The article is written under with funding from Russian Foundation for Basic Research. Grant “Diagnostics of consolidation potential of the values of justice in the implementation of civilian control in the practice of local self-government” No 17-33-01031-ОГН

Статья выполнена при финансовой поддержке РФФИ. Грант «Диагностика консолидационного потенциала ценности справедливости в реализации гражданского контроля в практике местного самоуправления» №17-33-01031-ОГН

Introduction. The issue of civilian oversight over authorities was enough designed in Russian and western scientific practices. However, owing to the new understanding of the role of the citizen, the development of institutions of the governmental authority and local self-government, there is a real need to find some new approaches to defining the essence of the concept of civilian oversight. This is especially important because most existing concepts could not explain why Russian people even with external promotion of civilian oversight extremely reluctant to be a party to it.

We associate the answer to this and some other questions with the interpretation of civilian oversight in the context of the social capital theory. Our view is that in the broadest sense, civilian oversight can be described as "a situational practice", through a specific territorial and social space with its political, social, cultural and historical features [2, p. 51].

Therefore, civilian oversight as a kind of social practice is always specific, influenced by existing conditions, public interest and a social code of conduct formed throughout history. Beyond the latter factor, it is impossible to understand the evolution of ideas and practices of civilian control extrapolated to Russian conditions. This factor is a major difference of Russia with the countries of European civilization, and the essence of this difference can be reduced to three main positions. Firstly, in Russia, in fact, practices of individual civic engagement and civil control were never developed. Secondly, cases where society tried to have a controlling impact on the power (in so doing mainly on the local authorities), are associated with collective forms of this activity, either peasant community in pre-revolutionary Russia or working collectives of the Soviet era. The elements of civilian control (it was absent in Russia as a system phenomenon) were understood and allowed only in the context of relying on “other people”, as a result of the collective interactions and collective citizens’ action. Thirdly, (this is crucial) the controlling impact in most cases was based on the appeal to the values of justice and not to the act, which is not typical for Western culture [4].

Thus, "civilian oversight" in relation to the Russian social and cultural space can be defined as a technology for implementation of social capital of citizens, aiming at independent evaluation of complex of managerial practices in terms of their compliance with the values and the public interest, implemented by associations of citizens and communities [4].

The proposed definition emphasizes that only if implemented collectively, in cooperation, civilian oversight in Russia (at least so far) can be filled with truly real content. In turn, the main cause of the lack of willingness to civilian oversight is the lack of social capital or its significant deformation. By the deformation of social capital, we mean its formation on antisocial manner (for example, social capital of kleptocracy or other criminal networks).

Of course, changes that are currently taking place in Russia make a significant adjustment in typical patterns of behavior of Russian citizens. A growing trend implies individually oriented and rationally motivated actions particularly typical for young people. As rightly pointed out by E.A. Chernykh, "among modern Russian youth, as evidenced by the results of the sociological research, a proper identification of oneself and one’s interests with society are not shaped, that, in turn, raises a consumer attitude to society, without a developed sense of social responsibility and citizenship. A significant part of the youth identifies its "citizenship" only with formal affiliation to the state" [3]. In this context, it is permissible to talk about differentiation of the foundations of civilian oversight and strengthening its dualism.

Thus, in considering civilian oversight as a network mechanism of practical implementation of social capital, we believe that due to the nature of social capital, a factor of culture, mentality, i.e. an axiological aspect, play a crucial role in its implementation.

It should be noted that the concept of "citizen" underlies the notion of "civilian control", and in many ways defines its essence, separates it from other similar concepts. Thus, in our view, the citizens could be more usefully discussed as "agents" of civilian oversight, rather than as subjects. P. Bourdieu, in this regard, stresses that "the concept of "subject" is used in the widespread perceptions of "models", "structures", "rules", when the researcher seemed to take an objectivistic view, considering the subject as a puppet which is managed by the structure and is deprived of its own activity. In this case the subject is considered as the one who implements a conscious focused practice, obeying a specific rule”. However, Bourdieu's agents "are not automata, structured like a clock in accordance with the laws of mechanics that they did not know. The agents have policies – peculiar systems of practices, driven by a goal, but not guided deliberately by this goal" [2].

In this regard, it is important to examine not only the technological component of civilian oversight, but also the motivational and estimation component.

The main content. Civilian oversight at the local level is characterized by a certain degree of dualism. It is primarily in that, on the one hand, the need for civil oversight is felt by citizens (as shown by the results of the study “Diagnostics of consolidation potential of the values of justice in the implementation of civilian control in the practice of local self-government” held by a team of young scientists of Belgorod State National Research University in 2017 (N = 1000), 73.35 % of respondents are convinced of the need for the oversight by the population over activities of the local government), on the other hand, 50.00 % of inhabitants of municipalities acknowledge their unwillingness to participate in its implementation. Many managers and municipal employees are not ready to introduce mechanisms of civil oversight in their management activities, that does not allow to turn it into a system and efficient organization.

Assessment of the population's readiness to implement the civilian oversight at the local level was carried out by us with the use of several criteria: a normative and value-based criterion, a criterion of feedback, as well as a motivational and estimation criterion.

The motivational and estimation criterion requires identifying the specificity of the perception of civilian control as a viable technology ,a  desire to participate in it; the motives for participation and preferred forms. The usefulness of its allocation is determined by the fact that only in the presence of the motivations behind people goes to real action in the control. The motivation is usually closely related to the assessment of supervisory practices.

The motivational and estimation component of civilian oversight can be made explicit by the inducement of people to it, underpinned by commonality of values and interests of municipal community and willingness to cooperate.

The results of the author's study show only 8.58 % of respondents to the question "would you like to participate in the monitoring authority at the level of your city (town, village)?" answered "definitely yes". Much more, namely 20.03 % of the people in Belgorod are not willing to participate in monitoring activities, and selected answer "definitely not." Thus, a third of the surveyed citizens express the extreme position, while more than 50 % of respondents selected such options as "more likely than not (29.33 % respectively) and "probably would not" (30.62 % respectively). Note, these answers are not unequivocal, but suggest that under certain conditions, and with a ratio of motive, value and goal sets, an individual is ready to participate in monitoring activities.

In order to identify a differentiated and to some extent real picture of the motivation of the population to civilian oversight, it is advisable to separate the groups of respondents according to their degree of activity and focus on such activity in relation to the interests of society as a whole. To do this, we select several types of motives:

– selfish (aimed at solving their own problems and implementation of private interests);

– societal (aimed at solving social problems, the protection of the rights and interests of the local community);

– corporate (aimed at lobbying and protecting the interests of narrow professional or business communities).

The study has revealed that the population's desire to exercise civilian oversight over the activities of local authorities is primarily explained by such motives as: changing to a better life in their town (township or village) (52.87 %), the desire to solve an issue citizen is interested in, to defend their rights and interests (41.00 %); the desire to feel responsible for what happens in a town, locality (36.78 %). For 22.22 % of respondents, the desire to exercise civilian oversight is expressed by the need to express their citizenship. 19.54 % claim that they are simply interested in monitoring the process, and for 15.33 % of respondents the primary motive for oversight over authorities is an attempt to exercise influence. Thus, formally the societal motives prevail, but the paradox of the modern development of Russia is that these motives again remain predominant in the field of abstract intentions. In practice, they can be turned into individualistic attitudes and orientation, being implemented almost exclusively in the private sphere, which is determined by the exclusion of the people from most social institutions and, consequently, low trust to these institutions. The exclusion creates a significant obstacle to rationally reasoned civic participation. In these circumstances, it becomes theoretically possible only on irrational (quasi-ideologic) basis. However, due to the fact that almost all ideologies in modern Russia are discredited, this option seems unlikely.

Despite the formal priority of the societal motivation, there currently prevails thesituational egoistic motivation to participate in civilian oversight, expressed in manifestations of a non-systemic, chaotic and situational civil activity of individuals, small groups, or administratively constructed structures[1]. The first model has both positive (lack of personal commitment and agreements limiting choice) and negative outcomes, as the potential of an individual at the lower levels of the social hierarchy, as a rule, is less than the potential of a team. The second model in most cases represents the imitation of control, since it applies only to the administratively allowed objects with predictable results.

However, the motivation for civil activity (both in public life and in addressing issues of local importance) significantly depends on the expected results, on the availability of real leverage to the people. A concrete result of these efforts should be visible for participants of civil control in form of developed, adopted, implemented solutions that correspond to their views, above all, to the perception of fairness. Otherwise people will find plenty of reasons to justify their passivity [9].

The main reasons for refusal to participate in civilian oversight, according to respondents, are the lack of time (36.93 %), the lack of clarity about the content of civilian oversight (23.01 %), the lack of interest in public life (16.48 %). Note that for 4.26 % of respondents the reason for refusal to participate in the implementation of civilian oversight was the fact that they have already taken part in it, but it turned out to be unproductive.

In general, the definition of "antimotives" by citizens can be adequately applied to the overall situation. As noted by E. Markvart: "today, we can clearly say that in Russia there was developed a very peculiar system, which can be described as "self-government without self-organization". Explanations of this situation are always roughly the same and are reduced to finding the growing "tycoonization" of local government, its service to the interests of local elites", rather than citizens. [8] "the current system of the local government in the Russian province allows its actors to focus not only on achieving public interest goals, but also successfully implement their personal and/or corporate interests. The latter motive is hardly the most common in the space of municipal policies that have a wide range of possibilities of using official position and/or relationships with carriers of public authority for personal gain" [6]. The consequence of this situation is the growing alienation of local authorities from citizens. According to the inquiry conducted by the Institute for Sociology of the Russian Academy of Sciences "Civilian activism: new actors of the socio-political action" conducted in January 2014, the vast majority of Russians, and in completely different types of settlements – 75-85% – agree that the population of their region, city, town is unable to influence the decisions made by the authority on issues of importance to them.  

However, this is only one side of the case, obvious enough, and described many times. Much rarer, researchers wonder whether the citizens themselves need to address development issues and problems of its locality, whether they possess sufficient information about the "problem areas" of their territories, under what conditions and in what forms they are ready to be included in the process of solving local problems [7].

If we look at these figures from a purely formal side, the main explanation for the refusal to participate in civilian control is the lack of knowledge about its forms and methods, or confidence in their futility. However, in the context of the above analysis, the axiological foundations of civilian control have a reason to believe that participation is not valuable, activism does not fit into the value semantic concept of the citizen of Belgorod, and that is what makes citizens reluctant to participate in monitoring practices, or to simulate the participation under the influence of external circumstances [4].

The conviction of citizens that they cannot change anything by engaging themselves in various forms of civic activism and a lack of real-world examples of effective civilian oversight are significant barriers in the process of turning capacity civic engagement into specific civil actions. The low daily involvement of citizens in public life (and this be one of the results of social transformations in Russia) is increasingly the result of their "rational choice": If the socio-political activity is not tangible or the career benefits are low, this activity is excluded from their lives. For this reason, this activity does not receive proper development and it uses the forms of social activity operating on a permanent basis: trade unions, parties, Territorial Self-Governments, Condominium Partnerships, charities, communities of interest, and recreational associations.  

Conclusions. Thus, the motivational and estimation component is one of the most important and complex development indicators of civilian oversight system. The difficulty lies primarily in the fact that, on the one hand, there is a real need and public interest in civil control, with different conditions, to facilitate the integration of citizens in the community of varying degrees of formalization. Moreover, usually the situationally-selfish motivation is the predominant type of motivation of citizens. As R. Dahl rightly points out, it is much clearer to citizens what it is useful and beneficial for them than for society as a whole. That results in incentives for acting in their own interests are stronger than motives for acting for the public good. If citizens realize their own interests, natural egoism will inevitably push them to act in such a way as to ensure these interests. If some of the citizens believe that their own interests are in conflict with the interests of society as a whole, then their desire to promote these interests will be severely undermined. Altruistic behavior is always provided with more difficulty than actions in personal interests [5].

But in Russia, in the minds of the majority of the population a commitment to value-rational behavior is manifested, and this, on the one hand, creates a barrier to participation in civilian oversight under the borrowed in the West concept of its rational organization. On the other hand, since inertia trail increasingly fades, the societal motivation to participate is dropping.