HETERARCHIES AS SOCIO-POLITICAL PROTO-INSTITUTIONS OF MODERN TRANSFORMATION

Abstract

The article examines the political processes that are associated with the transition of a number of societies from the modern era to postmodern practices. Economic, technological, and cultural aspects act as factors that determine the noted global social transit. The main contradiction of modernity, which is subject to the influence of globalization, is the irrelevance of the structural and stratification characteristics of society, according to its requests, values, orientations and institutional architecture, which developed during the period of developed modernity and dominates, mainly expressed in structural, procedural and normative terms. It can be stated that there is a large-scale social transition, pronounced in urbanized spaces, where authentic practices, norms, environments, arenas, resource opportunities, etc. are being formed. It is increasingly in conflict with the statist form of political governance. Despite the fact that formal political institutions are subject to devaluation, largely being replaced by informal «rules of the game», which is often interpreted in political science as an increase in neopatrimonial influence, their importance still remains quite high. Since the political sphere is a reflection of social relations, the postmodern transit analyzed in the article leads to the formation and strengthening of heterarchies as socio-political proto-institutions. As a result, there is an interdependent influence of both vertical, characteristic of modernity, and horizontal processes, norms and practices in the socio-political circuit, which are inherent in network logic, information communications, and a new social morphology. It is summarized that such social metamorphoses are likely to only intensify, which will lead to overcoming the existing contradiction and the formation of a relatively stable hybrid institutional design, the key element of which will be the logic of heterarchies.

Keywords:

MODERN, POSTMODERN, GLOBALIZATION, HETERARCHY, PROTO-INSTITUTIONS, INSTITUTIONALIZATION, NETWORKING, INFORMATIZATION