Features and functioning issues of the institution of local self-government in municipal units of an urban agglomeration

Currently, urban agglomerations are one of the key priorities of the country's spatial development in Russia. At the same time, Russia has not yet formed any legal regulations for developing agglomerations. There are certain difficulties in carrying out a comprehensive analysis of agglomeration processes due to lack of statistics directly for agglomerations and a unified approach to such analysis. One of the effective methods to study the processes of formation and development of agglomerations is various sociological studies (surveys of the population, representatives of authorities, economic entities), which makes relevant the topic of the present article. The purpose is to study the features and development issues of the institution of local self-government in the emerging agglomerations (case study of two agglomerations - Vologda and Cherepovets). The research novelty lies in identifying the specific features of management at the local level, the state and problems of development of municipal units in agglomerations compared to the rest of the region. In order to achieve this goal we used research methods such as economic, statistical, and comparative analysis, generalization and expert survey, monographic method. The results of the questionnaire survey for heads of municipal districts of the Vologda Oblast conducted by the Federal State Budgetary Institution of Science “Vologda Research Center of the Russian Academy of Sciences” in 2017 suggest that agglomeration processes in the territory of the Vologda and Cherepovets agglomerations are developing. It is revealed that the interaction of municipal units included in these agglomerations is manifested mainly in forms such as exchange of experience of authorities to address issues and problems of local importance (this was indicated by 83% of the surveyed heads in the Vologda agglomeration and 100% - in Cherepovets); circular migration (48 and 59%, respectively); production and economic relations between enterprises, organizations from neighboring municipal units (35 and 18%); agreements with local governments of other municipal units (30 and 18%); organization and implementation of joint activities, projects (26 and 29%). The results can be further used to justify the management mechanism and measures for the development of agglomerations.