Prof. DSc. Douhomir Minev presented part of his work within the project "Public Capacity for a Just Green Transition" in an article published in journal Sociological Problems Issue 1/2023.
The text emphasizes the importance of state capacity in shaping social dynamics and applies a new approach to researching and assessing state capacity in developed countries, using ideas from social theories of risks.
Prof. Minev draws attention to the fact that state capacity is incorrectly reduced only to the capacity of the government - whether it achieves the set goals. Moreover, the assessments of this capacity are indirect based on results that are not functions only of the government's capacity. When considering state capacity, the role of other important actors is much less often taken into account; the government's ability to choose adequate goals is not discussed at all, and the results that are reported are in practice the result of the actions of other actors. To talk about state capacity, many more aspects specific for the given society must be analyzed. It is precisely the possibilities for a different approach to studying state capacity, which includes characteristics of contemporary societies such as the behaviours of power elites, their specific group rationality, the substitution of moral values and scientific knowledge, that Prof. Minev discusses in his text. The issue of state and less frequently analyzed public capacity is important because they determine not only the economic development of a given country, but also the state of democracy in it and the ability to identify significant risks threatening modern societies.