Public Finances: The State vs Civil Society in Ukraine

The problem of the functioning of public finances applied to the tasks of social development of modern Ukraine is considered. Its relevance lies in the fact that Ukraine, having not completed the transformation of a traditional society into a modern one, found itself in a postmodern situation, which exacerbates the need for accelerated modernization. Our purpose is: 1. To identify the ways of building fair collective decisions regarding the functioning of public finances in Ukraine. 2. To justify the possibilities of preventing the obtaining of private benefits by the holders of political power with the help of the political process. 3. To identify the reasons for the distortion of the democratic ideal and ways to prevent the transformation of democracy into a corrupt autocratic regime. As a methodology used the theory of Institutionalism, the Theory of Public Choice, which dictates the researcher’s refusal to consider economic institutions separately from political ones, as separate structures subject to different laws. We attempt to study the economy and the state as subsystems of a single structure, a single field of interaction between people. The conclusion is justified that civil self-organization is the social resource that will ensure the real modernization of the country and the efficiency of its public finances. Proposals regarding conceptual foundations for improving the public finance system in Ukraine were formulated.