Public Administration’s Regulatory Acts: Classification Issues

Abstract

The author has attempted to group public administration’s normative acts. The advantages of classification as the method of cognition of state and legal phenomena and rules of its conduction have been outlined. The criteria for classification of public administration’s regulatory acts have been clarified. That made it possible to specify the content of the components identified as a result of the classification. The author has emphasized the necessity of forming theoretical system of regulatory acts as forms of public administration, establishing their clear hierarchy and competent independence.

Based on the competence of the public administration entity, it has been offered to distinguish general, departmental, interagency and local regulatory acts. The author has offered to improve the competence of public administration agencies with regard to normative and legal regulation of public administration relations. The author has indicated on the need to rethink the scope of the concept of local regulatory acts and has offered to include exclusively the acts of professional self-government agencies of socially important professions. The author has emphasized on the necessity to set general requirements for local rule-making in order to avoid procedural violations.

According to the functional purpose, the author has offered to distinguish program, regulatory, law enforcement, competence, statutory and structural acts, as well as planning acts. Competent acts define the sphere of responsibility, main tasks and powers, managerial relations within the agency of public administration and its organizational and legal form; structural acts – the territorial and functional structure of public administration agencies, distribution of powers, etc., statutory acts – the procedure of management and functioning of public institution. Program and planning acts do not cause the immediate effects of legal consequences such as the emergence, change or termination of subjective rights and legal obligations and related legal relations, which, however, does not mean that they do not lose the features of normativity. The legal force of such acts will depend on the entity that approved the act: the higher its place in the hierarchy of executive authorities, the higher its legal power.