IMPROVING ANTI–CORRUPTION POLICY: OPPORTUNITIES AND LIMITS OF THE NETWORK POLITICAL GOVERNANCE
A. V. Volkova, A. A. Kulakova  pp. 40-56

Abstract. The main goal of the article was is to analyze the mechanisms used to improve an-ti-corruption policies in present-day Russia. The authors took advantage of network public governance, in which the power of integration and solidarity of the society form the network of communicative power. It has been revealed that such modern institutions of anti-corrup-tion policy as codes of ethics and anti-corruption expertise, offered by the state, do not fully take into account the potential of public sentiments, demands and network civic activism in the transformation and improvement of institutions and practices of anti-corruption policy. The article presents the results of a 2018 sociological survey on the perception of corruption in St. Petersburg and the Leningrad Region. The authors proceed from the assertion that in modern Russia, the processes of making and adopting political decisions still remain closed, but the government seeks to delegate some of the responsibility, involving business into pub-licity; the desire to make the processes more transparent is traced. Under the civil society’s declining interest to participate in public policy, processes on the basis of formal mechanisms and an increase in the activity of forming their own stand, citizens are actively exploring the possibilities of digital communications for cooperation (cooperation platform). An important condition for cooperation is the mutually beneficial interest of the parties, as well as bilat-eral trust and openness, which implies minimizing corruption. The novelty of the research also consists formulating the problem of the digital environment of trust, since the formal structures still focus on the technological component and on the presence of formal feedback channels with the citizens.
Keywords: public policy, anti-corruption policy, network public policy, code of ethics, citizen participation, responsibility