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Political Agenda of the Government, or Why the State Needs the Society

Solovyov A.I.,

Prof., Head of Political Analysis Department, Faculty of Public Administration, Lomonosov Moscow State University, solovyev@spa.msu.ru

elibrary_id: 75920 |

DOI: 10.17976/jpps/2019.04.02

Rubric: Theme of the Issue: Looking into the Nature of the Political

For citation:

Solovyov A.I. Political Agenda of the Government, or Why the State Needs the Society. – Polis. Political Studies. 2019. No. 4. https://doi.org/10.17976/jpps/2019.04.02

The study was carried out with financial support of the Russian Foundation for Basic Research and the Autonomous Non-Profit Organization “Expert Institute of Social Research” as a part of the research project No. 19-011-31408.

Abstract

As shown in the article, as government decisions are developed, institutions of public administration are subject to constant informal pressure from resource-equipped stakeholders, thereby integrating themselves into the actual chain of goal-setting. The systematic influence of these contractors, which successfully overcomes administrative barriers, eventually forms a stable cluster of relations between authorities and a network of political and administrative coalitions, giving rise to the phenomenon of “intertwined institutions”, meaning the merging of official structures with associations of owners and the controllers of large public resources. Within the framework of this complex of business communications, instead of public institutions, “decision nodes” arise in which, on the one hand, the political agenda of the government is formed, and on the other, the composition of the ruling elite is gradually changing, part of which is increasingly losing its dependence on society and its interests. In these circumstances, the public agenda loses the actual ability to influence the content of state policy and promote the interests of citizens. At the same time, trying to defend their interests, citizens appeal to official norms and institutions that are often irrelevant to the actual decisions initiated by network coalitions that use formal institutions as an official cover for their actions. In modern Russian society, the affilation of networks with public institutions of public administration is aggravated by the costs of the super-presidential Republic and significant deformations of the norms of the democratic organization of power. This further reduces the ability of society to influence the goals and the plans of the government. 

Keywords

power, public administration, public institutions, political and administrative networks, government agenda, public agenda.

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