Bortnikova O. Functioning of Religion in Social and Political Processes of Modern Ukraine: Theoretical and Practical Aspects.

The possibility of applying traditional approaches and methods of studying to disclose the essence and forms of agents in religious-political space of Ukrainian society is extremely limited, and institutional analysis of this system is almost absent. One of approaches to solving this problem is the development of research toolkits based on the morphological analysis of the religious-political space in Ukraine and introduction of the harmonized interaction of religion and politics as theoretical and methodological solid foundation in the process of Ukrainian state formation. This goal determines the necessity of the incorporating institutional matrices theory into the feasibility study for the modification of the basic and complementary social institutes in order to find out an inter-confessional co-partner dialogue in the process of forming a political nation in Ukraine. We formulated several concepts to insure the surveillance of political, economic, and religious activities in society, in order to obtain, deploy, restrain and constrain the authority generated by institutions that structure the relations of people and organizations. These institutions provide political parties, movements, churches, denominations, social groups and individuals with control over resources and social functions, thus pushing motivation of religious and political agents under social transformations of Ukrainian society and state. We define the models of religion-politics interaction as a social order and consider the development of the idea of matrix synthesis in relation to the religious-political space as a social institution. Ultimately, the purpose of the study is to understand how the social order structures social interactions – both ethnic and interconfessional.