Glossary of Terms 

1.	Verkhovna Rada		 Ukrainian Parliament 
2.   Territorial  Hromada 	Territorial Community, Municipality (Community of local citizens of a city, town, village, settlement)
1. 	Raion 			District. 
4.   Oblast	Region. Ukraine consists administratively of 25 Oblasts, each of which is made up of up to 30 Raions
5.  Rada	Council of elected deputies

			It is getting to be harder to run a constitution than to frame one
							Woodrow Wilson (1887)

Politico-administrative relations in local government in Ukraine

Introduction 					
Ukraine’s emergence in 1991 as an independent nation interrupted and unsettled the authoritarian nature of the Soviet type government which had been ruling the country for decades, entailed  a broad constitution-writing effort by many actors representing different political orientations, but has hardly resulted in any substantial advance towards what we would call constitution-making proper progress. Despite the “formal” adoption of the Constitution (1996) and a number of other key acts (for the purpose of this paper, the Law on Local Self-Government in Ukraine, among others,  is of relevance), the government in general continues paternalistic by being too centralized, lacking responsive approach to the challenges of transition, and so far unable of interim restructuring to the end of more effectively addressing the problems of the country. Continuous political tug-of-war between the President and  the Verkhovna Rada is exacerbated  by lack of consensus on the key domestic and foreign issues among major political parties and movements. All this together leads to a situation well described by Woodrow Wilson in 1887:
	“Once a nation has embarked in the business of manufacturing constitutions, it finds it exceedingly difficult to close out that business and to open for the public a bureau of skilled, economical administration.” 
Whereas this observation is true for nations which possess a significantly developed political culture, it is more than true for countries like Ukraine, which have been for a significant period of time exposed to totalitarian party rule, and which have today to develop administration in accordance with the constitutions they won for themselves, but are not prepared for the tasks of the new period. One can hardly expect the trend in Ukraine  will be reversed in the near future due to a number of key reasons, among which are economic stagnation that forces more “basic” and “vital” issues in to the focus of popular attention, underdeveloped political structure of society which strongly impedes reaching consensus between key players, non-availability of a central government with sufficient support and confidence from parliamentarians and  public at large to launch a comprehensive reform of perfecting executive methods, and curbing with an “iron” hand but in a democratic way the on-going criticizing which has to be replaced with badly needed creating. The presidential elections to be held in October 1999, the preparations for them have been in full swing since late fall 1998, whereas, in their “latent” form they were visible for many observers even last spring/summer when it took the Verkhovna Rada more than two months to elect the Speaker and his Deputies. The already  launched fight for the presidency will most obviously result in close to  zero progress regarding the badly needed perfection of the system of civil service which has practically been just emerging.  Going back to the citation of Woodrow Wilson, it can be concluded that the Ukrainian space for improvement is immense: public administration reform (PAR) has just been started in the form of the Concept approved by a Presidential Decree in December  1998; the necessary changes in to the civil service legislation are still waiting for their turn in the Verkhovna Rada together with the draft legislation on the territorial organization and local state administrations,  not to mention practical steps to implement these far reaching plans. 

Overview of the administrative structure of the state		
The Ukrainian case is a combination of generalist and functionalist principles which is characterized by a special role of the Oblast (Ukraine consists of 25 Oblasts) Governor who is a direct representative of the President of Ukraine in the region (assigned to the position directly by the President without consent from the Parliament) and runs the Oblast State Administration made up Sectoral Directorates some of which  report to the governor but at the same time to their corresponding Ministries. The peculiarity of the situation lies in the fact that in most cases the powers are not clearly divided, and the “final word” would belong to the Governor without whose approval even cadres appointments are not possible by the Ministries. The case of Ukraine (the only remaining post-Communist country which has just only started the Public Administration Reform) is also of particular interest in view of an outstanding contradiction which is stipulated in the Constitution (1996): the Oblast and Raion Radas, being by their nature representation bodies of local government,  enjoy the  right  which in a unitary state,  like Ukraine is, would normally belong to the state: they redistribute the budget among other local authorities exactly the way it was done under the Soviet system. 
Unfortunately, this contradiction is not well understood even by leading Ukrainian experts.

The situation in local government is exacerbated by the fact that real power and influence over distributing the budget belongs not to Radas but to Oblast State Administrations, which in their turn are totally dependent on what is “given” from the central budget through the Ministry of Finance. 

The Constitution of Ukraine (1996) and the Law On Local Self-Government (1997) have guaranteed, for the first time in post-Communist history, the right to self-government which is “.. the right of a territorial Hromada - residents of a village or several villages voluntarily united into a village Hromada, of a settlement, or a city - to independently resolve the issues of local significance with the limits of the Constitution and the Laws of Ukraine”. (Part 1, Article 140, Constitution of Ukraine”)
However an element of Soviet system has been retained in the Constitution in the form of  Raion and Oblast Radas which shall “…represent common interests of territorial Hromadas of villages, settlements and cities.” (Part 4, Article 140, Constitution of Ukraine).
So, local self-governing authorities operate at (4) levels: settlement, municipal, Raion, Oblast. They have independent budgetary means only in theory as described above, being almost totally dependent on what would be “given” and lacking a capacity to generate any substantial revenues through local taxes and duties, the latter would normally constitute 3-5% of the total budget. 

Constitutionally the Ukrainian system can be probably described as dual. The Constitution of Ukraine clearly separates between the executive branch of power (including local state administrations) and local self-government, i.e. there is no constitutional representation of the state at the level of local self-governing authorities. (Not counting cases when the state delegates to the local self-government some authorities the execution of which is funded by the Central Government).  On the other hand, we have  Raion and Oblast Radas which, being in theory bodies of local self-government, firstly, do not possess any real power both financially and organizationally (no executive apparatus available), and secondly, are totally dependent on Oblast State Administrations representing the state. Plus, the bodies which represent the state - local state administrations, -  in accordance with the Constitution, can be delegated certain powers/authorities by local (Oblast and Raion) Radas, and in this case local state administrations are accountable to local Radas (councils of deputies), which, to a certain extent, can be interpreted as an element of fused systems. 
In January 1999 the Verkhovna Rada finally managed to pass the long-awaited Law on the Capital of Ukraine the City of Kyiv, and so created a legal act which might play a critical role in further complicating  the local self-government legislation in this country.  It is in this Law that an obvious element of a fused system can be found: the City of Kyiv to be run by an elected Mayor who would also govern the City State Administration and City Raions administrations through non-elected but appointed by the President officials. 

3. 	History, traditional position of Civil Service, vis-ŕ-vis Politics
The Soviet times “civil service” legacy has been a heavy burden on the reform-oriented  efforts undertaken by the young Ukrainian state. Obviously, it can be argued that the emergence of civil service proper has recently seen in Ukraine its very early and green years. It should be noted that the Communist Party selected and protected nomenclatura’s professional skills and public administration knowledge were better than those of today’s Ukrainian bureaucrats, who are also extremely vulnerable in their offices being totally dependent on "“political  sponsorship” in the situation when the legislation does not provide a solid framework to protect them as civil servants. This is exacerbated by extremely poor compensation for their work which inevitably leads to corruption and misuse of power. The position of municipal civil servants can be argued as becoming  even more vulnerable, as after the new Law on Local Self-Government was adopted (1997), their status can not be further governed by the Law on Civil Service of 1993, and the prospects of a Law on Municipal Civil Servants to be passed by the Verkhovna Rada in the near future are not optimistic. 

The current politico-administrative relations at the level of local self-government in Ukraine most probably fall under the typology of  “civil servants as personal servants”  (Raadschelders) due to the following key reasons:
•	neither the popular mentality, nor the operational practices provide a sufficiently strong basis for distinguishing between “state” and “government”, which are “the same” as viewed by most people in the country
•	after decades under the totalitarian party rule most Ukrainians would find it extremely difficult to delineate between “public” and “state”
•	civil servants  in Ukraine are not protected by corresponding legislative norms, and are extremely vulnerable, being significantly dependent upon the will of their political sponsors.
•	professionalism of civil servants at the local government level remains, and is likely to remain in the mid-term future, to be very low, which increasingly hampers the capacity of municipalities to address adequately the issues of community and regional development, and leads to an appalling  lack of trust and confidence to civil servants on the part of community residents. 

The current development of the civil service at the municipal level faces a few more challenges:
•	In many cases the provisions of the framework Law on Local Self-Government (LSG) in Ukraine are ignored by the Central Government, which results in its total dependence upon the Center. The Government continues the policy of interfering into the domain of the LSG, and, in a drive to save some budget funds, enacts cuts in the number of municipal civil servants, that are not reasoned by any objective necessity  and lead to lower operational capacity of municipalities. Such moves on the part of the Central government being totally unconstitutional, there is no evidence of someone appealing to the Constitutional Court. Last fall 20% cut can serve an example. 
•	The development of education for civil servants has seen in  recent years some progress primarily in the form of different courses offered by the regional branches of the Academy of Public Administration under the President of Ukraine. However, this is not sufficient as it covers a small part of medium level management civil servants in the local state administrations and municipalities, and does not embrace a wide stratum of those who are directly involved in day-to-day provision of services to local residents.

4. 	Formal Relations
Before the Law of Ukraine On Civil Service (1993) was adopted the Ukrainian legislation had not had a legally fixed definition of what is “civil service”. The given Law did introduce the notion of civil service, but did not stipulate what is “civil servant”. Neither did the Law provide a clear cut definition of civil service subjects, with the exception that Article 9 of the Law  can be interpreted the way that the below officials are not civil servants: President of the state, Speaker of the Verkhovna Rada (VR) and his Deputies, Heads of the Standing Committees of the VR and their Deputies, Deputies of the VR, the Prime Minister, Members of the Government, the Chairman and the Members of the Constitutional Court of Ukraine, the Chairman and the Members of the Supreme Court of Ukraine, the Chairman and the Members of the Arbitration Court, General Prosecutor and his Deputies. Notwithstanding that the Constitution of Ukraine (1996) failed to introduce those stipulations which would enable the development of a civil service model/concept, its ideology contains potential possibilities for the emerging civil service to function on the 
constitutional basis of the rule of law. Only once civil service is mentioned directly in the Constitution. 

Ukraine lacks today a single normative act that would define what is “politician” versus a civil servant. Some efforts to bridge this gap have been recently observed  within the framework of the public administration reform concept recently approved by the Head of State. It can be argued, however, that this process will be long and not easy due to lack of adequate understanding even on the part of some of the academics who write and teach on the topic using some other than the below starting point definitions  of what is civil service:
	“Civil Service - the branches of public service, that are not legislative, judicial, naval , or military”

Despite the fact that today most citizens of Ukraine would see no difference between the State and the Government (the Soviet times notion of Vlasti -English for authorities - as something given and not subject for debate, is still deeply rooted in the Ukrainian mentality),  selected communities have shown a strong will to influence the situation when they felt their legitimate interests were infringed either by local or regional authorities. 
So, at the level of local self-government one can observe in Ukraine an increasingly important, but rather weak so far,  tendency to exercise social control over the Civil Service (in the below quoted case, the Oblast State Administration) through more active involvement of NGOs and grass-roots interest groups. Surprisingly enough (the understanding of the notion  and manifestations of something like cross-sectoral cooperation are far from being strong in Ukraine) in some cases this has been a joint effort of community government supported by NGOs in dealing with currently one of the most challenging issues: formation of local budgets. 
To the end of developing an analysis  framework, the issues to be subsequently researched could include: a) correlation between the level of local government’s transparency in shaping community development policy and support from residents;  b) dual role of local NGOs, which can act as both “whistle blowers” and active supporters to the local authorities’ initiatives aimed at safeguarding the variety of community interests. 

5. 	Political culture and attitudes
At the community level (as well as at the national one) the majority of Ukrainian citizens would not be able to discriminate between the civil service and “government of the day”. This observation would most probably be shared by the majority of researchers despite the non-availability of separate surveys on the issue. The Ukrainian population has  generally rather non-structured, and contradictory knowledge about the local authorities themselves. Less than 25% of respondents confirmed they new something about the activities of Oblast and Raion levels, and about 35% of respondents had some knowledge about the activities of city authorities. More than two years after this survey, with growing apathy and discouragement over the economic crisis and growing corruption in government, Ukrainian  citizens have not made any progress, rather vice versa.

Of interest for subsequent research could be attitudes of civil servants and the population towards different levels of local government: primarily municipality and Oblast. In view of the complex and ambiguous nature of current relations between these two tiers of local government, such research could add value to the elaboration of practical recommendations in the process of the Public Administration Reform with a special focus on the delineation of responsibilities in service provision. 

6. 	The policy process in practice
At the level of local self-government a key pattern of formal communications between elected deputies and municipal civil servants (in the form of an executive body of the municipality) would be their joint sitting on a number of “sectoral” Standing Committees of the local Rada. A civil servant, representing the executive body of the municipality would normally serve as a Secretary of such Committee. 

7. 	Classification according to theoretical framework
The Ukrainian case can be argued  a difficult one for generalizing and categorizing primarily due to the non-availability of civil service proper. The institution designed to perform functions of civil service is in place, being however not “institutionalized” to the degree which would allow clear-cut classical definitions and far-reaching conclusions and recommendations. On the other hand, they can be useful as an extra starting point to digest and analyze the increasing bulk of empirical data related to different developments in the field of the on-going (to be more precise, repeatedly “declared”) public administration reform. 

The Ukrainian case is a combination of  “village life” and “functional village life” which is currently in the process of being “reshaped” by a set of variables produced by the very first steps in the course of the public administration reform made towards achieving a clear separation between politics and administration, as a key prerequisite for successful state building. 

8. Conclusions
The Concept of the Public Administration Reform envisages  rather clearer separation (to be more precise emergence of civil service proper) than integration, with a stronger focus on professional criteria. In reality, however, this will be a long and hard way to go due to a number of reasons touched upon in this paper. On the one hand, the political will to launch the reform is in place, on the other this will is very likely to be traded off (in the short- and mid-term) in return for political power, the Presidency being at stake. So, any practical moves towards  radical changes can be expected not before some time after the Presidential elections in October 1999. 

Bibliography
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