NEW DEMOCRACY THROUGH “DIGITAL VECHE” AS A PARADIGM FOR THE DEVELOPMENT OF POST-WAR UKRAINE

Abstract

The essence of effective democracy in post-war Ukraine is revealed as a new type of civil society, capable of organically combining the interests of the authorities and the people with the impeccable priority of the latter through the use of the innovative social technology «Digital Veche». The problem of cardinal improvement of democracy in post-war Ukraine by orienting the actions of the authorities to the interests of the absolute majority of the population through the development of a civil society of direct action is considered. Ukraine failed to do this, trying to copy the experience of Western Europe (in particular, Switzerland) and the USA. The main reason for such failure is determined, which is associated with the peculiar mentality of the people (more precisely, a large segment of the population), which for centuries was in conditions of unfree life (survival) and semi-statehood. This led to such negative mental qualities (while preserving the Cossack spirit) as low selfsufficiency, exaggerated egocentrism and weakness of large-scale thinking. And since the management elite for more than 30 years was formed exclusively from the active part of this particular segment of the population, failure was guaranteed. The possibilities of creating a new type of civil society are revealed, the basis of which is the powerful influence of the people on the actions of the authorities by determining the level of quality of life of citizens (with the participation of the citizens themselves) and using the obtained indicators as assessments of the resulting actions of government structures at all hierarchical levels. A new model of civil society of direct action is proposed (taking into account the experience of Switzerland), the core of which is the powerful social technology «Digital Council». The essence of this technology is an annual survey of the adult population in communities using «smart» questionnaires on paper and electronic media. The «intelligence» of the latter lies in the possibility of obtaining information from citizens about the quality of their life in quantitative form (using qualimetric evaluation models from the field of fuzzy mathematics). It is such digital information that provides the opportunity for feedback in the public administration system and to rigidly establish the responsibility of the authorities for the quality of life of their citizens. The results of the first successful steps of testing and the local experiment «Digital Council» in the city of Vyshneve, Kyiv region, are analyzed. There are two main results: the first is the reality of determining the effectiveness of government actions digitally for each year through meeting the needs of the population. The second is that people willingly participate in the survey (after certain explanations) in order to evaluate government actions through the quality of their life. This is interesting and promising.