Historical and Foreign Experience of Implementation of the Principle of Supremacy of the Council in the System of Local Government and Self-Government: Lessons for Modern Russia

Abstract

A Municipal Council has an important role to play in representing the interests of the population at the local level. At the same time in Russia the evolution of the legal status of this institution since the beginning of the 1990s is ambiguous: the capability and activities of representative bodies are limited. The paper, through the prism of the views and ideas of the famous Soviet and Russian constitutionalist Ekaterina I. Kozlova, examines the nature and legal status of representative bodies at the local level based on the principle of their supremacy. The implementation of this principle is also analyzed on the example of foreign models of local government. According to the author, the current weakness of representative bodies in the Russian model of organization of municipal authorities does not meet the requirements of efficiency and does not provide actual representation of interests of local territorial communities. Thus, the author urges to take into account both foreign and historical (Soviet) experience of development of institutions of administration and self-government in the field under consideration.