Correlation between State and Municipal Interests as Public Authority Interests

Abstract

The paper features the question of possible correlation of the notions of “state interest” and “public interest” as a common and comprehensive on the basis of the comparative legal method, as well as the methods of synthesis and induction. In turn, state interest is postulated as an integral part of a wider interest. The analysis of the current Russian practice of economic relations between the state and local authorities shows how the state compulsorily turns part of the public (in a broad sense) interest in the principle of targeted use of municipal property, including the availability of an exhaustive on-site inventory of property intended to address issues of local importance. However, as soon as this public interest changed — namely, the state agreed with the possibility of redistribution of powers between the municipal and regional (sub-entities of the Russian Federation) levels of public authority, which, of course, often involves the redistribution of the object-matter composition of municipal property related to it: the corresponding lists of property, that were rigidly assigned to municipalities, were excluded from federal legislation. The mechanisms of mutual relations of the state and local authorities seems to be convincing evidence that the public interests of the state and local self-government are united, in fact, local self-government bodies today are the lowest level of a unified system of state (or, with the consideration of the need for their formal separation, — public) power with common functions and tasks being solved both at the top (federal and regional) and at lower (municipal-territorial or municipal-settlement) levels. Moreover, despite the formal separation, the levels of local government and state power in terms of the forms and methods of exercising public power do not differ at all. The considered practice, on the whole, leads to the conclusion that as soon as a public interest is objected to by law (and the only subject of legal research is this is an objectified interest in law, in other cases it is an object for studying other sciences: sociology, political science, and so on.) — it becomes common to the entire system of public authority and it is necessary to find a balance of state-legal and municipal-legal interests on the basis of internal noncontradiction (combination).