On the meaning of centre and periphery in political and legal centralization and decentralization in society

Abstract

This paper considers a society as a whole people’s life within the space where a certain sovereign power functions — i.e., within a social organism, which substantially supplies the system of needs of the persons present in it. For example, a society is the totality of human activity processes within the state borders of the modern Russian Federation. All human activity processes within the borders of the kapauku chieftainship of Papuans in New Guinea, which includes several villages, is a society too. The paper demonstrates that giving the definition of political and legal centralization and decentralization in society is impossible without providing definitions of centre and periphery. It is explained by the fact that the mentioned processes are the transfer of political powers to the centre from the periphery and vice versa. These powers are included in the terms of reference or competence of the state apparatus in a stateorganized society or in the terms of reference or competence of the system of governing bodies of a pre-state politically organized society as a whole. On the basis of analysis and critiques of the existing ideas within its topic, the paper concludes that for the discussed processes the centre is either a system of governing organs of this society as a whole or several or even one of these organs. The periphery is either the rest of the governing organs of the society as a whole or this whole society excluding the above-mentioned system. The usage of such definitions of centre and periphery for political and legal centralization and decentralization in society is a desirable condition to achieve effectiveness of these processes. The usage of other definitions of centre and periphery leads to the deformation of the true understanding of the mentioned processes in society. As a result, it becomes difficult to achieve effectiveness of governing.