Institutional Basics of Tariffs in Housing and Communal Services: Cross-Country Analysis

Abstract

The aim of the article is a review and summarizing methods of tariffs in housing and communal services in foreign countries, and also reasoning of opportunity to use of state marketing in the regulation of tariffs and the main directions of its usage, both in Russia and abroad. The result of this article is the formulation of conclusions and predictions for further development of tariff setting, as well as the social consequences of this policy in the sphere of housing and communal services. The institutional character of the social practices of HCS, according to the authors, is associated with the provision of living conditions for the population in the sphere of material practices and with the finding of ways to optimize the economy of the industrial and postindustrial societies. In the service social practices HCS special factor is the change of goal setting, re-orientation of social action for the client from the process that is not always connected with rational components of the social actions of individuals, and also with the operation of irrational components. Besides, there is a kind of "soft" technologization in the service social practices of HCS. Pricing policy in the sphere of housing and communal services detects a contradiction, on the one hand, between a wide range of services and agents that shows the democratization processes in the maintenance and strengthening of processes of self-administration, and on the other side of rising prices and low quality of services provided.

DOI: 10.5901/mjss.2015.v6n3p26