Concept of social security of public service

This article is devoted to elucidating the socio-legal essence of social security within the civil service of Ukraine. It is established that the social security of the civil service constitutes an institutional-level manifestation of the broader imperative to ensure the state’s social security in the domain of public administration. In parallel, the social security of an individual civil servant reflects the personalised, or individual-level, expression of the state’s social security, the assessment of which is undertaken with respect to the public service workforce. The article advances the argument that a causal relationship exists between these two levels (the institutional and the individual). First, any weakening of social security guarantees at the organisational and institutional level directly undermines the personal social security of those employed within the respective public service bodies. Second, the consolidation and advancement of institutional guarantees of social security within the civil service invariably lead to an increase in the level of protection afforded to each individual civil servant serving within that institutional framework. It is observed that, under contemporary conditions, the social security of the civil service constitutes an integrated set of attributes (including conditions, forms, instruments, and practical measures) designed to comprehensively ensure the stable, secure, and effective functioning of the public administration system, and, more specifically, of the public service body itself. The ultimate objective of civil service social security is to achieve an organisational and procedural state in which the operations of the civil service are protected from internal and external social risks and challenges, and in which such risks are either prevented or their negative impact upon civil servants is minimised and/ or compensated. Accordingly, the social security of the civil service serves both preventive and reactive functions: it is tasked with pre-empting and counteracting socio-legal risks while simultaneously creating the necessary conditions to enhance the socially secure existence of civil servants. In this context, the principal functions of civil service social security are identified as protective, incentivising (stimulative), and organisational-managerial in nature. It is further asserted that the social security of the civil service in Ukraine represents a specific object of legal regulation, situated at the intersection of social legislation and administrative legislation (particularly in relation to norms possessing a socio-legal character).