The Philosophical-Legal Aspect of the Methodology of Research on the Instruments of State Policy and Public Administration

Abstract

In particular, the study has shown that each of the approaches under consideration—epistemological, ontological, axiological, and systemic (in combination with synergetics)—has its own substantive purpose, yet together they form a comprehensive methodological framework for the respective scientific inquiry.

It has been established that the epistemological approach ensures the identification of the ways, boundaries, and means of acquiring knowledge about the instruments of public administration. Its significance lies in the development of methods for collecting, verifying, and interpreting information, which include dialectical analysis of contradictions, metaphysical fixation of stable elements, logical operations of induction and deduction, analytic-synthetic data processing, as well as hermeneutic interpretation of concepts and norms. Within this approach, instruments are studied through the prism of how exactly they can be known, described, and explained by scientific means.

It is noted that, in contrast, the ontological approach focuses on the nature, essence, and structural characteristics of instruments as socio-legal phenomena. Its methods are oriented not so much towards the process of cognition, but rather towards the identification of the fundamental properties of the object of study and its place within the structure of public administration.

It is emphasized that the axiological approach provides the value-based dimension of the research, in which the criteria for evaluating an instrument are the ideals enshrined in the legal system and social consciousness, namely justice, equality, freedom, human rights, and others.

It has been revealed that the systemic approach, reinforced by the synergetic dimension, makes it possible to consider public administration instruments in interaction with all elements of the public governance mechanism as a whole, to identify internal and external connections, as well as the patterns of their dynamics, self-organization, and adaptation to changes in the external environment.

It is underlined that such a multi-level methodological construct ensures the comprehensiveness of scientific description, the internal consistency of conceptual frameworks, and their resilience to changes in both the external and internal environment of the public authority system as a whole.