The controversy surrounding oblast state administrations (OSA) clearly demonstrates the vulnerability of such a system to organized raiding. Whoever manages to capture this position and convince the deputies sitting on it to vote as needed can “reassign to themselves” an entire “oblast” without asking the consent of its residents, property owners, and so on. This vulnerability is just one of many inherent in the state corporation. In this case, it is a consequence of the fact that “local power” is simply a representation of the state on a certain piece of land. All our “oblasts,” “raions,” “cities,” and “settlements” are simply territories over which the jurisdiction of various officials extends. The scope of these officials’ powers is established by the state, which also sets the order of relations between “the center and the regions.” This power is considered local only because officials are voted for locally in local elections. That is, all this territorial division exists for the convenience of the state — for managing property and collecting taxes.
The management of local infrastructure, schools, hospitals, transport, and similar things is tied to this same system. It is not the needs and capabilities of local residents, but the opinions of officials that determine what services and in what volumes will be produced in one region or another. Therefore, all local politics is built around powers preset from the center. Local problems are considered only and exclusively through their prism. Moreover, in the case of Ukraine, “regions” directly participate in the general budgetary process. Two streams of funds flow through local authorities — from regions to the center and from the center to the regions. Around this process, in fact, all local politics is built. The phenomenon of “local tsars,” which adherents of rigid centralization fear so much, is its direct product. All these “dopy” and “gepy” are people skillfully speculating on local problems (caused by the same centralization) and cleverly absorbing the monetary flows from the region to the center and from the center to the region. It is precisely the immutability of this state of affairs that Party of Regions supporters have in mind when they speak of “federalization.” First and foremost, they understand federalization as weakening the center’s intervention in their affairs and expanding their own opportunities. And, of course, the main thing here is preserving the flows from and to the regions.
Let us think about what the solution to this problem might be. Is “federalization,” understood as redistribution of powers within a general administrative system, a way out, and do other alternatives exist? I will remind that the state is a territorial monopoly. It “has the right” to dispose (in various forms) of everything located on “its” territory. Territorial-administrative units are simply parts of this general territory in which the state’s “command posts” are located. A “federation,” as it is understood here, simply means that people in command posts will receive more powers from the general set of state powers.
A federation in the classical sense arises as a reverse process — as the delegation by already existing state formations of some volume of their power to the center. Historically, there can be various precedents here, but in any case, whether it was a union of states, like the USA, or a “union” arose after military conquest, like in Germany, in any case, by this point there existed a certain set of their own powers, some of which, regardless of exactly what process resulted in this, then passed to the center. Such an option is unavailable to us by definition. We can only “give” some of the already existing state powers “to the localities,” and, in the very best case, break up the common budget, leaving the formation of one’s own budget entirely to the region’s discretion.
However, even this option, which many will find radical, actually does not solve the problem. After all, it does not consist in who exactly should exercise certain preset powers — officials from Kyiv or local people; the question is how necessary these powers are in general and in what exactly manner they arise. The eternal song about “subsidized” regions very clearly illustrates this problem. At its core, it presupposes the idea that a certain amount of budgetary funds should be spent on some territory (in a region). And if the region itself cannot collect them, then the missing funds should be allocated from the central budget. Two things are easy to notice. First, the question is obvious: why must expenditures on certain services necessarily be budgetary, and why can’t these services be provided by private companies? Second, it is clear that, besides purely bureaucratic ones, there are no objective ways to determine whether subsidies are needed at all and which ones exactly. That is, “subsidization” is some option on the bureaucratic market, for which battles sometimes flare up between bureaucratic factions, but by no means an objectively existing phenomenon.
As an example of where and how “powers” come from, let us take the self-governance of some village in the times when the state had not yet reached these spheres. First, we will see that in each case it will be different. At minimum, it will consist of a village elder, who plays a role more judicial than administrative. The elder acts thanks to his moral authority; he does not receive wages for his activities. He does not tell people what to do; he steps in when the need for him arises, that is, his role is determined by the needs of the village residents. His authority extends to members of the community, not to the territory — this is a fundamentally important point. If there is a church in the village, then the priest is the next figure, a new “center of power.” I will remind that in the West, local self-governance was traditionally built around church parishes, that is, subdivisions of the church corporation were the points around which community activities were organized. Let us note that such structures change, again, naturally adapting to people’s needs. For example, if a village suddenly grows and a second church appears in it, then there will already be two parishes within one settlement, and I repeat that their activities are related not to the territory but to the parishioners.
Actually, the solution to the problem that some call “increasing the role of local self-governance,” others “decentralization,” and still others “federalization” consists not in manipulating certain powers within some “territorial division,” but in the transition from the territorial principle to the individual one. The existing paradox, caused, I repeat, by the essence of the state as a territorial monopoly, is very well illustrated by the concept of “territorial hromada” — a kind of guinea pig trying to combine two different principles together. It is unclear why people united only by the characteristic of living in one “administrative unit” should automatically constitute some community that is the source of power for preset “bodies” with preset powers. The discussion should be not about territorial hromadas, but simply about hromadas, voluntary communities that would take upon themselves the management of those or other functions that we are accustomed to considering inherent in local government. After all, there is no difference whether all current communal property, as now, is managed by local officials or by representatives of a mythical territorial hromada. The real question is how and for what purpose each individual object is used, who can use it effectively. A hromada in this sense is simply a unit of measurement for people who have decided to take something into management at their own expense. A hromada is, for example, the residents of an apartment building. Residents of several buildings may constitute another hromada, which would manage, say, adjacent territories. Other people may take a road or a bridge into management.
Another example of such a form of management can be places beloved by city dwellers, like Andrew’s Descent, Vladimir Hill, and similar ones; they can be managed by hromadas whose members pay dues for their maintenance. Within one “administrative-territorial unit,” there can be many hromadas, and the same person can belong to several hromadas. It is clear that current communal objects cannot belong to a hromada as a whole; there is no such thing as “public” property. Property relations must be clear and simple; they must be either shares or partnership. Hromadas can conclude contracts with each other, unite, and so on — for example, several blocks can maintain patrol officers, and one sufficiently large building can also afford this. Thus, “power,” if it arises at all (at first it will be difficult to get rid of it), will arise as a result of agreements that can be revised, rather than as some constant with preset parameters. Somewhere, perhaps, hromadas, according to procedures coordinated among themselves, will elect mayors; somewhere they will immediately do without this, and so on. A hromada is also a transitional form from “everything around is collective farm” to commercial enterprises providing services that we are accustomed to considering “communal.” Most likely, where people already have the habit of such services, there will simply be privatization, or a quick transition from “hromada” to private. Private transport, schools, and hospitals no longer cause surprise, but private roads or private sewage systems still blow the mind of the ordinary person. Managing these objects by hromadas will allow this process to be completed less painfully.