Regulatory and Legal Support for the Activities of Public Authorities in the context of a New Coronavirus Infection (COVID-19) Pandemic

The purpose of the work is to assess the legal regulation of the activities of public authorities in certain areas in the coronavirus pandemic. Using general philosophical, general scientific, private scientific and special methods of scientific research, regulatory legal acts and the practice of interaction of public authorities in Russia in a pandemic of a new coronavirus infection, analytical and statistical materials, significant foreign experience are studied.
The paper attempts to formulate and study the factors that hinder the effective regulatory legal regulation of the activities of the levels of public authority in the conditions of the COVID-19 pandemic. Among these are: the inability of the constituent entities of the Russian Federation to determine the content of special restrictive legal regimes from the array of current legal regulation; a high proportion of acts (instructions) of the federal center; the refusal of the Federation to specify the scope of the powers of the regions in matters directly related to the state of protection of individual rights and freedoms; insufficient competence of special bodies to protect the population from emergency situations; lack of legal guarantees of local self-government when including them in the process of implementing public functions.
The paper concludes that the effectiveness of regulatory legal regulation of the activities of public authorities in the COVID-19 pandemic depends on three main institutional factors: the competence of the elements of the public power system, the political neutrality of the system of protecting the population from emergency situations, the consistent regulation of restrictive legal regimes, conditions and the procedure for their introduction, regardless of specific scenarios for the development of threats to national security. The paper substantiates the idea that the optimal organization of managerial decision-making in the context of countering the pandemic involves a comprehensive interdepartmental approach with a dominant federal influence.

1. Adygezalova GE. Dinamizm rossiyskogo prava v usloviyakh pandemii [Dynamism of Russian law in the conditions of the pandemia]. Teoriya i praktika obshchestvennogo razvitiya [Theory and practice of social development]. 2020;5:77-81. (In Russ.).

2. Alekseenkova ES. Praktiki «chrezvychaynoy vlasti»: politicheskie posledstviya COVID-19 v Italii [The practices of “emergency power”: The political consequences of COVID-19 in Italy]. Sovremennaya Evropa [Modern Europe]. 2020;4:50-60. (In Russ.).

3. Gabieva SM. Predely ogranicheniya prav i svobod v Rossiyskoy Federatsii [Limits of restriction of rights and freedoms in the Russian Federation]. Zakon i pravo [Law and Legislation]. 2020;8:27-29. (In Russ.).

4. Zhavoronkova NG, Shpakovskiy YuG. Pravovye aspekty reformirovaniya sistemy gosudarstvennogo upravleniya zashchitoy naseleniya i territoriy pri chrezvychaynykh situatsiyakh: uroki pandemii COVID-19 [Legal aspects of reforming the public administration system for the protection of population and territories in emergencies: Lessons from the COVID-19]. Vestnik Universiteta imeni O.Е. Kutafina (MGYuA) [Courier of Kutafin Moscow State Law University (MSAL)]. 2020;5:130-142.

5. Maksurov AA. Problemy koordinatsii deyatelnosti organov vlasti v oblasti borby s pandemiey koronavirusa [Problems of coordinating the activities of authorities in the field of combating the coronavirus pandemic]. Pravoporyadok: istoriya, teoriya, praktika [Legal Order: History, Theory, Practice]. 2020;2(25):28-33. (In Russ.).

6. Plevako NS, Karlbek Kh. Virus i shvedskaya model [The virus and the Swedish model]. Nauchno-analiticheskiy vestnik IE RN. 2020;2:123-129. (In Russ.).

7. Tsibikov VA. O pervoocherednykh merakh organov gosudarstvennoy vlasti Rossii v svyazi s rasprostraneniem koronavirusnoy infektsii [About the priority measures of the state authorities of Russia in connection with the spread of coronavirus infection]. Gosudarstvennaya sluzhba [Public service]. 2020;2:42-47. (In Russ.).

8. Bhatia R. Public engagement is key for containing COVID-19 pandemic. Indian Journal of Medical Research. 2020;151(2-3):118-120. DOI: 10.4103/ijmr.IJMR_780_20. (In Eng.).

9. COVID-19 Dashboard by the Center for Systems Science and Engineering (CSSE) at Johns Hopkins University (JHU): cases by country (Russia). Available from: https://gisanddata.maps.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.html#/bda7594740fd40299423467b48e9ecf6. (In Eng.).

10. Ewing KD. COVID-19: Government by Decree. King’s Law Journal. 2020;31(1):1-24. DOI: 10.1080/09615768.2020.1759398. (In Eng.).

11. Knauer NJ. The COVID-19 Pandemic and Federalism: Who Decides? New York University Journal of Legislation and Public Policy. 2020;23(1). (In Eng.).

12. Wright C. Local government fighting COVID-19. The Round Table. 2020;109(3):338-339. Available from: https://doi.org/10.1080/00358533.2020.1763017. (In Eng.).