The paper discusses the formation and advocacy of public interests. It is shown that under conditions of increasing complexity and multidimensionality of the transforming Russian socium, as well as emerging pluralism of socio-political interests, the request of civil society for consistency of the institute of advocacy and promotion of public interests in the public sphere is growing. Modality of this request is increased by the crisis of social development. With the dominance of administrative-bureaucratic approaches to building public policy a falsification of feedbacks is occurred along with dysfunction of the public sphere in the direction of strengthening the influence of corporate and bureaucratic interests against the public interests. That inevitably leads to increased social tensions and protests as well to a loss of confidence in state activities and decline of legitimacy of political power. The development of institutions of public participation, mechanisms of intersectoral social partnerships contribute to improvement of interaction between government and society, as well as to effectiveness of social representation of public interests in the conditions of incompleteness of the processes of socio-political transformation; it also stimulates the public administration reform in the direction of greater openness and publicity. That allows to more adequately take into account the increasing pluralism and mobility of social groups and their socio-cultural preferences. Improvement in the functioning of the institute of formation and advocacy of public interests raises importance of the category of citizenship, which is considered to be an important resource and the basis of raising the quality and democratic character of modern public administration. The article also summarizes the findings of case studies dealing with identification and advocacy of public interests in three Russian regions (Kostroma, Tatarstan Republic and Yaroslavl).