Author
Abstract
Juridically, the system of local self-government in municipalities of Russia is traditionally considered as a combination of organizations where citizens exercise self-governing. They are direct, voluntary, free-will forms of the citizens participation, bodies of local self-government, territorial public self - governing and other similar forms in which people can participate and exercise administration locally. However, they have practically always been of no concern for lawyers in virtue of their vagueness and uncertainty. Hence social science is coming out to the foreground. It has been called for to investigate the core of these forms by fixing the social practices which lie in the basis of these forms. Meanwhile, it is already over more than 10 years, that we have been observing the processes of restructuring the public relationships in the local self-government system, since far from claiming to play an active role in decision - making process, the organized public does per-form it actively. The article gives priority to the non-state non-municipal non-commercial organizations (NCO), created by the citizens who get organized on their own, voluntarily. The balance of power in the local self-government system has always turned to the local self-government institutions. It is the latter and not the forms of direct democracy that the decisive role in choosing the guide-lines along which the local self-government is to develop, is assigned to. In fact, self-government institutions do not have possibilities to solve local matters independently. Given this situation, other subjects increase their importance and can take on the role of solving local problems. In this case local non-commercial organizations are meant, though, juridically, they are not elements of the local self-government system and are not matched to other forms of public participation in local self-governing. Nevertheless, their obvious contribution to the solution of local issues encourages sociologists to take into account these facts and bring to light their role as new elements of the self-government system. The article is devoted to the interaction of NCO and bodies of local self-government, its forms and intensity, with the information being based on the data of two sociological researches held in the framework of the civil society monitoring:1) the national poll of administration officials of non-state non-commercial organizations. 1054 respondents were polled on the basis of the representative choice, made according to the established indications;2) the national poll of local self - government and municipal officials. 1003 local self-government officials and municipal office workers who are in charge of interaction with the public, were polled. 1003 municipal institutions of all kinds took part in the sociological poll.The article shows that NCO participation in dealing with local issues is desirable and needed, according to the administrative officials of both local self-government and municipal bodies. This promotes strengthening the positions of local NCO as real elements of the self-government system, which can obtain a very important indication of an institutional character - legal registration. Interaction of administration authorities with the public could provide stability of the non-commercial sector locally, however, its potential has not been discovered in full so far. Therefore it is becoming necessary to work out measures for self-government bodies to give support to the NCO, which will result, in the last analysis, in strengthening the systems of local self-government in Russias municipal institutions as systems of self-organization of the population to manage their life activity.
Suggested Citation
Irina Mersiyanova, 2008.
"The communication space of the administrative agencies and the public at the municipal level,"
Public administration issues, Higher School of Economics, issue 3, pages 197-211.
Handle:
RePEc:nos:vgmu00:2008:i:3:p:197-211
Download full text from publisher
Corrections
All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:nos:vgmu00:2008:i:3:p:197-211. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.
If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.
We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .
If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.
For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Irina A. Zvereva (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://vgmu.hse.ru/ .
Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through
the various RePEc services.