THE INSTITUTIONAL CHANNEL OF YOUTH SOCIAL ACTIVITY AND ITS RESTORATION IN THE DIGITAL AGE
Keywords:
Key words: youth, social activity, hashar, mahalla, social institution, volunteering, threshold of participation, institutional design, slacktivism, collective efficacy, symbolic capital, participatory budgeting, digital civic engagement.Abstract
Abstract. The thesis approaches youth social activity from an institutional and
cultural perspective and asks why the traditional institution of hashar has lost its
capacity to convert readiness into collective action in a country whose median age is
27 and whose internet penetration exceeds 89 per cent. Four pillars of mobilisation –
the call, the address, the result and the recognition – are isolated and operationalised
through the civic voluntarism model of S. Verba and colleagues, E. Ostrom's boundary
principle, A. Bandura's collective efficacy, P. Bourdieu's symbolic capital,
M. Granovetter's threshold model and A. Hirschman's exit–voice–loyalty scheme. The
empirical core is a most-similar-systems comparison of two national platforms: of
more than 6,900 appeals submitted to the «Mening fikrim» portal only 495 (7.2 per
cent) reached the voting stage, whereas voting in the «Initiative Budget» grew from
87,700 citizens in 2019 to 10.28 million in 2026, a 117-fold increase. The difference is
attributed to institutional design rather than to values, motivation or technological
access, and a «digital hashar» model with four measurable indicators is proposed.
References
References
1. Decree of the President of the Republic of Uzbekistan on approval of the
strategy «New Uzbekistan Youth – 2030», 20 April 2026, No. PF-66.
2. UNDP Uzbekistan. Participatory Budgeting: From Piloting to Developing New
Practices. – Tashkent: United Nations Development Programme, 2023.
3. The winners of the first 2026 season of the «Initiative Budget» have been
announced // Gazeta.uz. – 2026. – 21 March.
4. Otamuratov S. Globallashuv va millat maʼnaviyati. – Tashkent: Oʻzbekiston,
2018.
5. Bekmurodov M.B. Boshqaruv sotsiologiyasi: nazariya va amaliyot. –
Tashkent, 2020.
6. Verba S., Schlozman K.L., Brady H.E. Voice and Equality: Civic Voluntarism
in American Politics. – Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1995. – 640 p.
7. Ostrom E. Governing the Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for
Collective Action. – Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990. – 280 p.
8. Bandura A. Exercise of Human Agency Through Collective Efficacy // Current
Directions in Psychological Science. – 2000. – Vol. 9, № 3. – P. 75–78.
9. Bourdieu P. The Forms of Capital // Handbook of Theory and Research for the
Sociology of Education / Ed. J. Richardson. – New York: Greenwood Press, 1986. –
P. 241–258.
10. Granovetter M. Threshold Models of Collective Behavior // American Journal
of Sociology. – 1978. – Vol. 83, № 6. – P. 1420–1443.
11. Hirschman A.O. Exit, Voice, and Loyalty: Responses to Decline in Firms,
Organizations, and States. – Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1970. – 162 p.
12. Morozov E. The Net Delusion: The Dark Side of Internet Freedom. –
New York: PublicAffairs, 2011. – 409 p.
13. Kristofferson K., White K., Peloza J. The Nature of Slacktivism: How the
Social Observability of an Initial Act of Token Support Affects Subsequent Prosocial
Action // Journal of Consumer Research. – 2014. – Vol. 40, № 6. – P. 1149–1166.
14. Resolution of the Council of the Legislative Chamber of the Oliy Majlis of
the Republic of Uzbekistan on electronic collective appeals submitted to the «Mening
fikrim» web portal, 12 February 2025, No. 463-V.
15. Resolution of the President of the Republic of Uzbekistan on measures for the
radical improvement of the system of work with youth in mahallas, 19 January 2022,
No. PQ-92.