Research fellows and experts of the Center for Territorial Government and Self-government, Centre for Comprehensive European and International Studies, and the Institute of Legislation and Comparative Law under the Government of the Russian Federation have prepared the joint scientific report “Improving Governance in conditions of Global Instability: international, domestic, regional and local levels.” It consistently considers the only one issue but at various levels of the political and legal space. How to put out the manifestations of global instability getting into an increasingly destructive resonance with each other—social, political, economic, intellectual, and moral fluctuations, vacillations, falls, and other similar phenomena—that form, as it may seem, the whole life of modern humanity.
Research fellows and experts of the Center for Territorial Government and Self-government, Centre for Comprehensive European and International Studies, and the Institute of Legislation and Comparative Law under the Government of the Russian Federation have prepared the joint scientific report “Improving Governance in conditions of Global Instability: international, domestic, regional and local levels.” It consistently considers the only one issue but at various levels of the political and legal space. How to put out the manifestations of global instability getting into an increasingly destructive resonance with each other—social, political, economic, intellectual, and moral fluctuations, vacillations, falls, and other similar phenomena—that form, as it may seem, the whole life of modern humanity.
At international level, we see a crisis… Well, no, not just the crisis of institutional mechanisms, but the essence of the global institutionalization itself. At the same time, we see the bankruptcy of traditional models of “success stories” of specific countries and nations. These success stories are now being rapidly replaced or even swept away by “all-encompassing global egoism” in the conditions of the global “cultural revolution,” which is reduced to the slogan “take and split” on a worldwide scale. Is it surprising that in these conditions (religious, ethnic, racial, etc.), “objective common identities” act as the only stable “traditional values,” which are often suitable only to “rally some against others”? As a result, we are still surprised that universal and regional international associations do not demonstrate the proper level of solidarity in their fight against global challenges. At the same time, we no longer feel the slightest surprise that relations between almost all significant participants in these associations have begun to resemble not the notorious “competitive struggle” but a “cold war of annihilation.”
Traditional mechanisms of governance are subject to destructive effects both at the supranational level and at the level of sovereign states. Everyone understands that economic growth (especially the growth of a nation’s real disposable income), normalization of the social protection mechanisms functioning, restoration of the migration stability, improvement of public finance management, etc. are extremely desirable nowadays. Nevertheless, we are witnessing “helicopter money,” the continuous chaotic movements of millions of people “from the south to the west and from the east to the north,” the transformation of social support into a “zero-sum game.” Moreover, ultimately, it turns out that the containment of real economic growth potential (and, in general, the development of the quality of life) occurs not only and not so much due to a decrease in real incomes of citizens—but primarily due to a sharp drop in the intellectual and volitional qualities of people, which the necessary management processes digitalization cannot compensate.
In the conditions of universal “induced subpassionarity,” the “struggle for fire” is replaced by the “struggle for resources.” Moreover, this problem manifests itself not only at the international and national level—but also at the level of regions as constituent parts of states. “New federalism,” “new regionalism,” and other similar phenomena (which have become a natural and logical response to the challenge of a large-scale global, provoked (but by no means caused) COVID-19) necessarily require a significant expansion of the rights and powers of public authorities at the regional level (which are designed to “solve issues in specific territories”) — but at the same time raise the question of the price of providing such an expansion with the required material, financial, regulatory and other resources. Are other levels of public authority willing to pay the fair price?
Finally, the problem of people’s confidence in the different aspects of public policy is strongly manifested at the local level. A high level of such trust is the basis of effective public administration; its lack is a direct way to break the “drive belts” connecting the implementation stages of management decisions. But what is the root of the genuinely catastrophic decline in this kind of trust? Is it only in the “quality of power-management elites”? Is not the threat of gradual (and often imperceptibly occurring) decomposition of society, the consequences of which are so terribly manifested, for example, in the situation of sabotage by almost half of the population of the developed countries of the Global North, calls for personal participation necessary in current conditions in the fight against the coronacrisis, not so long ago publicly indicated by the Minister of Defense of Russia S.K. Shoigu, is incomparably more dangerous?
Aforementioned and many similar problems enter into the same destructive resonance with each other with the question of how to extinguish it, which was started in this summary. Finding an answer to this question is a common task for us, both the authors of this report and its esteemed readers. The time of ready-made solutions seems to be passing. It's time for a creative and responsible scientific search. And most importantly—the time of tireless work to formulate constructive socio-legal solutions and their proper implementation!
