CONTRADICTIONS IN THE FORMATION OF ORGANIZATIONAL FOUNDATIONS OF PUBLIC HUMANITARIAN POLICY OF UKRAINE

Abstract

The article describes the contradictions of the institutional support of public policy in the humanitarian sphere in modern Ukraine. It is proved that the organizational component of the implementation of humanitarian policy has such features as voluntarism, fragmentation, significant dependence on the political factor. It is shown that, for example, the central executive body that implements state youth policy has been reformatted thirteen times in the last twenty-five years, i.e. on average it was amended once every two years. A number of institutions existed for several months and exclusively “on paper”. Thus, the State Agency for Youth and Civil Society Development of Ukraine, established by the Government in December 2019, was liquidated by the next Government in March 2020, not having started its activity.

At the same time, the decision to establish the State Service for Ethnopolitics and Freedom of Conscience can be noted as positive and timely. However, the process of organizational formation of this Service has been going on since August 2019, and as of May 2020, it has not been completed. It is shown that due to the lack of proper organizational and legal design, as of May 2020, the Government Commissioner for the Protection of the State Language does not act. The first “language ombudsman” in the history of Ukraine worked in his position for six months, resigning of his own free will in April 2020.

The state of funding for the humanitarian sphere was directly and negatively affected by the need for state budget sequestration caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. As a result of budget cuts, the financing of tourism development was actually stopped, support for book publishing and popularization of Ukrainian literature was reduced by more than 50 million UAH, funding for the Ukrainian Institute of National Remembrance was halved, and the budget of the Ukrainian Cultural Foundation was reduced by more than 40%.

Personnel policy in the humanitarian sphere is characterized, on the one hand, by a high level of information openness, on the other - inconsistency, conflict, and so on. In 2019-2020 the organized public actively tried to influence personnel decisions. Among the tools of influence were public speeches in the media, the so-called “open letters” to the leaders of the government and individual ministries, active lobbying of candidates for certain positions by disseminating relevant information on social networks. At the same time, the object of criticism was not only the procedural and organizational aspects of the appointments, but also the persons who received them.

A promising area of ​​further research may be the analysis of the first real steps of the newly formed organizations in the humanitarian sphere, in particular: the State Service for Ethnopolitics and Freedom of Conscience, the Government Commissioner for the Protection of the State Language, etc.