It is too optimistic to hope that Navalny or Moscow can change Russia.



Russian government is staffed with poorly trained and uninspired officials and clerks. An idealist at the top will not change this, but will be changed by it. If the 200 businessmen want to join the mayoralty as officials and hire competent subordinates, maybe there would be reason for hope.



Otherwise, what is Navalny going to accomplish when his initiatives will be nullified by ideologically opposed permanent and professional mayoral staff.



The only way to fight corruption is by changing people's expectations and the culture of government from the bottom up. Unfortunately, Russian people do not have cultural resources like the Protestant work ethic or contractual expectations from government. They are used to being oppressed and misgoverned and to dealing with it.



As Russians learn about the benefits of good government and orderly expectations, as they travel more outside Russia, as legitimate businesses make money and rotate in and out of government, Russian government will improve naturally. But low levels of political education, provincialism, and the resource curse work against progress.



Navalny, unfortunately, represents only a small but vocal portion of the Russian polity - those managers, administrators, intellectuals, and officials, who are well educated and traveled, but who also administer the state from Moscow and St. Petersburg, thus inexorably being its constituents.



The objections of these politically active populations in Moscow and St. Pete are just rumblings inside the imperial bureaucracy. Election of Navalny would be like a promotion of a negative Nancy middle manager to higher management. No one likes complainers and he will likely fail.