The principle of the executive power unity in the contemporary Russian federative model

Abstract

The article considers the unity of executive power in the federative model of contemporary Russia to show that a single system of executive power within the Russian political-legal culture presupposes a hierarchical relationship between executive authorities of different levels. Such specifics of the relationship between the federal executive bodies and executive bodies of the subjects of the Russian Federation contradicts the idea of a vertical division of powers. The Russian model of federal relations is based on the fact that if the interests of the federation and its subjects are intertwined the best decision is not to isolate or separate the levels of power but rather to help them to interact, to provide a joint solution to the challenges of the state and its constituent parts. The author studied the federal legal acts and the practice of the Constitutional Court, in which the principle of the unity of the executive power was reinforced and evaluated. The article is based on the culturological approach as a kind of the system-structural analysis of law and other elements of social reality. This approach allows to consider the specifics of the Russian federalism as a special model of public administration in dynamics, and the corresponding institutions in their constant interaction and development. The formal-legal method allowed to identify the legal content of the principle of the state power system unity as the ‘cornerstone’ of the Russian federative structure. As a result, the article presents the following cultural-historical model of the Russian federative relations: it allows for widespread decentralization in the political sphere (by providing a list of objects of joint jurisdiction of the federal center and the subjects of the Russian Federation, and also - by residual principle - the exclusive legislative competence of the subjects), while the federal center strengthens centralization mechanisms in the administrative sphere (through the distribution of powers within the joint jurisdiction), thus, ensuring political competition under the tough statist principles in public administration.