This thesis aims to explain the development of post-Soviet Russian housing policy by analysing the process of policy-making in this sphere at the federal level. The policy process is examined through the lens of the social learning framework. This framework views policy- making as a learning dynamic that unfolds in time, and holds the interaction of institutions, actors and ideas central to the understanding of policy development. The thesis constructs a model of social learning (MSL) that helps to trace a pattern of reiterating cycles of policy transformation in the post-Soviet Russian housing sphere. The analysis begins in the late-Soviet period. It finds that the first fundamental change in Russian housing occurred in the final Soviet years. In order to facilitate the analysis of this complex and multi-faceted policy area I have divided it into three interrelated sub-cases or issue areas - (1) housing property rights, (2) housing and utility services, and (3) housing finance. This analysis reveals divergent patterns of policy transformation in these three sub- cases. In the first and the third sub-cases two fundamental policy shifts were observed over the post-Soviet period, whereas only one such shift was present in the sub-case of housing utilities. This is attributed to the stability of policy ideas present in the latter sub-case and absent in the former two sub-cases. Overall, the thesis argues that the process of policy- making in Russia struggles to produce fundamental change in areas where a plurality of policy ideas is present. This is due to the effect of the Russian political institutional environment - in which the impact of informal connections among influential policy actors and the lack of social representation in the policy process are prominent. As a result, policy-making within the Russian state suffers.