Petukhov R.V. (2018) On the social content of local self-government. Monitoring of Public Opinion: Economic and Social Changes, Issue. 6, pp. 131–146.

Abstract

The author argues that the basic terminology and axiomatic of the municipal law are uncritically used in the sociological studies of the Russian local self-government. Such studies reproduce the ideal concepts of the legislation and legal doctrine and often substitute critical analysis of the social reality processes. In order to study the real meaning of the local self-government phenomena the author correlates the legal-dogmatic concept with the results of empirical research. In order for this research the article highlights such three constitutive features of local self-government as inclusiveness, accessibility and autonomy of local authorities. Analyzing the results of the empirical sociological study the author announced the lack of the mass trust to the municipal authorities. It is also claimed in the article that the municipal authorities are distanced from the local residents and are bound with regional authorities. One could see the example of such contradictions between the theory of local self-government and real processes here when, for example, direct election of municipal heads was abolished. At the same time, as the author claims, there is an ambiguous attitude of citizens towards local self-government as a value, and as a directly observed phenomenon. Being based on the sociological studies’ results the author declares principal discrepancy between reality and the normative concept of local self-government and announces the need for its rethinking from the point of view of social sciences. The author used the data of sociological studies initiated by the Institute of Sociology of the Russian Academy of Sciences, WCIOM and FOM.