The scientific article is devoted to the issue of the disclosure of the processes of establishment and development of decentralization and taxation during the times of the Ants State, Kievan Rus and Principality of Galicia-Volhynia, as well as the determination of the relationship between these two processes. Due to the study of the topic of the article through the prism of various historical developments, it is possible to trace the formation and development of the tax institute in the first state institutions on the territory of modern Ukraine, as well as the form of the exercise of the people’s power and its significance in the decision-making of both state-wide decisions and the resolution of issues of local importance. The role and significance of local authorities and issues that could be resolved by the then bodies of the people’s administration are revealed, and at the same time relations between the central authorities and the authorities of territorial communities are covered. Attention is paid to the law enforcement in the development of the people’s administration, taxation and their relationship between the state entities of the investigated historical epochs. Among other things, the article is devoted to establishment of a clear link between the gradual transition of power from the bodies of the people’s rule to the central apparatus in the person of the prince and his surroundings and, as a result, the necessity of permanent resources, at the expense of which it would be possible to keep them. The article analyzes the reasons for the necessity of revenue receipts and the main types of revenue receipts of the time, as well as the bodies on which the duties of tax collection were imposed. Attention is paid to the definition of such tax characteristics as collection bodies, collection form, documentary fixing and further distribution and use of taxes. As a conclusion of the research, the author has formed a table with indication of the basic types of revenue receipts of a given period and level of decentralization in such period, and also has made generalization of the connection of these two processes.

In this paper I would like to present an interpretation of David Hume’s political theory. Therefore, a method of investigation can be recognized as hermeneutical one. Main threads which I would like to emphasize are: concept of stability, distribution of power, role of an opinion in political dimension and a conservative attitude toward a change. I claim that important lesson for political science can be taken from his theory. Generally speaking, this lesson consists in refusing the so-called political regime fetishism and focusing on the relevant issues of social stability. These issues are strictly determined by the opinions, hence the proper subject-matter of political science is identified with them. As one of the conclusions I propose a thesis that politics is, and ought only to be slave of opinions, what is an allusion to a famous sentence from A Treatise of Human Nature that the reason is, and ought only to be the slave of the passions.