Assessment of local self-government reform with intercity division of Samara in 2015–2020 from perspective of its participants and the population

Abstract

A reform of local self-government was initiated in Samara in 2015 through the creation of formally independent municipalities in the regional center – those were the intracity districts that had their own representative bodies, Councils of Deputies and the heads of intracity districts elected by them. This model was a part of federal legislation, but was only implemented in three cities of Russia – Chelyabinsk, Makhachkala and Samara. The rest of the subjects of the Federation refused it. Thus, the implementation of the reform was, in fact, an experiment. In 2019–2020, before the duties of the elected first convocation Councils of Deputies of the Samara inner-city districts were completed, the author, who at that time was the chairman of the Committee of Local Self-Government of the Samara State Duma, initiated an analysis of the results of the reform, which gave a lot of factual material. One of the areas of analysis was an anonymous survey of deputies of Samara district councils, heads of territorial public self-government (TPS) and a sociological survey of the population of Samara about the effectiveness of the created model of local self-government. It became obvious that the reform did not achieve its declared goals – bringing authorities closer to the people. The survey results are presented in this publication.

Keywords

• local self-government
• reform
• intracity division
• samara