Holiashkina O. Organizational and legal mechanism of prevention and settlement the conflict of interest in public administration

The dissertation examines the organizational and legal aspects of prevention and settlement of the conflict of interests in public administration, which is enforced by persons authorized to perform the functions of the state or local government. This dissertation investigates the evolution of the organizational and legal mechanism of prevention and settlement of the conflict of interest in public administration, provides a review of the special literature devoted to the research, clarifies the concepts and features of conflict of interest, as well as examines the structure of the legal mechanism for prevention and settlement of conflict of interest in public administration, defines the system and the role of public administration bodies in the mechanism, its features in the activities of relevant categories of public officials. The key idea of this dissertation lies in the fact that a conflict of interest is a natural phenomenon, which is present in all aspects of social interaction, including public administration. As a result, the organizational and legal mechanisms of prevention and settlement of the conflict of interest are present in the legislation of almost every country, including Ukraine, independently of the formal definition or its absence within them. As a result of the scientific analysis of the concepts of “potential conflict of interest”, “real conflict of interest” and related concepts e.g. “private interest” and “connections” from the Law of Ukraine "On Prevention of Corruption" the impropriety of the categories “potential conflict of interest” and “real conflict of interest” is demonstrated. In addition to this, this work depicts the contradiction between these terms and the rule of law, which causes the violation of public officials’ labor and other rights. The dissertation illustrates the fundamental difference between the conflict of interest in public administration and the conflict of interest in other domains. The main particularity of the first one is that its prevention and managing are performed within the boundaries defined in the Constitution and the Law of Ukraine. The Law defines all categories of offices, which holders are subject to the application of the mechanism of preventing the conflict of interest, subjects’ rights, duties, and their legal responsibilities in case of violating the laws mentioned above.