Information and civil society: Problem statement

This article is an attempt to determine the place and role of information in the complex legal mechanism of shaping and developing the civil society institutions, taking into consideration the application of a cybernetic approach to this problem. The dual (social and legal) nature of the phenomenon of the civil society in Russia means that, on the one hand, it does not grow ‘from below’ but is shaped ‘from above’ at the state's will (which has the ability to govern the development of the civil society by way of information its institutions are able to perceive), on the other hand, the civil society is a complex, open social system whose development is qualitatively dependent of the development of its constituent components. The dialectical possibility of such development is secured by information which is exchanged between the components of the system and cannot be fully controlled by the state.