Abstract
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After unexpected obtaining of the independent state status in 1991 the Ukraine became the presidential-parliamentary republic. The institute of the President of Ukraine was established as a post of the state’s head, and as a superviser of the executive authority, and as a symbol of the country’s new independent status. On the moment of receiving an independence the Ukraine, as the republic entered into the frame of USSR, formally had own Council of Ministers (Cabinet of Ministers) and Supreme Council (Parliament). On that moment the Ukraine had not institutional structures posessing a real experience concerning a maintenance of the independent state functioning. During previous regime any strategic decisions were developed by allied institutions in Moscow and just were implemented in the Ukraine under the double control of the Communist party structures and the State security council.
During the years of independence the policy of Ukrainian society transformation was determined by the neoliberal ideological doctrine: speeding up the processes of state’s influence reduction, developing the privatization, decreasing of the state’s role in foreign trade activities, transfer of traditional state monopolies to the private companies on a home market. The neoliberal rhetoric and the idea of freedom from a state determined also a strategy of economy and state’s authority system (public administration) construction. Such approach had also fitted the tradition of administrative market (bargening between main territorial-economical groups or administrative-economy groups (AEG) - clans) as a dominant form of the political-administrative interrelations in the country. As a result the efficiency of the Ukrainian economy after 14 years of functioning is significantly worser than "inefficient" planned economy of the “advanced socialism societies". The reasons consist in the absence of effective public administration, and in the priority of getting of the maximal profit in strategy of Ukrainian administrative-economic groups above national interests of the country.
The specifics of the current political situation in Ukraine is determined by the beginning of the implementation of the amendments to the actual Constitution of Ukraine since the January 1, 2006. According to it the national political mechanism begins to function on the base of political norms and standards which are characteristic for the parlimentary-presidential republics. According to these amendments the Cabinet of Ministers becomes a sole legitimal centre of the executive authority in Ukraine responsible for the formation of the executive authority vertical in the country. The majority of single chamber Ukrainian Parliament (Supreme Council of Ukraine) will form a government. The functions of the President, as a state’s head, being the actual chief of the executive authority will be rearranged on the conduction of representation and arbitration missions.
It is logical to assume, that as a result of the actually existing party (coalition) principle of the executive authority central body’s (government) formation the creation of service structers (secretariats, groups of advisers) for Prime-Minister and Ministers rendering powerful influence on political process in the country will be conducted according to partisan quotas of parties forming the government. Now the Cabinet of Ministers Secretariat’s staff are the career public servants predominantly.
Process of formation of service structures of the President of Ukraine will be conducted in a different way. Obviously, the staffing of personnel of Presidential Secretariat, group of the assistants, advisers, consultants, reviewers and permanent President’s representatives in the Parliament and at the Constitutional Court will be remained a prerogative of the President in contrast to the government’s service structures. The President of Ukraine obtains his legal authority not from the Parliment, but from the majority of the Ukrainian citizens participated in the elections. It makes him less dependent upon the parliament and government at staffing his service structures .
However, it is ought to emphasize, that all told above concerning principles of formation and professional competence of service structures of the President and Government is just hypothesis, because the amendments to the Constitution of Ukraine adopted in December, 2004 and entering valid since January 1, 2006 are just frame description of a new authority structure in Ukraine. It does not determine the practical principles of formation and limitation of the competences of service structures of the President, prime-minister, and ministers. At the moment, according to expert estimations, these service structures (group of the Prime-minister’s advisers and the Cabinet of Ministers’s Secretariat) actually are a "government in government", or they (like the President’s Secretariat) are practically a top executive authority in the country.
Before adopting the amendments to the actual Constitution of Ukraine (which by itself was adopted in June, 1996) Ukraine was actually Presidential-parliamentary republic with doubled structure of the management of the executive authority. Up to January 1, 2006 an actual chief of the country’s executive authority was the President of Ukraine carrying out simultaneously the representative and arbitration functions. The Prime-minister as a chief of executive authority central body was proposed by the President for affirmation by Parliament. Thus not the President, as a head of executive authority, but the Prime-Minister, as a chief of the executive authority central body was politically responsible for a social-economic situation in the country and at the same time he had not sometimes necessary legitimal levers of influence on policy process formation and decision making. (Because it was possible to be a Prime-Minister and at the same time do not have constant support of the parliament majority). In fact, the institute of the President was a sole centre of authority being able to push the necessary political decisions, and to make policy. The President produced a strategic initiative. The Government and the Parliament were just required to have the tactical initiative directed on realization of Presidential designs. In such situation (when both government, and parliament became just the satellites of the President institute) the process of policy making became to be hidden and the competitiveness (political discourse) during policy making and decisions making inherent to the democratic governance has also passed away from a public sphere into the sphere of behind the scenes arrangements not only between the legitimal subjects of political process (President, Government, Parliament), but between service structures of the these subjects.
From the formal legal point of view the leading role in policy process belongs to the Supreme Council and the Cabinet of Ministers at the moment. The basic influence of the Supreme Council is carried out through the budget process. The participation of the Cabinet of Ministers in policy process is set first of all by the Cabinet of Ministers’ Temporaly Regulations, by the Cabinet of Ministers’ Decree on Governmental Committees, and by the Law on Regulatory Activity. The political initiatives can be initiated by various governmental agencies and departments. They are processed by governmental committees, then by Cabinet of Ministers Secretariat, which prepares the decisions. After that they are considered at the session of the Cabinet of Ministers and/or the Parliment. But practically the most influential centre of the shadowed policy making through political-administrative bargening was the Secretariat of the President of Ukraine during 1991-2004. In accordance to the expert opinion, the Secretariat of the President carried out the function of governer of the executive authority (under the Constitution this role is obliged to conduct by the Cabinet of Ministers), and sometimes the function of parallel, or an alternative government. The President’s Secretariat made the most important personal and managerial decisions, as well as the lobbing for the acceptance of the important economic and political decisions by the Parliament. At the same time, so powerfull service structure of the President was not totally legitimal authority body because it’s functions were not described by any legal act in details. The staffing of personnel for the President Secretariat was “shadowed”. Practically, the right on formation of the most influential centre of authority was received by the representatives of those financial and industrial groups (administrative-economy groups) which were in favor of the President of Ukraine.
One of the reasons of “Orange revolution" 2004 became a low level of political process transparency that was caused by the concentration of the practical public administration functions by the President. His service structure staffed on the basis of personnel preferences of the head of the state and controlled just by the President had actually managed the political process in the country. It was accompanied by a low level of citizens’ trust to all state authority bodies, moderate growth of internal locus of control among population and increase of readiness to the legal actions of disobedience to the state authority.
According to the adopted Constitution Amedments, which comes into effect since January 1, 2006, the political process in Ukraine becomes more competitive and the functions of the leading political players become more or less comparable (in theory). The experts believe that to avoid the recurrence of negative experience concerning the influence of the central authority bodies’ consulting services on political process in the country it is necessary to adopt a seria of the legal acts to fill the Parliment-Presidential model of public administration beginning to work since January 1, 2006 with a real sense. These acts should consider the existing practice of interrelations between existing service structures of the actual state authority institutions which are not described in any written legal documents or in pubished more or less profound papers. That is why it should be hardly usefull to conduct a comparative sketch of the political-administrative relations inside the service structures of the President and the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine and interrelations between Secretariats of the President and Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine to take into account the positive and negative expirience at new created practice of policy making on the central state government level.
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