Juridically, the system of local self-government in municipalities of Russia is traditionally considered as a combination of organizations where citizens exercise self-governing. They are direct, voluntary, free-will forms of the citizens’ participation, bodies of local self-government, territorial public self – governing and other similar forms in which people can participate and exercise administration locally. However, they have practically always been of no concern for lawyers in virtue of their vagueness and uncertainty. Hence social science is coming out to the foreground. It has been called for to investigate the core of these forms by fixing the social practices which lie in the basis of these forms. Meanwhile, it is already over more than 10 years, that we have been observing the processes of restructuring the public relationships in the local self–government system, since far from claiming to play an active role in decision – making process, the organized public does per-form it actively. The article gives priority to the non-state non-municipal non-commercial organizations (NCO), created by the citizens who get organized on their own, voluntarily. The balance of power in the local self-government system has always turned to the local self-government institutions. It is the latter and not the forms of direct democracy that the decisive role in choosing the guide-lines along which the local self-government is to develop, is assigned to. In fact, self-government institutions do not have possibilities to solve local matters independently. Given this situation, other subjects increase their importance and can take on the role of solving local problems. In this case local non-commercial organizations are meant, though, juridically, they are not elements of the local self-government system and are not matched to other forms of public participation in local self-governing. Nevertheless, their obvious contribution to the solution of local issues encourages sociologists to take into account these facts and bring to light their role as new elements of the self-government system. The article is devoted to the interaction of NCO and bodies of local self-government, its forms and intensity, with the information being based on the data of two sociological researches held in the framework of the civil society monitoring: 1) the national poll of administration officials of non-state non-commercial organizations. 1054 respondents were polled on the basis of the representative choice, made according to the established indications; 2) the national poll of local self – government and municipal officials. 1003 local self-government officials and municipal office workers who are in charge of interaction with the public, were polled. 1003 municipal institutions of all kinds took part in the sociological poll. The article shows that NCO participation in dealing with local issues is desirable and needed, according to the administrative officials of both local self-government and municipal bodies. This promotes strengthening the positions of local NCO as real elements of the self-government system, which can obtain a very important indication of an institutional character – legal registration. Interaction of administration authorities with the public could provide stability of the non-commercial sector locally, however, its potential has not been discovered in full so far. Therefore it is becoming necessary to work out measures for self-government bodies to give support to the NCO, which will result, in the last analysis, in strengthening the systems of local self-government in Russia’s municipal institutions as systems of self-organization of the population to manage their life activity.
Ирина Владимировна Мерсиянова (Mon,) studied this question.