Concepts of Representative Systems and their Practical Implementation in the System of Government

This article deals with the concept of a representative system in the legal sense (that is enshrined in the law) and in the true sense (public relations existing in fact), as well as a theoretical concept. It is proved that only Parliament can be a body of representation of the people because this body is called upon to play a key role in the exercise of power by the people, in the expression of popular will and interests. The author highlights the two main theoretical concepts that reveal the legal nature of the bodies of the people's representation and their role in the mechanism of Russian government and a number of foreign countries: the so-called liberal and socialist concept of popular representation. In this context, the paper provides a comparative analysis of different representative systems with regard to the possibility for the people to implement the constitutional principle of democracy. It is shown that one of the main tasks of representative systems in Western countries, in addition to the representation per se, is to implement a decentralized (network) government system of regulating the society, the so-called "divided government", in the conditions of a horizontal and vertical separation of powers (the first level is national and regional; the second level is local). While in socialist countries the main task of a representative system is to facilitate the implementation of a unified centralized (hierarchical) system of governance, because under the Constitution the plenitude of the power belongs to the people and is indivisible. Making the analysis of individual shortcomings of a representative system in Russia and their possible solutions, the author makes a general conclusion that constructing a governmental system should be carried out first and foremost in the light of its national interests, historical, ethnic and other peculiarities. In this regard, in the author's opinion, the modern network government is currently not able to contribute to the creation of opportunities for successfully addressing the range of challenges our country is facing and requires changes that take into account the factors outlined in the article.

representation of the people, sovereignty of the people, democracy, representative system, system of government, state mechanism, theoretical concept, hierarchical government, network government, liberal ideology, socialist ideology

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