SOCIO-ECONOMIC FACTORS FOR THE ESTABLISHMENT OF AMALGAMATED TERRITORIAL COMMUNITIES IN UKRAINE

The reform of decentralization and the formation of capable territorial communities is a priority of the Ukrainian Government. The reform aims at creating an effective system of local self-government to provide a high quality of life for people, improving the quality of municipal services and to ensure the sustainable development of regions. The reform is based on the European principles of local self-government, which determines the voluntary nature of the association of territorial communities. Considerable work has been done in Ukraine to prepare the reform for implementation, in particular, the methodology of the capable communities' formation. It determines which socio-economic factors should be taken into consideration when making decisions on the voluntary association of territorial communities and the development of perspective plans. However, the results of the reform are not satisfactory enough, as of August 2018, 753 united territorial communities were created, bringing together 3492 communities, although according to the Government's approved plans for 23 regions, 7913 existing communities should form 1206 integrated territorial communities. The study is devoted to examining the process of voluntary association of territorial communities in the context of implementing decentralization reform in Ukraine and identifying the socio-economic factors contributing to this. A factor analysis of the voluntary association of territorial communities in Ukraine during the period 2014-2017 was performed, using the software program STATA. The socio-economic factors that are significant in the decision-making for the voluntary association of communities were determined. Multiple regression and correlation analyses were performed to examine the impact of 24 demographic and socio-economic factors. The results of the study revealed that the following factors are significant: the average size of land area per household; share of united territorial communities created in the previous year; the size of land in one household (own and leased) and size of the farm's income in the area.