0w2010 01 RESUM EJECUTIVO 03 DEFcarta ang
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Eurasia Executive Summary
The major challenge of local governments in the eight countries under review (Armenia, Belarus, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova, Russia, and Ukraine) over the past twenty years has been adjusting to the narrowing role and size of government, and the resulting reduction in local resources, while attempting to maintain the high quality of social services provided at the local level during the Soviet period. Concurrently, local governments across the region have been coping with a dramatic increase in migration, both domestic and international. This has resulted in a redistribution of service needs in relation to these positive and negative net-migrations, which no longer match
Table 3:
the existing infrastructure. However, the social infrastructure (schools, hospitals, etc.) in localities that have lost population has been preserved in order to reduce social tensions, as budget-supported institutions have become almost their only area of employment. Local governments in the countries of Eurasia vary from a system of decentralized state bodies for local administration in Kazakhstan and a centralized hierarchical system of public authorities in Belarus to a two-tier system of local self-government in Russia and Moldova. In between, there are states where local self-governments exist autonomously (Armenia, Georgia) or alongside state bodies for local
Legal Status of Local Governments
Countries
Regional level
Intermediate (raion) level
Settlement level
Armenia
D
Belarus
LG/LSG
LG/LSG
Georgia
D
LSG +
Kazakhstan
LG
LG
LG (without budget rights)
Kyrgyzstan
D
LG/LSG
LSG
LSG (include Autonomous Republics)
LSG
LSG LG/LSG
Autonomous Republics (LSG)
Moldova Russia
Subjects of Federation
LSG
LSG
Ukraine
LG/LSG
LG/LSG
LSG
D – deconcentrated units of central government LG – local state government bodies LSG – local self-governments bodies LG/LSG – local executive bodies included into hierarchical “vertical power structure” and local representative bodies (councils) with a status of a local self-government
Natalia Golovanova Center of Fiscal Policy (Moscow), Russia Galina Kurlyandskaya Center of Fiscal Policy (Moscow), Russia