Comparative legal analysis of the systems of local government in Russia and USA

This research is devoted to a comparative analysis of the systems of local government in Russia and the United States. Numerous reforms of local government conducted in Russia since 1993 up to the present moment have failed to establish an optimal and stable model of local government, which could serve as a real mechanism for implementing the constitutional principle of people's power. "Stateization" of local government, lack of financial self-sufficiency and "settling" of economic resources in proper amounts in municipalities, chaotic changes in legislation and many other problems testify to the unsatisfactory state of local government in Russia at the current stage of its development. This research is aimed at revealing the most optimal ways of solving the existing problems by using the method of comparative legal analysis of local government systems in Russia and the USA. Consideration of the already proven system of local government in the USA will allow identifying the peculiarities and problems of legal regulation of local government in Russia. The study is related with legal nature, but due to the complexity of the problems under consideration other aspects of local government system in Russia will be touched upon: economical, sociological, political and others. The results of this analysis are intended to show how American institutions and organizational foundations of local government can be adapted to Russian legal "ground", and how the effectiveness of existing norms regulating local government in Russia can be improved.