The paper deals with the problems of reforming administration and law enforcement systems in modern Russia. So far, the Russian Westernization project, which has been the object of great hope in previous decades, has not justified itself. At the same time, during this period, the Russian law-maker has been performing a large-scale reception of foreign public law rules into the domestic legal order. An introduction of numerous constitutional law principles that characterize the Western countries has often been carried out mechanically with no regard for both the peculiarities of the countries where they had been formed and the real possibility of integrating these novels into the domestic legal environment. This process has led to a number of negative results. In many respects, an administrative reform failure, slips in the implementation of the principles that form the basis for law enforcement activities, fundamental discrepancies between the theory of local self-government and the practice of its implementation prove the need for reviewing ineffective normative regulations and seeking new approaches to solving existing problems. The study in question attempts to assess the above mentioned process systematically, to acknowledge the errors made and to identify the ways to find appropriate alternatives.