GOLD Report I - UCLG

EURASIA96United Cities and Local GovernmentsThree groups ofcountries can bedistinguished:1) where localgovernment hasbeenestablished asseparate fromthe state power;2) where the reformprocess is stillnot concluded;3) where localissues are still inthe handsof localstate bodies,whereas localself-governmentexists only atthe very lowestlevelrecent years, draft legislation that wouldhave introduced appointment rather thanelection of mayors has come close to adoption,only to be withdrawn at the final stage.This reflects the fact that proponents ofboth views of local government can befound at the highest levels of government.In the post-Soviet context the principle oflocal autonomy has often come into collisionwith that of regional autonomy.Nowhere more than in the Russian Federationfrom the early 1990s onwards hasconflict between regional governors andmayors of regional capital cities shapedlocal politics and development, sometimesover many years. In this case regionalgovernors have frequently supported thestate view of local government, wherebylocal authorities would be subordinate toregional state bodies. Advocates of thesocial or non-state view of local governmentmay, paradoxically, be found at thehigher national or federal levels.Most Eurasian countries have inherited insome form the Soviet territorial unit, theraion, consisting of a number of differentsettlements over a particular territory(much like a UK district). In most countriesin the region this is where most localfunctions and services are performed.Initially much criticized as a legacy of theprevious regime, the raion has proved difficultto replace. In Ukraine perhaps themost important of the reforms designed in2005 (but not adopted, due to that year’ssplit in the Orange coalition) was thatwhich would have made the raions intogenuine local authorities, with the executivereporting to the council; councilscurrently have no executive reporting tothem. In Russia the reform of 1995emphasized settlements rather than districts.As a consequence, many local functionswere exercised by the state. The2003 reform ended this anomaly, creatinga two-tier system with raions as the uppertier to carry out those local functions thatrequired economies of scale (in addition tocertain delegated state functions, as in theGerman/Austrian model) and leaving settlement-basedmunicipalities to do therest. In Georgia the municipal reform hastransformed the districts (raiony) inmunicipalities and cities without subordinationto any raion into self-governingcities. Raiony continue to provide the basisfor central Asian local governmentsystems, although local self-government(in the sense of local autonomy) is confinedto the sub-raion level where there arefew functions. In cases such as the localmakhallas in Uzbekistan, services are providedat this level, but genuine autonomyis restricted.Local self-government in the states of theEurasian region has attained differentlevels of institutional development. Inseveral states it exists as an independentinstitution; in others it is a structure combinedwith the institutions of state power.In this respect it is possible to distinguishthree groups of countries.In the first group are Russia, Armenia andAzerbaijan. In these countries local selfgovernmentis legally autonomous and institutionallyseparate from the structures ofstate power, and local government is seenas an institution through which the localcommunity decides on local issues.In the second group –Georgia, KyrgyzRepublic, Moldova and Ukraine– the processof the formation of local self-governmentis still not concluded. Reforms havebarely been implemented, or simply havenot been achieved up to now. The aforesaidtrend in the development of local selfgovernmenthas been changed neither inthe course of the Ukrainian “orange revolution,”nor in the course of the “revolution ofroses” in Georgia.The third group is composed of the statesof Central Asia: Kazakhstan, Tajikistan,Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan. Local selfgovernmentthere functions only on thelowest level, in small villages. In the main,local issues in this region are vested inlocal state organs subordinate to central