Paper/Speech Details of Conference Program for the 16th NISPAcee Annual Conference Program Overview I. Working Group on Local Government Author(s) Irina Turgel The Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration Ekaterinburg Russian Federation - Title Local government reform in Russia: A step to decentralization or consolidation of vertical authority? File Paper files are available only for conference participants, please login first. Presenter Abstract Since 2006 in most of Federation subjects local government has been acting on the basis of new principles of territory organisation and financial and economic governance. One of the key issues being currently discussed by experts and local community is the accordance of declared and real objectives of the municipal reform: whether it has provided real economic independence of local government and its protection from voluntarism decisions taken at the level of Federation subjects. And today we can make conclusions on how these officially declared objectives have been realised. As a result of transition to a two-level model of local government organisation (the first level is municipal districts and city districts; the second level is urban and rural settlements), the number of municipal entities in Russia have increased more than twice. In 2006 the number of municipal entities accounted for 24 372, whereas in 2005 it was 11 733. However, in their majority they keep being almost fully controlled by authority of federal subjects. Municipal bodies are limited in providing public service because some parts of important authority in education, medical care, social security have been transferred to the level of the subject. 1. The list of local taxes has been shortened, now having only personal assets tax and land tax. 2. Competition between regional and local authorities has become tougher due to division of land and other immovables. 3. In the income structure of local budgets the share of transfers from the budgets of RF subjects have grown substantially amounting from 2/3 to ¾ of income whereas local taxes are being cut. 4. While forming the system of interbudget transfers authorities of Federation subjects prefer tools providing mechanical levelling of budgetary provisions rather than stimulating economic self-development of municipality. Thus, on the one hand forming of territorial organisation of local government on settlement principle leads to having a big number of small, low-integrated municipalities. On the other hand, as a rule, the policy of Federation subjects is aimed at preserving economic and political dependence of local government. One of the solutions of this problem could be activation of integration and intermunicipal cooperation. Turning to foreign experience shows that in Western Europe there is a steady trend of forming highly-integrated municipal systems. Thus in Western Europe the share of municipalities with population of less than 1000 residents amounts to no more than 5% of their total number. The situation is similar in Lithuania, Estonia, Slovenia and Poland, where at the very beginning of the reforms they followed the way of setting up integrated systems of local government when municipalities are directed towards involving bigger part of population without taking into account the geographical borders of the settlement. There might be the following forms of integration interaction: o activation of interaction between primary territorial-governing entities and stimulating of horizontal integration. o creating intermediary levels of territorial governance between municipalities and Federation subjects, coordinating the activities of municipalities in specific economic and social projects. o reviewing distribution of authority between different levels of power and enhancing the efficiency of interbudget relations on the basis of applying tools that stimulate self-development of municipal entities. Further research task is to develop the model of integration interaction that takes into account the Russian specificity of local government and that is capable of modification considering the conditions of a concrete Federation subject.
