Normative regulation of local government officials’ responsibility in the Russian unified system of public authority

Abstract

The issues of legal regulation of the constitutional and legal structure “unified system of public power” have been the subject of scientific research and discussion for a long time. On the one hand, this is facilitated by the updated text of the Constitution of the Russian Federation, in which this category found its original place; on the other hand, the adoption of several federal laws aimed at forming the structure and content of a unified system of public power, which have not yet been fully investigated and provide “food for thought” for research papers, books, and dissertations. At the same time, the issues of forming the legal basis for the responsibility of bodies and their officials within the framework of a unified system of public authority have not yet found their sufficient attention and level of development. The issues of legal regulation of the responsibility of individual bodies and officials of local self-government, which are part of the unified system of public authority, are no exception. Within the framework of this study, the author conducts a critical analysis of certain provisions of the Russian Federal Law No. 414-FZ of December 21, 2021 “On general principles of the organization of public power in the subjects of the Russian Federation” in terms of empowering the highest official of a RF subject to apply liability measures (warning, severe reprimand, and dismissal from office) to the head of a municipality and the head of a local the results of which indicate a number of “negative” aspects of legislative regulation, which in their essence do not correlate with the provisions of the current municipal legal legislation regulating the constitutional and sectoral foundations of local self-government, and they contradict the achievements of the modern doctrine of municipal law as a complex branch of Russian law, which is the basic scientific basis for the development of local self-government in Russia. The methodological basis of the research methodology was the dialectical method, analysis and synthesis, formal-legal, comparative-legal, historical-legal, and predictive methods, as well as the modeling method.