1 The impact of Russian Welfare Reform on Social NGOs: Examining Contention and Compliance in the Case of Saint Petersburg Anna Tarasenko PhD in Political Science Lecturer, Department of Applied Political Science National Research University Higher School of Economics (St. Petersburg) Abstract In accordance with neo-liberal logic, the welfare reforms in Russia have shifted a range of social responsibilities from the national to the regional level and emphasis has increasingly been placed on individual accountability and the role of civil society organisations in service provision. The changing nature of state-society relations has challenged traditional understandings of the government’s responsibilities and therefore has become a source of contention in Russian society. Being one of the main beneficiaries of the former social system, civic organisations dealing with social rights, were placed in a puzzling situation: their interest is to resist the shift of the policy but without making challenging claims to the political system itself. This paper argues that these organisations protect their members’ interests by employing tools of “consentful” contention. The paper analyses sanctioned tools employed by social organisations to resist policy changes and revisions of the state-society relations in social provision: both through managerial mechanisms of funding redistribution and law changes. The theory of contentious politics allows us to explore mechanisms of channelling social demands under a specific political opportunity structure, taking into account structural characteristics and the rationality of social organisations that choose specific strategies to impact policy outcome. Introduction This paper examines how recent changes to Russia’s welfare sector have influenced the ability of social NGOs to resist the imposed liberal-oriented policy model. An assessment is made of the role of political opportunity structures in determining how civil society organisations choose their strategies in response to challenging policy changes. According to the “consentful” contention theory civic organisations are reluctant to use social protests since they prefer to be seen as respectful citizens seeking for the state’s social protection. The specific case study of NGO experience in St. Petersburg is chosen to illustrate the complex nature of state- society relations in the sphere of social provision. While it is argued that limited interest representation at the federal level has enabled the implementation of unpopular reforms, the case of St. Petersburg shows how, in reality, certain social groups are still represented and their previous social privileges are secured. The data collection for this project involved both quantitative and qualitative methods. An initial study of federal and regional legislature and governmental regulations was used to outline the main dynamics of the policy toward nonprofit organisations (law on socially oriented NGOs, regulations