The last days are increasingly discussed the topic of possible reforms in the Russian political system after the March 2018 elections. "Newspaper. Ru "talked about how probable and why they are needed, with the head of the Institute for Social, Economic and Political Studies Dmitry Badovsky, one of the main consultants of the ex-curator of the internal political bloc of the presidential administration, and now the State Duma Speaker Vyacheslav Volodin. - Today, Vladimir Putin increasingly speaks about the image of the future, after his probable re-election, the restructuring of the state system may follow. If he goes to the polls, it, and, most likely, will become the basis of the new Putin program. In this regard, our first question: what exactly does not work in our political institutions? - First, the institutions are always working. The question is which institutions:.

public political institutions or informal practices? The lack or underdevelopment of effective formal institutions in society does not at all mean that anarchy reigns instead of them and the war of all against all. On the contrary, instead of formal and visible institutions, informal ones work, which still provide a certain level of trust and predictability. But it's wrong to say that this topic arose only now. There was already a period when this issue was in the focus of attention - 2007-2009. Then they argued that under Yeltsin the presidency institute was simply a revolutionary institution, the institution of the breaking of the previous system, and under Putin the institution of the presidency gradually became equal personally to Putin. And when the transfer of power from Putin to Medvedev took place, a discussion arose about what is the institution of the presidency in Russia, if not to reduce it to Putin's personal political code. Now this topic again matters. The ruling class enters a period when they are more interested in the question of how power, property will be transferred further, how the new generation will come to power and how the current membership of the elite will be broadcast in the future. And what rules of the game are unconditional, unchanged, and which - can change.

The project of participation of Xenia Sobchak in the presidential election of 2018, in this sense, is very symptomatic and indicative. The principles and mechanisms of the reproduction of elites are demonstrated. In fact, it is a non-political manifesto of a part of the elites, which is aimed at the inheritance of social and political status in society. - How can you stop the transformation of state institutions into property of clans? Changing the Constitution? - Such discussions are periodically activated. In particular, this happens always on the eve of the presidential elections. Someone suddenly throws a theme that it is necessary to leave the presidential republic for the practice of mixed government. Someone, on the contrary, says that the current system of separation of presidential and governmental power is not very good. And if they are combined, the "princes of the court" will finally be able to become vice-premiers and unite the systems of formal and informal management. Our Constitution was written in 1993. In many ways, it borrows samples of the constitution of the French Fifth Republic, with separate borrowings and from other legal systems. It turned out a certain institutional pattern, to which one should strive, and whose practices had to be mastered. To say that we have already used the entire institutional capacity of the Constitution,. Just some institutions are covered with rust idle, and some practices are forgotten or work only sporadically. And you need to maximally load and "train" existing institutions, including in order to understand what works better, what is worse and, accordingly, that may require in the future clarifications, including constitutional. Another thing is that some issues are "suspended" by the peculiarities of our constitutional model itself and will inevitably be always discussed.

For example, we borrowed from the same France the duality of the presidential and executive powers, but at the same time completely differently altered the design of the government, whose composition depends on the president, and not on parliament. And this issue within the constitutional model hangs from the very beginning, it is constantly being discussed and will be discussed. There really are important forks for institutional deposoposobnosti and general balance of power. Speaking about the balance of power. There are signs that the so-called "siloviki" are the only solid foundation of the state system of Russia. Are they willing to change and share informal levers of power? - There is a well-known saying that political institutions are fortresses. It is important not only to properly design and build, but also correctly populate. Political agents - people - matter. What strategies do they build, what do they have in their heads, what games they want to play. The attitude towards politicians is determined by the quality of their goals. The growth of this quality can also be determined by rational considerations. If the ruling class is more interested in stability, predictability, in clear rules of the game, then it will be interested in replacing informal practices with formalized ones, including public and legislative ones. - What will make the current elites work for this future, for creating public institutions? - Let's remember the scrapping of the Soviet system. The nomenklatura could not, within the framework of that system, decide for itself the question of the inheritance of power and property. And then they preferred to simply "hack" the state. If elites can not solve the issue of transition to some new standard long-term rules for the reproduction of the system and the transfer of inheritance statuses and capitals, then you always have a threat. Elites in general come in two types: revolutionary elites and so-called stationary, entrenched, "old" elites. Revolutionary elites are the elite of redistribution. Both the nineties and the "zero" years are the epochs of redistribution, reconfiguration. But sooner or later the system enters a period when it already wants to reproduce itself not within the framework of new redistribution, which it seems dangerous and unnecessary. And before the elites is the question of inheritance, how will the capital be transferred. For this, the institutional foundations and rules of the game. Moreover, they are fixed in principle publicly, and within the framework of formalized institutions. These are safety rods, as in a nuclear reactor, which make the situation predictable. Otherwise, the value is not the one who knows the rules of the game best, but the one who can take them and at any time turn them over. Elites and the system need to reproduce. Understanding this is naked pragmatism. He will push the ruling class to strengthen public institutions. In particular, with regard to the elections of 2018, no one has any special questions, we practically with absolute probability know that Putin will advance and win. But, for example, the electoral intrigue of the elections of 2021, the new elections to the State Duma, will be very significant. Depends on them the structure of the parliament, the balance of interests of both different social groups and various intra-elite groups. This will be a key intrigue of the political process of the coming years. And these will be the most competitive and most important elections from this point of view. Why is that? Because the parliament is a key institution of institutional transit on the eve and after 2024 and possible changes, including constitutional ones. - Those who speak about the crisis of the party system, where everything decides "United Russia", long unaccustomed to political competition, disagree with you. Moreover, there is a chance that Putin will run not from the EP, but as a self-nominated. Will the "party of power" change? - This very important case to the general talk about the institutional system. Of course, the 2016 elections, which led to the dominance of United Russia, is an important symptom of the state of the party system and public policy. The crisis in the development of the majority of parties, including the parliamentary opposition, is quite obvious. It is not the fault of "United Russia" that it is the most capable. On the other hand, since we refused in the middle of the zero years from the mixed system and moved to a purely proportional one, there were no new public politicians left in the country, which in the main were leaving the districts, from the regions. Reproduction of strong public politicians stopped after the abolition of single-mandate constituencies and only now resumes. In the next parliamentary elections, the ruling party will not be able to win more than 90% of the districts, but this is good. The party system will inevitably coalesce. Including at the expense of existing large parliamentary parties. At present, almost all of them are in the phase of transition, the change of generations. In addition, by 2019, the seven-year period will be completed, which was given to all parties after the liberalization of 2012 to confirm their status by regular and effective participation in elections. Of the current 70-odd registered parties will remain around 20, which will be able to confirm their status. The possibility of creating new party structures will remain, but the intensity of the new party building has already fallen. Incidentally, the nomination or non-advancement of the incumbent president from the party in the presidential elections is also an important institutional signal. If you are nominated from a political party, then you emphasize the importance of the party system. And if not, then accentuate the trend for its reform. This means that further the signal will begin to scale, go to the governor's level, and so on. - Maybe it's worth to switch to a completely majority system?.

This would have eliminated even more parties and candidates, the system would have become even easier to manage. - Suppose that the Russian ruling class is gradually ripe to the understanding that further preservation of power and the general outline of the political regime requires more complex designs than personal designs of successors and tandems, personal ratings of leaders and a model of the dominant party. Then it may come about the formation of a two-party system in which power could be periodically transferred from one elite faction to another, but as a whole would remain in the hands of the ruling class. If we want to set such an institutional trend, then we can discuss the possibility of moving to a completely majority system, which always tends toward bipartisanship. Because this election is based on the principle: the winner receives all. Other parties would also exist in their niches, but in the conditions of an actual intra-elite consensus on the impossibility of coming to power of "third parties". In principle, all this would have looked and resembled some analogue of many Western political systems. Such a rearrangement will affect all parliamentary parties - United Russia, the Communist Party, the Liberal Democratic Party, Just Russia, and also the ONF. However, it is obvious that the transition to a bipartisan political model requires a different intra-elite treaty. At present, the unseparability of power and property automatically turns any real transfer of power, at least into a new economic redistribution. - Do not you think that now the government has taken a course toward an actual refusal from the party system? - This, in fact, is a fairly popular idea today, almost all over the world. Everyone starts to say that democracy is degrading everywhere and can not cope. This idea is based on the fact that the society of the industrial age, mass classes and large social groups are leaving. One of the main trends in the contemporary development of the world (in many areas, including the economy, public and political spheres) is the individualization of needs and the individualization of consumption. The modern world is differentiated, crushed, complicated.

Individualization, in the final analysis, of people's notions of what democracy is ("democracy is specific to me") and the demands for it (democracy as a supermarket, where everyone must find something for themselves).

Therefore, populism is thriving, and groups and movements are replacing parties. This conversation has been going on for a long time in the scientific literature, and in political discussions. Forms of direct democracy are proposed. But a political system can not be non-subjective. All the same, there must be political actors, political actors that aggregate interests. You can name them differently, but the meaning of this does not change. In general, it seems to me that the talk about the parties' weakness and democracy as a whole is not so harmless. Now many people say that we are entering the era of a new digital economy. Artificial intelligence, digital economy, robots are a new reality. It is already literally outside the threshold, there are a few years left before it. And quite rightly there are discussions in the scientific literature that the consequence of the onset of this new era from the socio-political point of view will be the trend towards a new feudalism. In it, artificial intelligence and robots will replace labor up to 100%. For the vast majority of such a society, work will be unavailable. People are completely dependent on the state or corporations who will give them money with such a message: "Buy yourself something, play, but do not create problems". On the other hand, artificial intelligence, robots, crypto-currencies depend crucially on access to significant resources, in particular, to energy resources, on a large scale. Those people and those entities that will have access to these resources will have access to development, a "pass to the future". And within societies it will, in fact, be the neo-feudal estates. As in the series "Game of Thrones". There is an army of the dead, White Walkers, and in fact - robots, they are controlled by artificial intelligence - "King of the Night", and the old world is threatened with an end. Because of all these threats of social and political transformations, in the oncoming digital world it is important not only to develop laws on the relationship between a person and a robot. It is still important to monitor the preservation of human relations. Do not let them degrade. - That is, calls for a digital economy lead to an anti-utopia? - This is just a challenge for democracy and political systems, with their institutional structure. Not only can parties become institutions of the past, democracy can become a phenomenon of the past if it can not meet these challenges.