. J. Electronic Governance, Vol. 8, No. 3, 2016 211 Copyright © 2016 Inderscience Enterprises Ltd. Russian movement for ‘open government’: issues of civic engagement in politics Leonid Smorgunov Political Governance Department, St. Petersburg State University, Universitetskaya Nab., 7/9, St. Petersburg, 199034, Russia Email: l.smorgunov@spbu.ru Abstract: The paper concerns contemporary trends and issues of transparency, participation and collaboration in governmental activities in Russia. Building an ‘open government’ is based on the institutionalisation of access for citizens to the sphere of governmental activities and transformation of government. Its implementation, however, has resulted in a certain gap between the three major clusters of the movement for open government: governmental, presidential and civil. The paper analyses the structural and ideological movement for open government in Russia. Using a network approach, the author describes the main clusters of the movement for open government, and particularly the structure of political opportunities they create for civic engagement in public policy but also for authoritative control over it. The paper is based on a study of 154 actors of open government using network analysis. Keywords: open government; network clusters; structure of political opportunities; civic engagement; control; Russia. Reference to this paper should be made as follows: Smorgunov, L. (2016) ‘Russian movement for ‘open government’: issues of civic engagement in politics’, Int. J. Electronic Governance, Vol. 8, No. 3, pp.211–228. Biographical notes: Leonid Smorgunov is a Professor of the Political Governance Department at the St. Petersburg State University, Russia. His research interests include public administration reforms, electronic governance, political networks and collaboration. This paper is a revised and expanded version of a paper entitled ‘Institutional learning for government-society relations: Russian case of ‘open government’’ presented at Electronic Governance and Open Society: Challenges in Eurasia, St. Petersburg, Russia, 18–20 November, 2014. 1 Introduction The movement for open electronic government began at the end of the last decade. Under the slogans of transparency, participation and collaboration, this movement has occupied many countries (Open Government Partnership, 2011; Scassa, 2014; Kariuki, 2015). In general, the movement relates to some changes in the ideology of administrative reform. The emergence of networked social structures transformed the task of public