Decentralized Value-Inspired Communities: Towards the Renewal and Institutional Development of the State Unity Policy

Abstract

The article examines the possibilities of a meaningful revision of analytical and managerial approaches within the framework of the state policy aimed at ensuring social unity. Today, its implementation is often complicated by the potential of sociodemographic super-diversity and value pluralism accumulated by the majority of societies. The cumulative effect of these processes suggests the presence of deeply divided communities under the facades of the political unity of modern states. The article substantiates the thesis that the combined accumulation in the structure of society of minorities consolidated around social status and the growth of the political significance of minority value discourses only at first glance have common roots and are subject to diagnosis and social therapy by similar methods. The article analyzes the reasons of contemporary institutional preferences in favor of solving the problems of diversity consolidated around social status. It is established that they are predominantly related to the institutional specifics of the modern state. The political potential of decentralized value-motivated actors, their contribution to the social polarization, and the repertoire of political action are considered. An approach to the conceptualization of such actors as discursive coalitions is proposed. The article explains why the state identity policy evades targeting the decentralized actors and suggests possible directions of replenishing the analytical arsenal for their identification, fixation of their requirements, and development of mechanisms for integrating deviant value discourses into the mainstream of unity policy. The article examines the judicial branch as a system directly predisposed to communication with decentralized public discourses, and shows possible ways of its institutional development as one of the central subjects of the state policy of social unity.

Keywords

• policy of social unity
• civil identity
• national-state identity
• decentralized value system
• discursive coalition
• discursive conflict
• political values
• constitutional patriotism
• unity of legal space
• judicial branch