Doctrinal issues of determining the essence of an administrative agreement as an activity instrument of local public administration bodies

The paper conducts a scientific study of doctrinal sources on determining the essence of an administrative contract as a tool for the activities of local public administration bodies. The paper states that The legislative definition of the concept of an administrative contract is found in the Code of Administrative Procedure of Ukraine, which also defines the scope of application of an administrative contract - delimitation or delegation of competence of public administration bodies, determination of the procedure for interaction between them, redistribution or combination of financial resources, decisions based on the results of an administrative-procedural legal relationship as an alternative to issuing an administrative act. According to the legislation of other states, an administrative contract is also defined as a replacement for an administrative act or as a tool of public administration, used in the areas of organizing the provision of transportation, communication, utility services, transferring (delegating) certain public services to private individuals or managing public property, or to eliminate uncertainty regarding the rights and obligations of the parties to administrative-legal relations on the basis of a compromise. The following approaches to defining the concept and nature of an administrative contract have been developed in the administrative-legal doctrine - formal, functional and complex. According to the formal approach, an administrative contract is defined as a legal act, a decision expressed in contractual form, of a local body of public administration; this approach involves the distinction between the categories of “administrative contract” and “administrative act”, although at the same time, an administrative contract is considered as an external form of exercising the powers of local bodies of public administration, however, in cases where it is appropriate to apply the dispositive method of legal regulation of administrative-legal relations. The functional approach involves the definition of an administrative contract through the category of legal regulation of administrative-legal relations. According to the comprehensive approach, the essence of an administrative contract is more complex than it is defined in the administrative-legal doctrine - on the one hand, it has a contractual nature, on the other - most often it is a replacement for an administrative act.