Inter-city municipalities in the city districts in Russia: New functionality in the Post-Soviet Era
Modern Russian legislation has not regulated inner city division since collapse of the Soviet Union. The set of the socio-economic factors demonstrated process of local communities' destruction: changes of the cities' social structure caused districts identities erosion and economy shifts decentralized the labor market, destroyed strong connection between citizens and their home area. However, legislative amendments in the 2014 created new municipality types - city district with inner division and inner-city districts. Big cities were supposed to decentralize their administrative models and increase citizens' participation in the local governance, but only three cities used this possibility - Chelyabinsk, Samara and Makhachkala. The article examines experience of these cities with focus on the administrative competences, financial capabilities and level of the civil initiatives. The research results consist in the fact of decentralization fail and lack of the districts deputies' institutional strength. In authors opinion, the reforms followed political purposes of the regional governments. However, this institutional model has at least three different perspectives of further applying. First of all, it could be one of the legislative alternatives for regulation of the agglomerative pro- cesses. The second option is providing with additional autonomy city districts with strong local identity. The last alternative is compromise variant in the case of settlements abolishment (new city district).