From crowdsourcing to civic collaboration: legalnature, forms and features of public participation in the Russian Federation

Subject and hypothesis. The article interrogates the legal nature, forms, and distinctive features of public participation mediated by digital technologies in the Russian Federation, arguing that the term “crowdsourcing”, rooted in private law, lacks normative certainty for public administration. The working hypothesis is that “civic cooperation” can and should be conceptualized as a distinct public law institution, differing from private law crowd technologies by its procedural legal framing, legally relevant outcomes, and enforceable guarantees of participation.
Goal. The study aims to substantiate and introduce into legal scholarship a definition of “civic cooperation” as a public law institution, identify its constitutive features and forms, and propose directions for legal regulation that ensure equality, transparency, and accountability of digitally mediated participation.
Methods and methodology. The research employs doctrinal legal analysis; historical and comparative perspectives on the evolution from early forms of collective problem-solving to digital platforms; functional comparison of private law crowd models (crowdprocessing, crowdsolving, crowdcreation, crowdrating, crowdvoting, crowdfunding) with public law analogues (public consultations, regulatory impact assessment, petitions, participatory budgeting, public control, e-voting, participation in procurement and PPP/concession frameworks); and normative analysis of Russian constitutional and statutory guarantees (popular sovereignty, equality, access to information, petitions, data protection) as well as sub-statutory procedural rules.
Results. The paper demonstrates that in the private sphere crowdsourcing is an organizational technological model whose outcomes are typically factual and legally consequential only at the initiator’s discretion, while motivation is mixed and monetary incentives are ancillary. Transposed into public administration, identical technological forms require legal mediation: the object of regulation becomes legally significant procedures for engaging an indeterminate number of citizens in preparing and adopting administrative or regulatory acts; coordination by a public authority is mandatory; and results must be documented, reasoned, and linked to final acts with justiciable consequences. The study formulates an original definition of “civic cooperation” as a legally regulated set of procedures of citizen involvement that culminate in a legally relevant outcome (an administrative act or other public decision) and trigger obligations of consideration, reasoned assessment, publication, and accountability. The findings confirm the hypothesis: civic cooperation constitutes a distinct public law institution rather than a mere transfer of crowdsourcing techniques.

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