Organizational and legal forms and differences in the administrative and legal status of the territorial bodies of the federal executive authorities of the Russian Federation

The subject of the study is the norms of administrative legislation regulating the territorial features of public administration in Russia. The chosen topic receives a certain update against the background of the formation of the definition of "system of public authority", which is not fully covered at the doctrinal level. The purpose of the study is to assess the current state of legal regulation of the activities of territorial bodies of federal executive bodies. In the context of the functioning of the power vertical, there is a need to unify their administrative and legal status, since the unity of the public authority system is the achieved result of the constitutional reform of 2020. Methodology and research methods. As the basis of the research methodology, the author chose the formal legal method, based on the established principles of dialectical cognition. With its help, the non-transparency of the organization of territorial bodies exercising the fullness of state administration in the subjects of the federation was revealed. The main scientific results of the study are built around the hypothesis of excessive institutionalization of the territorial and central divisions of the executive authorities with the priority of subordinate legal regulation. It has been proved that in this case, both the efficiency of public administration and the trust in public law institutions on the part of civil society may decrease. 

Conclusions. Based on the legal nature of the territorial bodies of the federal executive authorities, it can be concluded that they are in hierarchical subordination, but at the same time they are endowed with the full implementation of the powers attributed by law to their jurisdiction. In the absence of a single normative act that would detail the constitutional foundations for the exercise of public authority, most of them are established in the manner prescribed by the normative act issued by the entity that manages the activities of the relevant federal executive authority. This practice has hidden defects that reduce the effectiveness of public administration. The best way to create a transparent mechanism of public administration is to abandon the practice of legal regulation of the administrative and legal status of the territorial bodies of federal executive authorities by by-laws. By-laws may have a certain potential in terms of the distribution of powers within the structure of the territorial body of the federal executive authority, however, “status” norms should be present in the provisions of a separate federal law regulating the procedure for the establishment, transformation and liquidation of the territorial bodies of the federal executive authority.

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