ЭВОЛЮЦИЯ ПРЕДСТАВЛЕНИЙ О СУЩНОСТИ МЕСТНОГО САМОУПРАВЛЕНИЯ В ОБЩЕСТВЕННО-ПОЛИТИЧЕСКОМ ДИСКУРСЕ

Abstract

The article analyzes the socio-political discourse of local self-government in the post-Soviet period of Russia’s development. The aim was to study the transformation of ideas about the functions of local government in the socio-political discourse of 2014-2023. The research method was quantitative and qualitative content analysis of texts. As it turned out, in the associative series with the concept of “local self-government”, word forms associated with the meanings of local democracy, civil society, democracy, and political participation of citizens were least used. To a much greater extent, the concept of local self-government turned out to be associated with concepts describing it as local public administration related to the performance of the function of providing services to the population, solving socio-economic problems. As a result of the study, the hypothesis was confirmed that the idea of transforming local self-government is the lowest link in the system of public power has support in political discourse. In the public consciousness, the function of this institution as a “school of democracy” was almost completely replaced by the idea of it as a “grassroots” management unit, engaged mainly in providing services to the population and solving socio-economic problems. Such a painless rejection of the democratic component in a broader context confirms the hypothesis that the formation of local self-government in the first half of the 1990s was not democratic, but politically situational in nature, associated with the interests of a relatively small number of actors, the lack of formation of local communities in the post-Soviet period, and the weakness of the “middle class”, therefore unable to become social the base of local government. This gave rise to the objective inevitability of the subsequent evolution of the institute of local self-government into the “lower floor” of the regional public administration system, bringing the “superstructure” institute of political management in line with its basic basis.