Electoral absenteeism in the context of contemporary socio-political transformations

The authors analyse the causes, manifestations and possible ways of overcoming and reducing the scale of absenteeism as a phenomenon in the context of modern socio-political processes and transformations. The dominant characteristic of current elections is the widespread repudiation of the electoral system, political campaigns, parties and candidates. The authors reveal the essence of absenteeism, illustrate the forms of its manifestation, identify the reasons for political absenteeism as a personal position of a citizen, a political phenomenon and an integral part of the electoral and political processes. They also give a detailed typology of factors of absenteeism. The nature of absenteeism is revealed in the article in a multifaceted way: as an individual's political position (the aspect of individual choice), as a social phenomenon (an indicator of the level of involvement in politics of population groups) and as an inevitable element of the electoral process (reasons preventing the expression of the will of citizens). There is a methodology for analysing the indices and the voter confidence factor for candidates and political parties. The effects and consequences of the expansion of models of consumer and mass societies in hybrid and transitional regimes are considered. It is argued that in modern conditions it is necessary to link the solution of the problem of absenteeism with a broader cultural and identity problem, with a more complete description of the changes in the nature and status of various electoral groups. It is noted that it is necessary to link all kinds of decisions with a qualitatively new understanding of democracy (electronic, network, etc.). It is also promising to link the solution of the problem of absenteeism with the idea of a multi-level identity (the Swiss philosopher Denis de Rougemont) - local, regional, national, global-confessional - which, in the authors' opinion, is able to effectively solve the problem of political participation in multi-component societies, giving democracy (including in its electoral form) a new stimulus to development. To solve the problem of absenteeism, a new model of the political market is obviously proposed, its demonopolised model assuming that it is not dominated by the "seller" (the community of professional politicians) but by the "buyer" of such services - voters and all citizens acting on the basis of a developed feedback from the institutions of power and government. The article is a theoretical and methodological one.

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