Modern Practices of Effective Digital Government: A Case Study of Russia and China

Digital government has become a central driver of public sector transformation worldwide, yet its development pathways remain highly heterogeneous across institutional contexts. This study conducts a comparative institutional analysis of digital government development in China and Russia, focusing on national integrated service platforms as key empirical cases. Drawing on longitudinal data from the United Nations E-Government Development Index (EGDI) from 2014 to 2024 and qualitative analysis of official policy documents, the study adopts a mixed-methods comparative case study design. A five-dimensional analytical framework is developed, including institutional support, service integration, data governance, user orientation, and inter-agency coordination, to operationalize institutional logics in digital government development. The findings reveal two distinct institutional pathways. China follows an integration-driven model characterized by strong state coordination, deep administrative integration, and rapid post-2018 acceleration in digital government performance. Russia adopts an access-driven model emphasizing user-centered service delivery, incremental platform expansion, and functional accessibility through the Gosuslugi system. Longitudinal EGDI trends further support this divergence, showing that China’s rapid post-2018 acceleration is associated with institutional integration efforts, while Russia’s more stable growth reflects an incremental and access-oriented development trajectory. Despite these differences, both countries converge on the strategic importance of digital sovereignty and state control over digital infrastructure. The findings offer theoretical and practical implications for understanding how institutional environments shape digital transformation pathways in emerging economies.

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