Apskričių viršininkų institutas Lietuvos Respublikos administraciniame valdyme 1918-1940 metais

Abstract

During the statehood process, the institute of the district heads is an essential part of the administrative state rule system that helps to realize its policy in the whole country. This institute was established in 1918. During the interwar the rights and duties of the district heads were mostly regulated by the circular note of the secretary Home Office 17, December 1918 “Provisional rights and duties of the district heads”, legislation of the local governments, other right’s acts which gave them the vast rights. During the whole 1918-1940 lifetime of the Republic of Lithuanian the institute of the district heads was the intermediate between the central Executive Branch of the country and the autonomous bodies. The heads of the districts qualified for a care and kept in check the small rural districts, district municipalities’ work and their resolutions. Since 1924 the district heads worked at the same time and as district board’s chairpersons, so they took right to rule district municipalities. As the secretary of the Home Office chose the district heads, so this enabled the central government to have its representative in the districts that were loyal and reliant. The district heads implemented the authoritarian policy of the central government at the locality, prevented the tendency of the democratic development in the self-government. It was obviously after the 1926 coup d’etat. Since 1931 the heads of districts were enabled to administer a supervision of the small rural districts in legality and purposive opinion, to organize an election of the country’s president. The institute of the district heads played up within the state administrative management to legislate instructions in the public order, cleanness, quietness, health service and other questions, collected various information from the local governments and handed it to the Home Office and to another departments of Ministries by doing supervision and control of autonomous bodies. The work of the heads of the districts in Lithuanian administrative management in 1918-1940 was based on the rule of the compulsory measures.