Legislative aspects of the Russian reform of local self-government (2003–2022)
https://doi.org/10.31249/poln/2023.01.11
Abstract
In 2023, it will be 20 years since the law, which became the legal basis for the reform of local self-government, was introduced and adopted. In 2021, as a part of the implementation process of the constitutional reform of 2020, a draft bill «On the general principles of organizing local self-government in a unified system of public authority» was introduced and adopted in the first reading, which should replace the law of 2003. The prospect of terminating the 2003 law makes it possible to analyze the history of all its changes (implemented and rejected) in terms of the behavior of legislators.
The article is based on database of 452 draft bills, which is built on the information (texts of bills, explanatory notes, reviews of authorities, tables of amendments, records of plenary meetings, voting results) from the legislative activity support system of the SAS «Lawmaking». In the article following aspects of lawmaking in the sphere of local self-government are analyzed: 1) the activity and effectiveness of the initiators of bills (regional legislators, deputies, the Government of the Russian Federation, the President of the Russian Federation, senators and the Federation Council); 2) the role of parliamentary (factions, committees) and extra-parliamentary institutions and substitutes (the Council of Legislators, the Civic Chamber of the Russian Federation, the Council for the Development of Local Self-Government under the President of the Russian Federation, public organizations) at different stages of lawmaking, including «zero readings»; 3) relations between parliamentary factions in the context of municipal reform (inter-fractional initiatives, opposition initiatives blocked by the majority, types of voting on adopted laws); 4) legislative mechanisms/practices in 4–7 convocations of the State Duma compared.
The article proposes a typology of the behavior of parliamentary fractions in the course of voting on bills.
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