Vertical system of public administration. Power vertical
Comparative historical studies of public administration systems in different countries reveal many differences in the forms of organization and activities of central and local government bodies. Some of these differences depend on degree of economic and social development respective countries. Thus, an industrial state with rapid economic growth and a high standard of living may have different administrative institutions than an agrarian state with its slow economic development and low standard of living.
Another important factor influencing the structures of public administration is political regimes, within which administrative bodies function. For this reason, two countries with approximately the same socio-economic structure may have different government institutions in nature.
Quite often, in countries with similar political regimes and approximately the same socio-economic level (for example, in developed Western countries), very different models of public administration develop. In this case, the main differences are determined type of territorial organization of the state. From this point of view, there are two main types of administrative-territorial government: unitary and federal.
Unitary state It has a unified political, legal and administrative system throughout the territory, emphasizing the indivisibility of its sovereignty. The unitary system provides very little autonomy to its constituent territories, with most administration carried out directly from the capital. Territorial divisions (for example, departments in France, provinces in Italy, counties in Sweden) mostly exist for administrative convenience.
Federal State comprises several state or territorial entities that have a certain political independence and form a single political community. Here are some of the most significant features of federalism:
- – federal subjects have a significant political life of their own (states in the USA and Brazil, cantons in Switzerland, states in Germany). They have the right of constituent power, i.e. have their own constitutions, independent legal and judicial systems;
- – the division of powers between the center and the subjects of the federation is carried out within the framework of the union constitution;
- – subjects of the federation can be arbitrarily abolished or changed by the central government on a legal basis.
Theoretically, there is a third possibility of administrative-territorial organization - confederation, i.e. union of independent states, is such a free formation that its constituent parts can successfully fight against the central government. Confederations are usually short-lived, they either fall apart or become federations. Switzerland can serve as a historical example of a confederation: this country still calls itself a confederation, although in fact it has a federal type of administrative government. Perhaps the European Union is currently the only example of a confederation in which the weak power of the headquarters in Brussels is easily blocked by the veto power of individual member countries of the European Community.
Formation of government structures on a federal basis from a historical perspective, due to a number of reasons. The first one is desire to strengthen state security: By pooling their resources, several small states are able to protect themselves from more powerful neighbors. Historical examples include Switzerland and Brazil.
Another reason for structuring the state on a federal basis is the interest of several small states in aggressive expansion. The pooling of diplomatic and military resources of such states made Bismarck's Germany one of the leading powers at the end of the 19th century.
In some cases, a certain social class of a nation may prefer a federal system of government in the hope of obtaining economic benefits. For example, the American historian Charles Beard viewed the US Constitution of 1787 as an attempt by the founding fathers to protect their property interests by strengthening the central government.
Finally, the federal type of government is often the only way to preserve national unity. For example, after the end of British colonial rule, India created a federal system of government that allowed states such as Bengal, Punjab, Rajasthan to maintain their cultures and unite into a single state. These countries would never have joined the federal union if it had not guaranteed them local autonomy.
It should be emphasized that federalism quite effectively protects local autonomy by creating different levels of government, each of which is responsible for a specific range of issues. In most states there are three levels of government: National(federal), regional(administration of provinces, states, states) and local. These levels usually form a pyramid: at its base there are many local government units, above them there are several smaller state government units (lands, provinces), and at the top there is central government. Note that countries with unitary systems are often divided in similar ways, but the lower levels of government have very little power.
Under a federal structure, the administrative functions of the state are legally and actually distributed between the federation and its subjects. This division has important consequences.
Firstly, this leads to a certain heterogeneity of the state apparatus (which contrasts with the uniformity of the unitary structure of the state). Each member of the federation has the right to choose the structure of its administrative institutions at its own discretion. For example, in the United States there is no standard organization of state governments.
Secondly, The federal structure leads to the creation of two levels of administration, between which there is no organic connection. And if such dualism does not create difficulties in those areas that are entirely under the jurisdiction of the federal administration (for example, in the field of defense and international relations), then the situation is different with the functions that fall under the competence of both the federation and its subjects. For example, in the United States, where education is the responsibility of states and local governments, the president faces significant difficulties whenever he sets out to make changes in the educational structure. Lacking the possibility of direct influence, he is forced to resort to such means as subsidies.
Third, Federalism gives rise to specific problems in the field of public service, especially in the field of recruitment of employees to work in various government bodies. In federal states, fears are often expressed that the central apparatus of government may become dominated and even monopoly of power by people from one or another region of the federation. Therefore, such countries often have formal rules and customs aimed at maintaining national or geographic balance in the recruitment of civil servants.
Unitary system of government also has its own characteristics. Here the government and central administration have significant control over local authorities. For example, in France, in order to reduce regional differences, primary school curricula are published by the central ministry in Paris. Most unitary states have national police force And strict control over local police forces. Usually here unified judicial system, whose employees are appointed by the national government. The unity of the administrative system in a unitary state is maintained thanks to homogeneous model of public service.
However, even in a unitary state, the central government cannot decide all local issues. For example, in the UK local government units have significant power. All counties and cities elect their own councils, which form standing committees, each responsible for their specific area of government. These councils are in charge of issues of education, health care, social policy, and law enforcement. And although the government can at any time intervene in local affairs and correct the decisions of local authorities in its own way, in practice this happens only in extreme cases, since the British highly value local autonomy.
Both federal and unitary systems of administrative government have their advantages and disadvantages.
So, concentration of administrative power in unitary states may lead citizens to feel futile to be active in solving local problems, since all power comes from the capital. This feeling can result in widespread alienation from government and administrative institutions. Moreover, if the central administration is too distant from the problems of the local community and citizens were disappointed in the opportunity to acquaint her with their problems and views, then pursuing sound public policy becomes problematic. It is not by chance that today the national governments of many unitary states are trying to find ways to greater decentralization and dispersal of government functions and decisions. It is very urgent to create more effective state, provincial, regional or city bodies that would be vested with the powers of local authorities and provided with the necessary funds to use for the most important needs and services of the local population.
On the other hand, the undoubted advantages of the federal system of public administration include the ability to make operational decisions at the local level. Citizens are closest to the local administration, so they can influence these officials, see how decisions are made and what their results are. It is much easier for local governments to experiment with new programs than for larger administrative units. Accordingly, the cost of failure is much lower here.
However, decision-making at the local level also has its drawbacks: often the local administration does not have enough funds to finance social programs; Local government officials are usually poorly trained, unqualified, and in some cases corrupt. In addition, local decision-making can lead to duplication of services and poor coordination, so the centralization of power in a unitary state can be a significant advantage in solving the most difficult problems of modern society.
In unitary systems, the central government and administration can control economic resources and coordinate planning and development; their broad tax powers make the task of funding social programs much easier. It is for this reason that some federal states have become more centralized in recent years. In particular, in the United States and Germany, governments and central administrations began to implement national economic policies and finance social programs. All this indicates the emergence of an interesting trend of our time: evolution of unitary systems in a federal direction, on the one hand, and movement of federal systems in a unitary direction – with another.
With V. Putin coming to power in 2000, a gradual implementation of reforms began aimed at strengthening the power vertical. The construction of the administrative vertical led to the establishment of more developed and accentuated political and economic control of the federal center over the regions. Another characteristic feature of this process was the increase in the powers of executive authorities and the decrease in the role of representative bodies at both the federal and regional levels. A management system is emerging in which representative authorities have less and less influence on the process of making key political decisions, while the dominant role is assigned to the president and the presidential administration, whose functions actually duplicate those of the Russian government.
As always, the unlimited strengthening of the executive branch of government creates institutional conditions that contribute to the decline of civil initiative and lead to the consistent displacement of civil structures from the field of public policy and from the mechanisms of political decision-making.
The vertical of power is considered not only as a system of institutions, but also as one of the mechanisms of interaction between society and government. The effectiveness of vertical power institutions is assessed by their ability to ensure two-way communication between society and government through the implementation of the following functions:
· Identification of interests and problems of society, their formulation.
· Translation of the interests and problems of society “upward”, to the authorities.
· Development of project solutions.
· Participation in the decision-making procedure.
· Implementation of solutions.
· Monitoring and control over the implementation of decisions.
· Correction of decisions.
The concept of “vertical of power” includes both hierarchically organized institutions of executive power (executive vertical) and institutions of legislative power (parliamentary vertical), which are currently actually built into the system of executive power and increasingly serve as an administrative mechanism for legitimizing decisions of the executive power . Local self-government is also considered as one of the levels of the vertical power.
Along the “center-regions” line, as part of building the vertical of executive power, the following main steps were taken:
· Creation of new administrative-territorial entities - federal districts.
· Introduction of the institution of the Presidential Plenipotentiary Representative in the federal district.
· Expanding the powers of federal inspectors.
· Changing the principle of formation of the Federation Council (removing governors from its composition).
· Cancellation of elections of State Duma deputies in territorial districts and transition to elections based on party lists.
· Transition from the election of governors to their appointment by the federal center.
· Creation of the State Council of the Russian Federation.
· Consistent changes in the system of redistribution of tax revenues in favor of the federal center.
The natural result of these reforms was the downgrading of the status of governors, increased control over the constituent entities of the Russian Federation, and the consolidation of a dominant role in political decision-making for the federal center.
The final measure was the abolition of gubernatorial elections and the introduction of a procedure for appointing regional heads.
As a result of the policy of strengthening the power vertical, negative trends arose in the sphere of public administration. Among them are the following:
· complication of the decision-making process;
· reduction in the effectiveness of decisions made;
· reduction in the effectiveness of the legislative process;
· violation of the principle of separation of powers;
· strengthening administrative control over social and political life;
· weakening of the role of public political mechanisms in public administration;
· almost complete exclusion of civil society from the process of developing public management decisions; lack of an alternative to the state when making key political decisions.
The regional elite also speaks out for the existing configuration of political institutions and the model of interaction within the framework of a rigid administrative vertical. Such conservatism is most likely of a transitional nature, since the government, which is ineffective due to this state of the political system, not solving but accumulating economic, demographic and other problems and imbalances, will sooner or later face a rise in protest sentiments. The attitude towards building the administrative vertical in the regions has changed. In 2006, the “vertical of power” was perceived in the regions as an important component of political reform; its discussion was not accompanied by such a pronounced negative reaction as it was in 2004. But having adapted to the new rules, regional elites again began to perceive the “vertical of power” as a very a contradictory construction that has an ambiguous impact on the state of Russian federalism.
They emphasize that integration built on administrative resources makes the “vertical” unstable and dependent on the first person. It is possible to change the current situation and increase the efficiency of the functioning of government institutions by implementing measures aimed at legislating the responsibility of civil servants for decisions made, streamlining the monitoring of the implementation of laws and increasing the degree of openness of the activities of public authorities, i.e. by implementing the principle of feedback between the authorities and society.
Thus, the formation of Russian statehood took place in a dramatic atmosphere. The main reason for this was that, having become independent, having taken significant steps to abandon the socialist principles of development, Russia, in its form of government, continued to remain a republic of Soviets. There was an incompatibility, a dualism of the political system of the transition period, which provided for, on the one hand, the power of the Soviets, on the other, a structure of autocracy from bottom to top represented by the heads of administrations, presidents of autonomous republics, headed by the popularly elected President of Russia, which could not but lead in the future to both contradictions and confrontation between power structures.
The Constitution of the Russian Federation of 1993 enshrined the separation of powers: state power in the Russian Federation is exercised on the basis of division into legislative, executive and judicial. The legislative, executive and judicial authorities are independent. So, Russia accepted the principle of separation of powers as a condition for building a democratic republican system, a rule of law state. The adoption of the new Russian Constitution means that of the two most common forms of democratic government - presidential and parliamentary republics - in Russia a choice has been made in favor of a presidential republic.
This is the structure erected by V.V. Putin during administrative reform. The construction of a vertical power structure is justified by the need to strengthen Russian statehood, which was shaken after the parade of sovereignties, as well as by an increase in the level of responsibility of officials to society. The main step in building a vertical power structure is the creation of seven federal districts, dividing the entire country into approximately economically equal parts, appointing responsible people as heads of federal districts, and reassigning the heads of federal subjects to new officials.
However, the hidden trends in strengthening statehood are that secret procedures are being carried out to create a two-party (or even one-party) system in the Russian Federation similar to that in the United States, when two tame parties carry out the appearance of political struggle and democracy. Such parties in the United States are the Republican Party and the Democratic Party (but few people have a reasonable question: “How do these parties differ if the names of the first are translated from Latin and the names of the second from Greek mean the same thing - “power of the people” "). In Russia, one of the parties may become the so-called. the ruling party “United Russia”, which, with the help of electoral technologies, captured all the key posts in the Russian government. It is not yet clear which party will be chosen for the second role.
Thus, after the final construction of the vertical of power, Russia will face a political theater of the absurd.
The time of Putin's changes has seriously changed the configuration of Russian power, moving regional elites, at least judging by public policy, to the periphery of the political process. At least if we judge this by public policy. As a result, compared to the Yeltsin era, the positioning of regional elites in the space of federal politics has significantly transformed. At that time, the weight of regional elites was comparable to the political weight of politicians at the federal level. Moreover, the political resources of the Russian regional authorities were such that no other public institutions or structures in the region and in Moscow, even at the federal level, could present their demands to them from a position of strength. For Boris Yeltsin and his team, it was important to take into account the subject structure of the regional political space and the peculiarities of the functioning of regional authorities. For them, this was a necessary condition for the success of the policy of the Federal Center (both in routine issues and in the case of strategic decisions). Inadequate ideas about the goals, resources and behavioral characteristics of regional political actors were fraught with the fact that decisions taken by the Center at the regional level were significantly distorted or were not implemented at all. Control from the federal center was significantly reduced. The degree of autonomy of the regions and the ability of regional elites to influence political decisions made in the Center were very significant. In recent years, analysts have focused on the very fact of the disappearance of regional elites from the federal political space. When describing various situations in the regions, political scientists most often proceeded from the assumption that regional leaders and their teams are the “injured party” who cannot like leaving the political space and replacing political functions with the functions of the “supply manager” of the region.
By default, it was assumed that the regional elite would not immediately submit to the Kremlin’s demands, and that the power vertical would provoke even greater hidden conflict in relations between regional and federal politicians. The default assumptions, however, only hypothetically described the situation developing within the regional elites. They did not provide answers to numerous questions. Is there a great variety of political assessments of the vertical of power by regional elites?
How do those who must implement it at the regional level perceive administrative reform? What are the dynamics of the attitude of regional elites to the gradual strengthening of the vertical and growing monocentrism? What is the proportion of regional elites who have come to terms with the practices of the vertical power structure and even find advantages in them, and those who are forced to submit to such a scheme of political governance?
Vertical of power in 2006: implications for regions, federalism and strategies of regional elites
If we integrate the assessments of regional elites and experts obtained during discussions two years later, then we can quite reasonably say that the vertical of power in 2006 was already perceived by regionals as an important component of political reform, and its discussion was not accompanied by clearly expressed negativism, which was typical at the beginning of the transformation. True, having lived for some time under the new rules, the regional elites continued to perceive the vertical of power as a very contradictory structure that has an ambiguous impact on the state of Russian federalism. The majority in 2006 perceived the vertical of power as an ambiguous political phenomenon, but in general the nature of its perception became more positive. Most representatives of the current regional authorities perceived the created vertical rather as a positive step in reforming power, while recognizing that such changes could be perceived by the majority of society as a departure from democracy. Experts, in turn, warned that such a reconfiguration of power could have far-reaching consequences, unfavorable not only for Russia, but also for the regional elites themselves.
Among the negative aspects of such an organization of interaction between federal and regional authorities, representatives of the regions noted the uncertainty of the time for which it is involved, as well as, as one of the main results of its construction, a sharp drop in political competition in the regions. The loyalty of the regional elites was actually bought by the federal Center over the past two years: “The Center now has money, it has become possible to use financial resources to buy the loyalty of the regions,” this is how one of the discussion participants summed up what happened.
Here, first of all, the need arises to touch upon the issue of organizing the management system of the Supreme Power, which for centuries has been built on the principle power vertical. In Russia this was the strongest link, but also the most vulnerable. It is this that they now want to actively strengthen, but this would be the wrong step, and here’s why.
The power vertical, understood as the subordination of peripheral centers to the single central leadership of the country in the person of its head - the President, does not fully reflect the internal meaning of this system. The vertical of power is, first of all, the system of distribution of the country's energy resources, a management system in which the command from the subject of management is conveyed to the object through a sequence of hierarchically subordinate authorities. In such a system, if at least one of the management links fails, failures periodically occur.
In this case, the diagram of such a system can be compared with the simplest electrical network, in which electricity consumers are connected to the power supply in series, from one to another. A breakdown in communication between consumers of such a network leads to failure of the entire system as a whole. Most of all, this insecurity manifests itself in the actions of the Supreme Power when forming the country's budget, based on the residual principle. By placing the production and non-production spheres of society's life in one consistent row under the conditions of state capitalism, the system is preparing itself for a global explosion.
It is naive to think that a material resource expressed in monetary terms is akin to a spiritual resource, which is priceless. And when people, carriers of this resource, are subjected to laws that are unacceptable to them, they become outcasts in society, and society itself loses its internal bonds and disintegrates. Moreover, in today's system of public administration, operating on the principle power vertical, Most material resources are in the hands of private capital. What kind of reasonable and fair distribution can we talk about if energy flows go through private structures? Is it possible in such a situation to strengthen the power vertical and centralize power, which does not fully possess this resource? The government itself interacts with the private sector through partnership agreements and has certain obligations and agreements before it, and the personal interests of private capital have very little correlation with the needs of ordinary people.
In fact, the same thing happened at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries. The tsarist government, using private banking capital, and not of Russian origin, for the development of the country, had to reimburse the costs of this capital in a certain way, i.e. the state was the debtor of the entity owning part of the state property. Moreover, when with the development of industry, agriculture, developing science, the education system (the Russian Empire was the second country in the world in terms of development) and all state social institutions, public administration began to become more complicated, reform of the entire state system was required. But the process did not go in the right direction, and this was facilitated by two factors: internal and external, which were still tied to the same power vertical.
Internally, this is precisely the process of anti-systemic actions of the cabinet of ministers of the monarchical government itself, which, against the backdrop of the strengthening of the state, treated their personal lives with greater reverence than the people of their country. And, as a consequence, their betrayal of the king, and with him the entire people. The external factor is world banking capital and those “secret forces” that strived and still strive for world domination: a single global state and a single world religion, which ecumenism should ensure. At that time, these two factors complemented each other, and the country received a revolutionary situation.
Upon closer examination, one of the main reasons for creating such a situation was, and we are once again convinced of this, it was the system power vertical. The country's resources under such a system are too open and available for plunder by anti-system forces. Due to its insecurity and simplicity, it is easy to integrate into the power vertical and feed the interests of private capital. We know what this looks like from life in Russia today.
According to the concept of the free market, which allows you to buy even government positions, anti-system activists invest their capital in government projects only to return it increased tens or even hundreds of times at the expense of those resources that belong to the entire people. There is an open robbery of the country. There is nothing fundamentally new between the democracy of Ancient Rome and the Russian democracy of this century. Democracy in its pure form will always remain a system of exploitation of man by man.
What steps of civil society and the government itself will be able to influence the change in the democratic system that is not justifying itself in Russia, steps that can lead the state to more sustainable principles of life and a form of government?
Here it would be appropriate to recall the works of our compatriot Ivan Solonevich. He talked about People's Monarchy, which, in our view, is the source and fundamental basis of the Autocratic Monarchy. In the minds of most people, it is fixed as hereditary power, but taking into account the practice of historical eras, it is possible and necessary to admit that this postulate requires change and the formation of the ruling layer may follow a different scenario. https://vk.com/doc-68258216_354324266
Self-organization of the people according to the principles proposed in I. Solonevich’s “People’s Monarchy” will give us the opportunity to bring to power the truly best people from the people. Democracy, as we see, is not going anywhere; it remains in the place where it should be - at the first hierarchical level in the system of elections to the Legislative Bodies of the country. By the same principle, elections of the next steps can be carried out, if we talk about hierarchy, but these elections can only be conscious and responsible if people choose worthy ones from among themselves, i.e. from those they know well. This approach can be carried out both according to the territorial (zemstvo) principle, as the President of our state Vladimir Putin spoke about https://vk.com/club56194166?w=wall-56194166_1685, and professional principle, following which the responsibility of each person for life in your country. The extremely vicious system of coming to power through party lists must become a thing of the past. The system of party representation has not given us anything more destructive and deceitful and will never give us anything more.
The management layer, which by inertia we call aristocratic (ruling layer), works in the system as a filter connecting the bottom with the top, but in the simplest scheme of sequential inclusion in the command block, this filter very quickly becomes clogged and fails. Many requests coming from civil society to the top are blocked, and sometimes the orders of the Supreme Power, which governs the country as a whole, are not carried out. In such conditions, the Presidential Administration is forced to take on the responsibilities of the executive branch even at the level of regional administrations, buying the loyalty of the local elite in order to maintain government in a more or less stable state. In such conditions, the state will not be able to exist for long.
Changing the ruling layer while leaving the entire control system intact is completely useless. Corruption, like cancer metastases, eats away at the entire society. Here, only a complete reorganization of public administration at the level of the Supreme Power can save the state from collapse and the people from extinction.
It is necessary to repeat and say once again that when governing the country according to the principle power vertical all the conditions for the collapse of the Russian Empire arose. Exactly the same collapse can await us in modern democratic Russia. Already now, when power vertical begins to be more actively strengthened by the will of the President of the Russian Federation, we see how he snaps and goes on the attack fifth column, having occupied the Government of the Russian Federation and carrying out animal laws against its own citizens. Stopping this offensive and preserving Russian statehood with its Russian core is possible only if it is possible to reformat the system power vertical into a more complex system of distribution of energy resources, which, despite its apparent complexity, will be more reliable and will not provide such an easy opportunity to steal resources from the people, as is happening now.
The country's energy resources from one stream must be channeled into two streams, making them parallel. To understand how this can be done, you need to solve a fairly simple question: what energies does a person need for his life and how can the flows of these energies be grouped?
vertical line of power) - a commonly used understanding of the distribution of power, management functions from bottom to top, along a vertical line.
Excellent definition
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VERTICAL OF POWER (POWER VERTICAL)
A rigid system of government, based on the unconditional subordination of the lower levels of management to the upper. Both terms appeared in Soviet (and Russian) media in 1991.
1. Synonymous with strong and effective presidential power.
If the president really needs an advisory political body headed by the Secretary of State, then this body, in order not to weaken or deform the vertical of power, should probably be turned from the first and decisive link of the vertical into its outgrowth, a body acting exclusively through the president. If the president believes that the heads of regional administrations elected according to the old scheme cannot fit into the vertical of his power, then nothing prevents him from introducing a bill on the powers of regional executive authorities, on giving their heads the temporary status of appointed representatives of the president.
(“Nezavisimaya Gazeta” (Moscow). 10/17/1991).
2. Designation of an effective public administration system. In this sense, the term became especially popular in 2000, after V. Putin came to power.
Over ten democratic years, governors have built a vertical of power in the regions that Putin never dreamed of. Having placed your own people at the head of regional formations, you can have no doubt about your political future. The electorate will always vote as it should. For this purpose, there are electoral technologies that have been developed since Soviet times, which today’s Kremlin political strategists have never dreamed of.
(“Russia” (Moscow). 11/30/2000).
In the same Chelyabinsk, the restaurant “Putin” was pompously opened, where the signature dish was the kebab “Vertical of Power”. According to political scientists, there is no ideological background here. It’s just that in Russia you won’t find a more popular brand than the name of the head of state. Wanting to inspire confidence in their product or establishment, entrepreneurs shamelessly assign it the name of Putin. Excellent definition
Incomplete definition ↓
