Public legitimation of political power in the context of civil society transforming in modern Russia

Abstract

The issues of legitimizing the political regime are of particular importance in the conditions of transitional societies, when the preservation of the sustainable development trend becomes the most important condition and basis for the preservation of national security. The subject of the article is the legitimization of political power due to the level of trust and loyalty of the Russian population to a number of socio-political institutions at the present stage. The analysis of the data of monitoring studies conducted at the ISPR of the Federal Research Center of the Russian Academy of Sciences allowed the author to state
That in society there remains a significant gap between trust in the institution of presidential and parliamentary power, and that a high level of distancing from government institutions and moderate loyalty associated with the need to maintain formal “order” are reproduced at a low level of trust. Given that the public legitimacy of the Russian political system is based on the president’s ratings, which retain a high potential, it can be assumed that the pseudoalternative election model will be preserved in the near future. At the same time, the dynamics of the level of trust and sympathy for a number of political institutions suggests the limit of opportunities for growth in the existing conditions of a system with a limited role of parties, what both reduces the space of free political discourse and limits the possibility of choice for citizens, which will threaten the legitimacy of the political regime.