Prospects for consolidation of civil and expert participation in the legislative process at the regional level

Мазеин А.В.

doi:10.7256/2454-0706.2022.6.38049

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Law and Politics

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Mazein A.V. Prospects for consolidation of civil and expert participation in the legislative process at the regional level // Law and Politics. 2022. № 6. P. 45-72. DOI: 10.7256/2454-0706.2022.6.38049 EDN: DNASOA URL: https://en.nbpublish.com/library_read_article.php?id=38049

Prospects for consolidation of civil and expert participation in the legislative process at the regional level

Mazein Artem Vladimirovich

ORCID: 0000-0002-5598-7784

Senior Lecturer, Department of Legal Support of Public Administration and National Security, Ural Institute of Management – Branch of the Russian Academy of National Economy and Public Administration under the President of the Russian Federation; MIREA - Russian Technological University

620034, Russia, Sverdlovsk region, Yekaterinburg, ul. 8 Marta, 66

artemmazein@mail.ru

Other publications by this author

DOI:

10.7256/2454-0706.2022.6.38049

EDN:

DNASOA

Received:

12-05-2022

Published:

30-06-2022

Abstract: In this article, the author analyzes the variety of lists of subjects of the right of legislative initiative in the Russian regions. The author conducts an analysis of the constitutions (charters) of all regions of the Russian Federation, uses formal legal and comparative methods. According to the results of the study, the author notes that at the regional level, the right of legislative initiative is granted to 46 categories of subjects, which are classified into 4 groups: 1) state authorities and officials; 2) local self-government bodies and their associations; 3) judicial authorities and prosecutor's offices; 4) citizens and public associations. The latter group reflects representatives of the civil and expert community and includes 13 categories of subjects. Based on the results of the analysis of scientific works, generalization of the emerging legal practice, the author proposed the concepts of "civil participation in the law-making (legislative) process" and "expert participation in the law-making (legislative) process". Summarizing the Russian and foreign experience of civil and expert participation in the legislative process, the author confirms that citizens easily support ideas for changing legislation (vote for them), but at the same time have difficulties in converting such ideas into draft laws. With this in mind, in order to increase the professionalism of the preparation of the bill and the openness of its discussion, the author proposed a two-stage model of civil and expert participation in the legislative process, which involves: 1) at the first stage, the development, taking into account the real needs of the draft law, carried out on the principle of professionalism, by representatives of the expert community and (or) public associations; 2) at the second stage, a public discussion of the draft law developed in order to obtain the support of citizens. The author focuses on the need to implement a public discussion of the bill using digital technologies.

Keywords:

legislative initiative, legislative bodies, civil society, subjects of the Russian Federation, citizen participation, people's initiative, expert participation, the principle of professionalism, openness, e-voting
This article is automatically translated.

In federal legislation, the legal status of the legislative bodies of state power of the subjects of the Russian Federation is regulated by the provisions of Chapter 2 of Federal Law No. 414-FZ. In particular, the federal law defines that "the legislative body of the subject of the Russian Federation is the representative and only legislative" body of state power of the subject of the Russian Federation, acts permanently. At the same time, the name of the legislative body of the subject of the Russian Federation and its structure are established by the constitution (charter) of the subject of the Russian Federation, taking into account the historical, national and other traditions of the subject of the Russian Federation. In the course of the author's analysis of the constitutions (charters) of the subjects of the Russian Federation, it was revealed that currently the legislative bodies of the subjects of the Russian Federation have 19 different names (Table 1).

Table 1

Names of legislative bodies of the subjects of the Russian Federation

Names of Legislative Bodies of the Subjects of the Russian Federation

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First Peer Review

Peer reviewers' evaluations remain confidential and are not disclosed to the public. Only external reviews, authorized for publication by the article's author(s), are made public. Typically, these final reviews are conducted after the manuscript's revision. Adhering to our double-blind review policy, the reviewer's identity is kept confidential.
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The subject of the research The article analyzes the lists of subjects of the right of legislative initiative in regional parliaments regulated by normative legal acts, and their classification is given. The author called the article "Modern systems of subjects of law of legislative initiative in Russian regions." Meanwhile, there are no arguments to substantiate the fact that the circle of subjects of the law of legislative initiative established by regional NPAs represents a single system (within the framework of the relevant subject of the Russian Federation and in general in the horizontal section of the analysis). In this regard, the author is invited to correct the title of the work in this part. In addition, it should be noted that the subject of the article is generally well known to specialists in the field of public law, as well as students, since the issue of subjects of law of legislative initiative in regional legislatures is included in all academic textbooks on constitutional law of Russia (not to mention special courses). It is also unnecessary to recall the multitude of dissertations and other works on the subject of research. Methodologically, the work uses methods of analysis, generalization, comparative method, as well as abstraction, methods of induction, deduction, modeling, descriptive methods. The dialectical method claimed by the author is not revealed in the article. The relevance of the regional level of the problem is determined by the wide palette (diversity) of the established range of subjects of law of legislative initiative. However, for specialists, such relevance seems conditional due to insufficiently expressed conceptual and applied components. The work would have become much more relevant if the author had presented and analyzed data on the features and effectiveness of the implementation of legislative initiatives by "atypical" subjects of the law of legislative initiative (for example, public chambers, CCI, prosecutors of subjects, Federal Tax Service, etc.). Scientific novelty Scientific novelty in the article is present fragmentally in the form of their own author's judgments in regarding the issues related to the analysis and classification of subjects of law of legislative initiative in regional legislatures. The style of the article meets the requirements for legal publications. The author knows the legal vocabulary, there are no spelling errors in the work, but there are punctuation errors. Also, unconventional expressions were not found in the text. The graphic design of the article deserves a positive assessment. The structure of the article is generally consistent. In terms of content, the following should be noted. The author presented a well-developed overview of the subjects of the law of legislative initiative in regional parliaments. At the same time, the study lacks conclusions that could be presented as an adequate result of the work carried out. The conclusion in the article is unreasonably concise and conceptually weak – the author writes: "Therefore, in our opinion, it is currently advisable to expand the list of subjects of the right of legislative initiative to include those bodies and persons who propose certain reasonable legislative changes, but cannot express their proposal to the legislature in accordance with the established procedure. Many of these entities are currently anchored in individual regions. First of all, these are senators of the Russian Federation and deputies of the State Duma, commissioners for human rights, children, entrepreneurs, public chambers, trade unions, territorial bodies of federal executive authorities, youth parliaments. Other subjects mentioned in this article are also of interest." Firstly, the proposal to fill the list of subjects of law with legislative initiatives in regional legislatures by "socially oriented" bodies and officials is well known. Secondly, in order to draw such a conclusion (to emphasize their importance in terms of the resource characteristics of the representation of the interests of the population, as well as to really evaluate "certain reasonable legislative changes" as presumptive), it is necessary to argue the effectiveness of their activities (if not on specific examples, which would be desirable, then at least through competence), and not just to state their normative consolidation in regional legislation; in this part, the author does not fully observe the causal relationship. Thirdly, the author, emphasizing the importance of expanding expert and civic participation in initiating the legislative process, does not explain in any way his attitude to the people's law-making initiative, which is just the quintessence of civic participation, does not talk about possible implementation mechanisms. Taking into account the above, I believe that this work is a well-developed classification reference information on the range of subjects of the right of legislative initiative in regional parliaments. Meanwhile, the article does not see a conceptual core. Conclusions on the expediency of supplementing the range of subjects of law of legislative initiative by representatives of the expert and civil society are based on a formal compilation of the practice of fixing such subjects in regional legislation, and not on an assessment of their competence and performance.

Second Peer Review

for the article Prospects for the consolidation of civil and expert participation in the legislative process at the regional level, the title corresponds to the content of the article materials. The author did not specify in the title of the article: "in Russia." The title of the article reveals a scientific problem, which the author's research is aimed at solving. The reviewed article is of scientific interest. The author explained the choice of the research topic and justified its relevance. The article does not formulate the purpose of the study, does not specify the object and subject of the study, the methods used by the author. In the opinion of the reviewer, the main elements of the "program" of the study can be seen in the title and text of the article. The author did not present the results of the analysis of the historiography of the problem and did not formulate the novelty of the undertaken research, which is a significant disadvantage of the article. In presenting the material, the author demonstrated the results of the analysis of the historiography of the problem in the form of links to relevant works on the research topic. There is no appeal to opponents in the article. The author did not explain the choice and did not characterize the range of sources involved in the disclosure of the topic. In the opinion of the reviewer, the author correctly used the sources, maintained the scientific style of presentation, competently used the methods of scientific knowledge, followed the principles of logic, systematicity and consistency of presentation of the material. In the introduction of the article, the author pointed out the reason for choosing the research topic, justified its relevance, explaining, in particular, why "the definition of the place of civil and expert participation in the legislative process deserves special attention." The author's allocation of the first section of the main part of the article ("Methods") does not seem appropriate, its volume is two paragraphs. In this section, the author reported on the need to give a general description of the legislative initiative "as a stage of the legislative process", "to form an idea of the existing legislative bodies of the subjects of the Russian Federation", etc. The author explained for what purpose he applied the content analysis of constitutions (charters) of the subjects of the Russian Federation, the formal legal method, the comparative method, etc. In the second section of the main part of the article ("Results") the author explained that "the independence of the legislative bodies of the subjects of the Russian Federation should currently be disclosed in two aspects": "through their independence in the general system of legislative, executive and judicial authorities" and "as the independence of the establishment of regional legislative authorities," etc. The author reported that "currently the legislative bodies of the subjects of the Russian Federation have 19 of various names", that "in addition to the free (within the limits of the established restrictions) choice of names of legislative bodies, their independence is ensured by the free establishment of the list of subjects having the right of legislative initiative in them", etc. The author justified his idea with references to relevant normative legal acts, concluding that "a comparison of the relevant provisions allows us to establish that in 2021 the list of "typical" entities that have the right to legislative initiative in accordance with federal legislation has expanded." The author explained why "the subjects of the Russian Federation will have to bring their legislation in terms of regulating the right of legislative initiative in accordance with Federal Law No. 414-FZ", said that "at the regional level, the right of legislative initiative has been granted to a total of 46 categories of subjects", classified them, taking into account the peculiarities of their legal status, into 4 groups: "bodies state authorities and officials as subjects of the right of legislative initiative", "local governments and their associations as subjects of the right of legislative initiative", "judicial authorities and prosecutors as subjects of the right of legislative initiative" and "citizens and public associations as subjects of the right of legislative initiative"; described these groups in detail. Further, the author analyzed the "modern practice of implementing the right of legislative initiative", commented on the factors that caused "an imbalance in the legislative activity of deputies, senior officials, senior executive bodies and other subjects." In the third section of the main part of the article ("Discussion of the results"), the author stated that "the involvement of representatives of the public and the expert community in the legislative process as subjects of legislative initiative is currently fragmentary," etc., and also made an attempt to "determine the prospects and grounds for expanding civil and expert participation in the legislative process." The author presented to the reader his own definitions of the terms "civil participation in the law-making (legislative) process" and "expert participation in the law-making (legislative) process" (in the text: "Based on the above, we formulate the following concepts"). In the following stories, the author described in detail "the prospects for expanding expert and civic participation in the legislative process." The author's conclusions are generalizing, justified, and formulated clearly. The conclusions allow us to evaluate the scientific achievements of the author within the framework of his research. The conclusions reflect the results of the research conducted by the author in full. In the final paragraphs of the article, the author reported that "at the regional level, the right of legislative initiative has been granted to a total of 46 categories of subjects," etc., that the author classified them into 4 groups. The author stated that "currently only 28% of subjects of the law of legislative initiative are subjects of civil and expert participation," etc., and stated that "it is advisable to pay more attention to civil and expert participation in law-making activities." The author proposed definitions of the concepts of "civil participation in the law-making (legislative) process" and "expert participation in the law-making (legislative) process", as well as a two-stage model of civil and expert participation in the legislative process, summarizing that "the two-stage model will simultaneously ensure professionalism in the preparation of the bill and openness of its discussion, and will also correspond to the idea of expansion civic participation in political decision-making and the idea of developing civil society," etc. In the reviewer's opinion, the potential purpose of the study has been achieved by the author as a whole. The publication may arouse the interest of the magazine's audience.

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Prospects for consolidation of civil and expert participation in the legislative process at the regional level