Abstract

Problem setting. Social justice is determined by the attitude of the state towards those who contribute to its strengthening and recovery. High power is here the main arbiter. Therefore, the government should create a system for the search for talented people who can bring benefits to the state and provide them with a decent livelihood through the implementation of the principle of social justice. The greatest hopes here are based on democracy, which, according to Merkel’s definition, may not only be effective, but also defective. Therefore, the assessment of its ability to ensure the principle of social justice reveals a wide research space for scientists of different directions, especially political scientists and sociologists. Recent research and publications analysis. Comprehensive systematic study of the problem of social justice is contained in works by L. Boltansky, L. Teveno, K. Sabbay, M. Sandel, M. Woltser, V. Argunova, I. Gavrilova, I. Devyatko, O. Sapelkina, T. Shipunova. It is these studies, along with works R. A. Dahl, L. Diamond, R. Dworkin were used by Merkel in developing the concept of defective democracies. The рaper objective was analysis of the causes and consequences of the deformation of the principle of social justice in conditions of defective democracy. Paper main body. In political science, social justice is defined as perfect integrity and is associated with a balance between equality and freedom. At the same time, the requirements for social justice are growing and exacerbated by the spread of social and legal inequality, exploitation, the dominance of administrative and bureaucratic methods of governance, limiting politicalfreedoms, orienting social policies to service and enriching the ruling classes of society. The vast majority of researchers in this phenomenon determine that social justice is an inherentfeature ofdemocracy, although the existence ofdemocratic institutions does not always guarantee the implementation of the principle ofsocial justice. The conducted research showed: 1) democracy, as a political regime, implies the possibility ofdeformation ofany parameter characterizing the ways and mechanisms of the realization of power in society; 2) «defect» of democracy is determined by the presence of shortcomings or limitations of institutional mechanisms created by the constitutional and legal democratic system for the realization of democratic practices of domination. It is noted that the main signs of defective democracy are corruption, ineffective courts, weak civil self-organization, incapable groups of interests and party systems, underdeveloped administrative infrastructure and controversial monopoly of the state for the exercise of political power. The analysis carried out in the article allowed to reach the following conclusions of the research. The mechanisms of action of the principle of social justice in Ukraine are destroying such defects of its democracy: imperfection of the functional separation of the actions of branches of power and their real independence; defects of party construction in a multi-party system; corrupt power; «damage» of the constitutional and legal principles and partial neutralization of the mechanisms of containment ofpower; the establishment and institutionalization of nonformal practices and rules of the political game, the displacement of formal political institutions by informal; the state’s inability to overcome the economic and political problems of the pre-democratic phase of development; domination of paternalistic practices in socio-political and socio-economic relations.