| Summary: | The processes of digitalization, intensified and accelerated by the COVID-19 pandemic, have a serious impact on the socio-political space. This research aims to analyze the risks and prospects of digital transformation for traditional political institutions. Based on the signs of post-democracy identified by the English sociologist C. Crouch, the study defines the state, citizenship, parliamentarism and elections as the key traditional political institutions. In addition, digital transformations act as a trigger for emergence of new institutions that influence the political actions of a person in society. In this regard, the authors of the article emphasize that it is impossible to ignore the claims of technology corporations to acquire the status of a new political institution, on which socio-political communication between citizens and the state begins to depend. In the course of the study, the following scientific results are obtained. The current practice of socio-political processes digitalization is analyzed. Special attention is paid to the cases of digital platformization and de-platformization on the part of global technology corporations as political actors of a new type. It is concluded that that rapid technological changes have a significant impact on the structural, content, and functional parameters of traditional institutions of power, which are forced to adapt to a new digital environment with a high degree of complexity and diversity to maintain their effective viability. Simultaneously, digital technological transformations cannot be defined as unambiguously constructive or destructive. For traditional political institutions, there are both positive and negative potentials of digitalization, closely intertwined into a complex system of digital effects and sociopolitical consequences of institutional changes for both the state and society. In the final part of the article, promising areas of further study on digitalization of the socio-political space are highlighted.
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