Expert group formation for making the regional development decisions: disagreement or cohesion (on the example of national projects implementation)

When implementing national projects, there is an issue of the expert group formation due to the need in new management mechanisms that meet the meritocratic demand of the Russian society for an effective state under the transition from the “control and supervision” paradigm to the “smart management” paradigm. National projects should not be left out of the wider public discussion and real participation of different target groups, which is determined by the tasks of the power-administrative vertical - to answer external and internal challenges in the implementation of 12 national projects. The result of the established expert group formation is the structure of decision-making groups. To identify the effect of group formation, the authors introduce the parameter ‘cohesion’-‘disagreement’ in expert groups during the development and implementation of project solutions. The study aims at assessing the state of expert groups (decision-making), which reflect the level of the regional development, including social-cultural modernization. On the basis of the presented theoretical-methodological foundations, the authors developed a methodology for identifying socio-mental groups that are formed in the decision-making groups and work on the implementation of national projects. This methodology consists of the scales of experts’ access to the regional management (index “activity vs passivity”) and the scales of solidarity of experts with the position of power, political and managerial activities of all levels of the power-administrative vertical (index “support vs disagreement”). The structures of the expert groups were correlated with the integral indices of the regional development as presented in the social-economic and political-administrative rankings. Thus, on the basis of statistical procedures and identified expert groups, the authors assessed the ‘disagreement’ and ‘cohesion’ of expert decision-making in achieving national goals.