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The genesis of volunteering as a source of social agency in conditions of social tension and crisis situations shifts research attention from considering volunteering as an activity that supports the work of official structures, to considering it as a self-sufficient activity in solving urgent problems facing society in situations of social instability and institutional instability. As a research perspective, the complexity paradigm is chosen, which offers a view of social processes through the prism of nonlinear system dynamics. The basis of the conceptual framework of the study - the allocation of the two mechanisms of social change – organizational and self-organizational. The processes of social self-organization reveal themselves in the crisis moments of the life of society through the activities of powerful volunteer communities, which become agents of change due to their emergence. The characteristics of such a volunteer community are their attractiveness, procedurality and specific hierarchy, which has a leadership basis. The genesis of the community of volunteers is viewed in the context of socio-structural changes. Using the example of the interaction of volunteers with the communities of internally displaced persons and combatants, it is shown that the communities of donors and recipients are interconnected in their own development. The features of the dynamics of volunteering agency in crisis conditions are determined, which depend on the ratio of self-organizing and organizational mechanisms at different stages of crisis situations. Since the beginning of the crisis, self-organizing structures have been active independent agents, however, as the institutional component strengthens, the initiative to restore public order is gradually shifting to organizational structures and the role of agency in self-organizing structures decreases. A decrease in the energy potential of a volunteering agency is associated with internal restructuring and adaptation of communities that arose at the time of the crisis and were the main recipients of assistance. However, this potential can recover quickly against the background of new challenges (eg pandemic) and unwillingness to respond to the situation by the organizational structures.

The article describes the tool, which was formed and tested to assess politicians’ emotional attitude to predict the impact of affective polarization on the nature of political confrontations. Plutchek’s theoretical scheme of emotions has been operationalized, the tool for assessing emotional perception has been proposed, and its use for measuring the President’s emotional perception has been tested. Eight basic attitudes that can be used as the foundation for behavioural matrices, representing different types of links between emotional evaluations and behavioural attitudes, have been modelled. The tool was tested during the survey with the participation of 1420 respondents. There have been identified two latent factors, which demonstrate the internal connection of eight pairs of bipolar emotions concerning the figure of the President. The first factor covers the emotions of defeat, the second is – emotions of victory. As far as the emotional attitude to the President is concerned, the presence of an emotional split between those who voted for him and those who were against him has been confirmed. It was found out that the structure of the emotional perception of the President by the winners is mobile and combines both positive and negative emotions. At the same time, the structure of the emotional attitude of the losers is monochrome and is mainly represented by negative emotions. Comparison of emotional profiles of representatives of polar groups revealed that the behavioural model of the defeated is formed by mixing two fundamental attitudes, those of the Distressed and the Rejected. The behavioural model of the winners is formed on the ground of the essential attitude, that of the Stakeholders. The emotional profile of those who did not vote for any of the candidates is generally closer to the profile of the winners. Significant differences in the emotional perception of the President between those who voted for and against him have been defined. There have also been fixed the peculiarities of emotional perception of the figure of the President, depending on the level of education and financial status of the respondents.

On the basis of data of the European sociological research the comparative analysis of various social orientations of the youth of Ukraine and Russia is performed. Statistically significant differences in the trust levels to political and legal institutions, the satisfactions by the life, and the value orientations of the youth are revealed.