Strengthening the differentiation of the development of territorial communities as a risk of decentralization reform

Abstract

The paper investigates the strengthening of intraregional differentiation of the development of territorial communities in Ukraine under the influence of decentralization reform and administrative-territorial reform. The types of asymmetries of territorial communities’ development are identified, among them: organizational, functional, social, budgetary, institutional. The conducted analysis of organizational asymmetries related to the formation of territorial communities has made it possible to identify significant gaps by number and area of ??the united territorial communities (UTCs). The capacity and the size of the population of community are interrelated, because the large communities have greater opportunities for business development due to the availability of labor resources and the ability to hold infrastructure objects and institutions of communal property. Instead, small-scale UTCs are usually financially feasible only if they have budget-generating companies. Unfortunately, the creation of a significant part of UTCs has taken place without taking into account the capacity requirements and contrary to the requirements of the methodology in order to obtain additional authority and resources. As a result of violations, there were problems of the possibility of further functioning of newly formed territorial communities. Among the UTCs created during the years of reform, there is a strong differentiation by level of their financial capacity. The ratio between the minimum and maximum values of own revenues of UTCs’ budgets per inhabitant (asymmetric scale) is about 40 times. The distribution of UTCs’ revenues depending on the population size are analyzed and it is found out that with each subsequent year of power decentralization reforms the territorial communities with higher financial capacity were formed. The lack of sufficient economic potential for UTCs’ development is confirmed to be the reason of low level of financial capacity of their overwhelming majority. Attention is drawn to the necessity of leveling the risk of increasing differentiation and the gap between UTCs and territories that have not gone through the process of unification. The measures for overcoming intraregional development differentiations are proposed, among which is the necessity to adhere to certain criteria concerning population size, share of transfers in income, share of managerial expenses while the formation of a UTC; maximum use of endogenous factors of territorial communities’ development; elimination of conflict situations between the center and the periphery when planning the development of the territory, etc.