Institutional features and development trends of local government in the United States

Abstract

Local self-government is an important institution of a democratic political system. Its value is to promote the political participation of citizens, to use the social capital as a resource for social development. The US experience in this area may be useful for other countries, including Ukraine. In recent years, the main areas of research in this field are the evolution of local governing structures, relations between various administrative units and management bodies, local political regimes, the relationship between the elites and interest groups, the relationship between political and managerial approaches to urban management, operation and role of city councils, the influence of electoral systems, the role of executive authorities, the interaction between the local government and federal administration, on one hand, and state, on another, the relations between local government and the processes of globalization, the emergence of new types of communities (regional clusters, knowledge corporations, etc.). With regard to the general theoretical approaches, it is possible to ascertain the transition from the so- called market-based approaches to network approaches [1; 2; 5; 7; 9].