Concepts of trust and mistrust in the Russian legal doctrine of public authority

The article examines the patterns of formation of the categories of “trust” and “distrust” within the framework of the Russian legal doctrine of public authority based on the analysis of scientific literature, legislation of the Russian Federation, and judicial practice of the Constitutional Court of the Russian Federation. The article considers the features of the content of the categories of “trust” and “distrust” in the relations “state-citizen”, and reveals the specifics of legal regulation of relations of trust and distrust in the public legal space. The dichotomy of “trust - distrust” is analyzed, as well as constitutional and legal constructions of distrust included in the mechanism of constitutional and legal responsibility and the control system. The article shows the peculiarity of legal regulation of the categories of “trust” and “distrust”, expressed in a combination of the methods of meta-regulation, general regulation and detailed regulation. The method of meta-regulation is used by the legislator in relation to the category of “trust” (trust is postulated as a legal principle), the method of specific, detailed regulation is applied in relation to the category of “distrust”. It is concluded that trust in public authority cannot be built solely on the basis of legislative norms and presupposes the development of mechanisms of civil control and citizen participation in the processes of making public-authority decisions, as well as the law enforcement practice and judicial doctrine developed by the Constitutional Court of the Russian Federation. To increase trust, the modern system of public authority can use transparency tools based on openness of information and citizen participation in government.