Nikovskaya L.I. Peculiarities of involvement in public policy in the context of the relationship between network and hierarchical principles of communication between the authorities and society (using the example of the Vologda and Yaroslavl regions). Local law. 2025. No. 5. Pp. 3-14.

Abstract

The article presents the results of a social study of the state of practices of social and communicative involvement in the process of public policy in two regions of the Russian Federation - Vologda and Yaroslavl, conducted in 2024. It is shown that the two regions as a whole implement two different scenarios of social and communicative involvement in public policy: Vologda – an activist format of co-participating management, when both linear and digitally mediated communication work to strengthen the public involvement of active citizens, NGO organizations, and business representatives to collaborate resources, search for and develop technologies for joint activities in order to diagnose and successfully solve socially significant tasks and form priorities for the development of territories, which is important for the formation of and the implementation of the strategic development of the region in the near future.The Yaroslavl region, on the contrary, has taken the path of formalizing and ritualizing this kind of interaction, minimizing open public dialogue, relying on the priority of only government decisions and communications, which, according to representatives of the regional civil society, has led to a depletion of the potential of public participation, reducing the quality of interaction between government and civil society in the region, which affects the overall public the mood is towards a certain extinction of the dialogical principles of the communicative public field, both in face-to-face format and digitally.The study used methods of qualitative analysis, primarily the method of in–depth interviews with relevant representatives of the main traditional social groups of the regional community of two regions - civil servants and NGO activists, as well as the expert community. The objectives of the qualitative research were to obtain a sufficiently competent and thoughtful assessment of the complex set of relations that are built in the public space of interaction and communication with representatives of those social groups that are most actively and interestedly involved in the formation and implementation of public communications in the regional and municipal space.