PUBLIC OPINION IN THE POLITICAL AND LEGAL SPHERE OF SOCIETY

Public opinion formed in the conditions of the political regime and determined by political and legal processes, the activity of their subjects, the media, the impact of globalization on the information openness of the state, legal unification, and legal and cultural dynamics. Opinion manifests and forms consciousness and acts as an element of the institutions of society. Its mechanism manifested in the behavior of subjects, motivated by changes in the content of their judgments. Public opinion contains emotional and mental judgments and carry out evaluative, analytical, regulatory functions. Political and legal judgments formed in the channels of communication between the public and the authorities, objectified in the form of analytical comments by experts and the media. Public opinion is a collective value judgment, has a communicative nature, is formed in the context of changes in the technologies of social dialogue, and opinion becomes a factor of public administration. The peculiarity of interaction between public opinion and government reflects the relationship between the state, law and society and gives rise to political and legal regimes of interaction between government and public opinion. Their originality depends on the type of attitude of the state power towards it. Especially in the context of a democratic transition for societies with an unstable hybrid form of political regime, which are delimited depending on the democracy of electoral laws, consideration of opinions in laws, forms of discussions with the authorities and forms of expression of opinions. In the methodology of public opinion research, factor analysis is advisable since it significantly directed by laws and is a significant factor in influencing the dynamics of legislation — the legal basis of government institutions and the private sphere of society. Information technologies are a resource of power and turn public opinion into an object of influence. It reveals the risks of the impact of hidden, latent public opinion and the purposeful formation of artificial, pseudo-public opinion by the authorities as result of the use of methods of manipulating power resources in the legal sphere. This preserves the ability for the authorities to change the markers of public opinion and artificially create the appearance of legitimate grounds to lobby for the content of legal policy, the drafting of laws, and law enforcement decisions, which is desirable for public authorities.