Regarding the theory of demarcation of competences of local executive bodies and local self-government bodies

The article is devoted to the coverage of certain theoretical issues regarding the delimitation of the competences of local public authorities. Attention is focused on revealing the terminological features of the category’s «competence», «powers», «functions» of executive power bodies and local self-government bodies. The author focuses attention on certain features of the demarcation of competences of local executive bodies and local self government bodies.It is stated that the development of local self-government as a direct form of manifestation of public activity of the population and a free, democratic way of organizing public power is an integral part of administrative reform in Ukraine and state building in general. It was determined that the very question of delimitation of competences is quite problematic, because it is practically impossible to delimit the functions of bodies that carry out a single administrative activity (public authority) on the ground. First of all, because local state administrations and local self government bodies perform a kind of general management function, they face a common task - the implementation of the most effective management of territories. The implementation of this task requires both management centers to have such functions as regulatory and managerial, communicative, control, informational, normative, organizational and institutional and a number of others.It is argued to take as a basis the principle of control, which should be carried out in such a way that the degree of intervention of the controlling body is proportionate to the importance of the interests that this intervention should protect when delineating the competences of local self-government bodies and local state authorities.It was determined that the current state of demarcation of competences between local executive bodies and local self-government bodies in Ukraine is not in a very good condition, which is due to some problems, namely: the incompleteness of the administrative reform; inheritance of a centralized model of public administration; the imperfection of the current legislation in the field of local public authorities, which leads to numerous conflicts in the delimitation of competence between local executive bodies and local self-government bodies. It is emphasized that the current stage of administrative reform and local self-government reform is aimed at legislative improvement and strengthening of the legislative framework in the sphere of public authority in Ukraine.