LOCAL SELF-GOVERNMENT IN THE RUSSIAN FEDERATION AFTER AMENDMENTS TO THE CONSTITUTION-2020

Abstract

The formal legal and political status of local self-government, its position in the system of authorities in the Russian Federation remains unformulated. Despite the fact that this status is not legally formalized, de facto it was the amendments to the Constitution of 2020 that consolidated the reduction of autonomy and increased control of municipalities by the state. Of course, this legal innovation was accompanied by motivation to increase manageability, economic efficiency and a number of other arguments. The purpose of this study is to analyze the effectiveness of this amendment to the Constitution on the basis of a field study conducted in the autumn of 2022 in the municipalities of the Perm Region. The municipalities of the Perm Region were selected as research cases, among them Krasnokamsky and Nytvensky urban districts. Using the example of the implementation of Sustainable Development Goals in the field of ecology and the formation of a comfortable urban environment, the implementation of a multi-level policy in the Russian Federation at the municipal level is considered. The research method is a series of in-depth interviews with municipal officials. As a result of the study, the following conclusion was made: according to the results of the reform, the stated problems of local self-government in the Russian Federation were not resolved, and their main consequence is not so much building an effective system of accountability and self-government at the local level, as strengthening the integration of municipalities with regional and federal authorities. From the point of view of the theory of multilevel management, the basic principles of the reform of the LSG should be functionalism and self-government. These principles can be implemented only by increasing the subjectivity of Russian municipalities, both political and financial, budgetary, organizational, etc.