The purpose of application social-and-economic and social-and-political research is study of economic and political processes, finding out the reasons for social changes, regular patterns and their further development.
Social-and-economic and social-and-political processes are an aggregate of all dynamic changes in the persons’ relations, in performance of their social roles, functioning of political and economic institutions influenced by external and internal factors.
It is possible to consider the changes as two main types: first ones do not influence on the basic characteristic features of functioning of economic and political systems and second ones, correspondingly, influence on such characteristic features.
There are three possible forms of a social process:
· Objective form that is a consecutive change of the state of a social object;
· Subjective or activity-related form, that is successive actions of the person;
· Technological form, that is meeting or implementation of a certain technology.
There are following types of economic and political changes:
· Functioning – in this case the structures and institutions change in such a way that their main characteristics stay within generally accepted basic values and indicators.
· Development – in this case basic characteristics of economic and political systems and institutions are changed. It is assumed that the changes should result positively for the system.
· Decline – in this case the main system characteristics are transformed resulting in negative consequences.
There several classifications of social-and-economic and social-and-political processes:
o Domestic and international ones differ from each other in dimensional characteristics as well as in ways of persons’ interaction, institutions’ functioning and regular patterns typical for them.
o Basic and peripheral. Basic processes are those during which changes of the main fundamental systems and institutions take place; peripheral processes are those during which there are no changes of fundamental characteristics of systems and institutions.
o Obvious and concealed ones. Obvious processes are those involving regular declaration of interests of citizens’ groups in their public open claims and discussions. Concealed processes are those based upon the activity of shadow centers and institutions that have not been officially registered which activity may not be controlled in any way by the society.
o Open and closed ones. Closed processes are a type of changes which may be rather unambiguously assessed in terms of “better or worse” for some persons, that is the process displays a strictly limited number of factors which influence its course, therefore, it may be accurately calculated, predicted and regulated. Open process is characterized by an unlimited number of factors, indicators and powers that may influence its course, so, it is hardly predictable and its consequences may not be unambiguously assessed in terms of “better or worse”, “advantageous – non-advantageous”.
o Stable and transitional. Stable processes allow to trace a distinct orientation of changes; certain types of interrelations among persons prevail in them, outwardly they are characterized by absence of any shocks or cataclysms significant for the society. It is difficult to find out a prevailing orientation in transitional processes, various types of interrelations are formed among persons and significant crisis situations are possible in their course.
