SOCIAL COMPONENT OF AUTONOMIZATION IN EUROPE:LEGAL ASPECTS
Introduction: the article is devoted to the autonomization process (gaining of ethnical and territorial autonomy) in modern Europe and relevance of the social component in this process. Purpose: to analyze the significance of the social component, considered under this study as vesting autonomies with power to carry out social policy and providing them with the relevant financial opportunities in the course of decentralization and devolution. Methods: the methodological framework of the research is based on a set of methods, including universal, general scientific methods and also comparative law and technical methods. Results: various models of autonomization in Europe show various strategies of regional and/or ethnical elites. The models considered in the article are characterized with the elites' focus on gaining a high degree of autonomy and its legitimation (decentralization without breakup of the state, devolution without revolution). Though political ambitions, ethnical and regional identity play their significant part, socio-economic factors, in general, and the autonomization social component, in particular, determine this process to a considerable extent. The European models of autonomization do not exemplify political ambitions being satisfied at the expense of social policy curtailing.