Institution of public control in the regional political landscape: current state and prospects for development

The aim of the study was to identify the peculiarities in the contemporary development of public control institutions in the regions of the Siberian Federal District, including public councils under government bodies, as well as non-governmental organisations. The study was based on the following types of sources: statistical data of official authorities, official websites of regional and municipal authorities of Novosibirsk and Kemerovo regions, the Public Chamber of Kemerovo Region, the Public Chamber of Novosibirsk Region, non-profit organisations (Kemerovo regional public organisation Resource Centre for Support of Public Initiatives and the Siberian Politics foundation), works of Russian researchers dealing with the problems of civil society and social control. The paper considers the concept of public control. While there are a number of related concepts such as "social control", "people's control", "democratic control", "civil control" used in scientific research, the authors hold that the concept "public control" most fully reflects the ongoing social processes, and it should be viewed as an emerging social mechanism aimed at exercising control by the civil society over the federal and, to a greater extent, regional and municipal authorities by including representatives of public, non-profit organisations and expert community in the institutions of public control, as well as in the activities of regional non-profit organisations. The paper analyses the normative legal acts that provided for the formation of regional public councils under the bodies of legislative and executive power. Today, the Public Chambers of Novosibirsk and Kemerovo regions are regional discussion platforms for the development of further mechanisms for civil society development with the participation of public councils, the Public Chambers are engaged in improving the mechanisms for selecting personnel and monitoring their activities. At the same time, certain problems remain, including almost complete oversight on the part of the authorities, lack of real tools for influencing the authorities, and others. Certain significance in the issue of exercising public control over the authorities should be given to non-profit regional expert organisations. The activities of non-profit organisations can strengthen monitoring mechanisms in assessing the work of government bodies. In addition, in order to transform public councils and non-profit organisations into an effective institution of civil society and public control, further work is needed to improve the regulatory and legal framework, change the principles for the formation of the composition of public councils; besides, a better understanding of the significance of qualitative changes in managerial decision-making with direct participation of expert community at the regional level is required.

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