The paper reflects an experience of empirical research on the institutional and regulatory component in the modernization of Russian regions that are historically at different levels of civilizational development. The information basis of the study includes findings of a mass representative survey (“civil examination”) conducted by the Center for the Sociology of Management and Social Technology at the Institute of Sociology of the Russian Academy of Sciences; the survey was carried out in four constituent entities of the Russian Federation: the Moscow Oblast, the Republic of Bashkortostan, the Belgorod Oblast and the Republic of Kalmykia; the assessment of their development include criteria of the level of socio-cultural modernization (grant # 15-18-30077). We believe that higher education is an underestimated resource of the state strategy for socio-cultural modernization of regions. People with higher education are considered as an avant-garde social group able to exert an increasing influence on the harmonious development of the country. This group is characterized as a “soft” force in the support of constructive actions of the power vertical and in the future – as a centripetal factor capable of providing a high level of solidarity in the Russian society in solving multidisciplinary problems of modernization. We elaborate the research tools outlined in the article “The Role of Institute of Higher Education in Solving the Issues of Socio-Cultural Modernization of Regions” (Economic and Social Changes: Facts, Trends, Forecast, 2017, vol. 10, no. 5). We clarify the empirically tested hypotheses: first, socio-cultural modernization of Russian regions is associated with the degree of development of their government systems that depend, in turn, on social organization and self-organization, the hierarchy of groups, including the population with higher education, and their interest in the process of modernization; second, the social group of the population with higher education is an electorate with average estimates of social and political activity, which can play an important role in the development of problem situations in regions with different levels of modernization and in the creation of new models of organizational development and management. The goal of our study is to identify the degree of social support that the population with higher education provides to the policy of the power vertical and its individual links. We provide the results of analysis of socio-economic indicators of regional development, taking into account the place and role of the population with higher education. The tools of the survey are designed to conduct further comparative studies on larger samples
Keywords
regions, socio-cultural modernization, higher education, social resource, management problems, “civil examination”