General Evaluation of the Reform of the Success of Local Self-Government Reform in Ukraine

Abstract

The reform of local self-government in Ukraine was called decentralization. Community residents directly consuming medical, educational, administrative and other services received a real opportunity to influence these services. The processes of decentralization as a way of transferring powers to local self-government bodies in Ukraine have been studied for a long time and remain relevant today. The goal is to find and evaluate the success of local self-government reform in Ukraine at this stage of its implementation. Decentralization reform is called for by the need to bring the provision of most primary public services (security, medicine, education, infrastructure, etc.) closer to citizens as consumers of these services. Thus, the quality and efficiency of these services is formed. After all, in the conditions of the ongoing centralization of state power (in the period until 2014), these characteristics significantly worsened. Decentralization reform has become a tool to overcome these trends at the basic level. The strategy for the implementation of the decentralization reform was defined in 5 clear steps, which were completed with varying degrees of success in the period from 2014 to 2022. There is a clear understanding among practitioners that the reforms have given local officials more responsibility and resources, contributed to increasing the capacity, and especially the resilience and resistance of communities in the difficult circumstances of the martial law period, as well as the continuation of the provision of basic services to the people in communities that have been severely affected by the conflict. The effectiveness of the decentralization reform is confirmed by the fact that the vast majority of local self-government bodies continue to function, including being on the front lines and even under occupation. The application of the assessment of the overall success of local self-government reform makes it possible to evaluate the effectiveness of the reform in general, to see the directions of detailing the criteria for the success of the reform, and to create a basis for the development of a multi-criteria model for evaluating the effectiveness of the reform. Further research is aimed at finding and justifying a specific list of criteria for the success of local self- government reform, which could determine both internal efficiency (from the point of view of an individual community) and external efficiency (from the point of view of central authorities).