Increase offunctionality of political institutes as a condition of political cooperation in society

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The need to increase the functionality of political institutions is fixed by researchers, from the time of the early Modern (XVII century.). Since then the specialized interest groups, which compete for the power levers, have been growing rapidly, and the number of exogenous and endogenous challenges to the heads of state has grown significantly. The variety of subjects of political interactions and the complications of social life determine the institutionalization of politics the regulatory arrangement of an extensive system of relations and organizations that structures society and allows control and prediction of the actions of political actors, express their interests and protect their rights.

The political relations of the postmodern age are characterized by the further increase in the number of subjects of social interaction and the complications of the challenges of the external and internal environment, and they only strengthen the role and importance of institutes in defining the functional parameters of the societies. But at the same time as the undeniable trend of our time, the deepening crisis is fixed in the functioning of the political institutions of the “national state”. It seems that in this case we are not dealing with the cause, with the consequences of the functioning of the administrative structures that were inherited from classical polities of modern “nationstates” of early Modernism. Despite numerous attempts to use moral rhetoric as a resource of their own legitimacy, political institutions of the “national state”, even during their “designing”, did not have an ethical functional load. Instead of forming a moral consensus in society, management structures were demanded unconditional loyalty of citizens by their own decision on the basis of deprived sentiments of “rational law”, confirming the need for their own existence, sometimes questionable criteria and examples of effectiveness. The modernist political system did not require people to be particularly virtuous, but only to be rational and obey the law in their own interests.

In practice, this functioning of professional managers was reduced to a strict implementation of formal regulations and turned to technocratic bureaucracy, which increased the distance between political structures and civil society. The result of the reflection of the mass consciousness of this rational bureaucracy of administrative structures was falling in the level of trust in them, which is fixed by Western researchers throughout the second half of the XX century.

Particularly dramatic, this crisis of managerial institutions is manifested in polities that demonstrate the “catching-up” type of modernization. Awell-known researcher on the problems of modernization S. Huntington notes that “immoral family” of a backward society finds its analog in immoral clan. Morality needs trust; trust presupposes predictability; and predictability requires regulated and institutionalized forms of behavior [2, p. 42]. All components of this “chain of interaction” either absent or significantly weakened in a modernized society.

From the point of view of the author, the coincidence of the general civilization institutional crisis with the actual national problems of the countries of Eastern Europe led to the reception of political relations as close to feudal. We are talking about the informal legacy of the past which is fixed in the culture of a society and determines the trajectory of the development of its institutional environment.

Common features of these processes are atomization of social interaction, deformalize and privatization ruling circles of institutions, the dominance of cronyism, nepotism, family relationships in solving individual and group problems. Thus, according to the typology of V. Gelman, cronyism and nepotism are part of the informal institutions of traditional political domination and clientelistic party, the mala and autocratic clique to “by-products of modern society” [3, p. 7-8].

For several centuries in the region of Eastern Europe, a model of domination has been implemented, in which ordinary citizens acted as non-political, but administrative, authoritarian structures. The arbitrariness of the authorities and using of its repressive practices caused a protective reaction at a massive level.

The post-Soviet period, unfortunately, has not led to a reversal of the situation, the more that informal institutions have already proved their functionality in ensuring the survival of individuals in the conditions of a permanent crisis. Interesting, but adaptation to extreme political environment has led to the development of the network of informal relations and forms of relations, which were reproduced not only ordinary citizens, but also representatives of the ruling classes, who themselves were not protected from the “unfair” power of competition [4, p. 167]. But the transformation of deviation to the norm, the formalization of informal institutions and social practices deprive the body the chance to overcome the status quo of their own atomization.

In the atomic society, interactions are mostly carried out within the immediate surroundings of the individual, in the terminology of L. Blyaker the “homegroup”. It is directed to all the status resources of social actors on the service for its. Interaction between representatives of different “homegroups” involves two possible scenarios. For the first of them formal-institutional it should be used by official institutions for the purpose of realizing their own goals. But they do not work, have proved ineffective, or require considerable expenses to perform their own functional duties. Under the second scenario, efforts should be made to include the counterparty in their “homegroup” or to join its circle of communication and support. The latter version is considered by all actors of interaction as the most optimal [5, p. 68].

More than half a century ago, Aron was very skeptical about the effectiveness of modernization processes in the Third World countries, he said that liberal institutions were monopolized by “feudal lords” or plutocrats, large owners and their allies in the state, and parliamentarians and civil servants formed so-called “a progressive dictatorship” [6, p. 25]. Modern scholars of democratic post-Soviet transit, stating the widespread practice of monopolizing officials with the right to interpret the content of norms and defining the boundaries of communication, confirm the existence of such a “progressive dictatorship” in Eastern European countries. Private space of power acquires takes there its own institutional forms, which have little in common with the public institutional system as a totalitarian and democratic type.

The corporate interest of the elite (the protection of its own privileged status, the accumulation of potential influence) is also characteristic for the developed democracies of Europe. However, the functioning of political elites and the existence of a certain “corporate consensus” does not lead to privatization of public resources there.

In this sense, it becomes clear the focus of domestic parliamentarians in the process of adopting a new, vital, laws, and mass creation of regulations which substantially transform the content of already existing legislation. The “game rules” changes on “game with rules”. As a result, a situation arises when universal rules of law and morals are mastered by all subjects of socio-political interaction, but lacking in practical sense.

It is important to note that the monopoly of the ruling circles on the interpretation of the content of official rules and the exploitation of state institutions, in addition to bonuses (avoiding public control over the sphere of political decision-making and excluding citizens from the processes of political interactions), has major disadvantages for representatives of the elite itself. It is a question of large resource costs for the establishment and maintenance of communication links in the process of mastering the power resources and protecting their own privileged status. In the conditions of artificial blocking of official channels of information, considerable time is spent on its collection for organizing new and prolonging old “projects”.

For understanding the complexity of the process, one must also take into account the blurring of the criteria of trust, without which any interaction is problematic or even impossible at all. According to modern scholars, the post-Soviet elite, due to its own victory over “ethical prejudices”, is compelled to construct artificial criteria for the emergence of a phenomenon of trust.

To protecting its own elite status, there is a need to master an important legitimate resource support and loyalty of citizens. This task is mostly solved by the brutal coercion of ordinary citizens towards patrimonial domination / subjugation, the in-equivalence of the “political exchange” and, finally, the dehumanization of the processes of social interaction.

Under the conditions of consolidated liberal democracy in the field of political relations, vertically integrated client-oriented structures are created for the purpose of legitimizing power, the boundaries of which often coincide with certain regions and branches of the economy. “Proper” voting of voters, their participation in protest actions or the initiation of actions in support of specific political forces or projects is achieved through periodic and regular benefits from the patron, whose organizational costs are offset by the preservation of his power status.

There is also a less costly way of legitimizing the power of the elite, which failed to create institutional conditions for the social and political solidarity of citizens of a particular state. These are permanent appeals of elite social agents, attempts to ensure the legitimacy of public authority, and so on.

A logical question arises: how long will the situation with the domination of informal institutions and practices in the socio-political interaction of Eastern Europe has been continuing? Unfortunately, in the opinion of both domestic and foreign researchers, we are dealing not with a temporary defect a deviation of democratic development but with a long-term and principled characterization of the political regime.

Conscious of the lack of an impeccable version of the development of political institutions not only “defective” but also “consolidated” democracies, some researchers generally suggest abandoning attempts to reform the “old” administrative institutions and adopt so-called “Network paradigm” of the development of society. Her supporters believe that loyalty to the institutions tends to display media of a sub-type political culture, passive in their civic engagement and motivation, and people are prepared to give the right to decide their own destiny to politicians who in no way depend on those who delegate them these powers.

Acknowledging the intellectual appeal of these recipes to overcome one of the fundamental problems of postmodern human civilization, the author also draws attention to the disadvantages of the proposed model. The main one is the reciprocal relationship that exists between the cohesion of the community and its openness to external contacts. In addition, practice does notyet provide examples and self-organization of societies on network principles that have been borrowed from synergetics. Thus, there are serious doubts as to the possibility of applying “network” principles in its pure form to address the problems of managing societies. Moreover, in the context of the Eastern European political process, the network structure of social management is a fictitious alternative to informal institutions and practices. There is every reason to assert that it will lead to the consolidation of such negative tendencies as nepotism, clanism, clientelism, etc.

From the point of view of the author of the article, the agenda should not be the question of the complete dismantlement of inefficient political institutions, but the question of their fundamental modernization in the direction of removing the acute dichotomy of cybernetic (on the verge of technocratic) and synergistic (on the verge of spontaneity) principles of the functioning of administrative structures. It is a radical ideological restructuring in the perception of the essence of political institutions.

References

political postmodern social

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