Old and new forms of communication between the state and society on the way to a new social contract

The article considers the concept of social contract as a consensus between the state and the people. Based on the works of T. Hobbes, D. Locke, J.-J. Rousseau, C. Montesquieu, German social thought, in the context of reflections on the “legitimacy” of R. Nozick, J. Rawls, M. Olson, A. Auzan, the author argues that social contract is consensual in nature and communication between the government and the people is necessary to develop such a consensus, focusing on public organizations and political parties as traditional conductors of the interests of the people in interactions with the state. Based on sociological studies, the author makes a conclusion about Russians’ low trust in political parties and non-participation in public organizations, which indicates that public organizations and political parties poorly represent the interests of citizens in interactions with the government. This situation is determined by the change in the type of society: the Russian society turns into more flexible and atomized, strong ties are replaced by weak ones (even the family as the most traditional institution goes through flexibilization and atomization). In these conditions, public organizations and political parties created in the previous period cease to be adequate intermediaries in the interaction between the authorities and the people, and new communication channels develop - Internet communities and direct appeals of citizens to government bodies. The Russian society actively interacts with the authorities in these forms but weakly in classical ones, which refutes the idea of the people as a passive subject, the spread of political absenteeism, the underdevelopment of civil society and public organizations as an expression of public interests and indicates the need to develop concepts that correspond to a new type of society.