Roskomnadzor vs. Strategic and Institutional Limits of Good Public Governance (Case of Blockage of Online-Resources in Russia)

Abstract

The paper analyzes the factors that may potentially influence the elaboration and implementation of publiс policy in Russia. The authors put forward two basic types of strategies of actors that participate in decision-making. The authors offer two basic types of actors’ strategies that participate in decision-making. The first factor covers policy strategies which aim at reaching economic and social goals, as well as improving indicators for public values management. The second factor embraces political strategies that are implemented by actors in order to redistribute resources, represent interests, and shape (inner-elite) competition inside and among the elites. The resulting public policy is balanced for all strategies input by actors. The outcome of agreements that actors come to also depends on their access to power and institutional factors of political and policymaking environment. The authors focus on “good governance” concept to explain the factors that may be of key importance within the framework of policymaking procedures. The antithesis, which is “bad governance”, is also discussed in this context. Orientation to consensus and rule of law principle are seen as the key criteria of the quality of governance in terms of procedural component of public policy. The authors offer an original theoretical model of the balance between and correspondence of political strategies and policy strategies analyzed as the dichotomy of ‘rule of law’ and ‘rule by law’ principles. The model can be applied to account for the results of the interaction between the multitude of actors who participate in coordinating and shaping public policy. The workability of the model was tested in the analysis of two cases of LinkedIn and Telegram Internet resources’ blockage by Roskomnadzor. To verify their preliminary propositions, the authors plan to construct network cards with decision-making actors and establish the research design that implies policy network analysis combined with strategies’ equilibrium modeling.

Acknowledgements

The study was carried out with the financial support of RFBR within the framework of the scientific project № 18–011–00705 “Explanatory potential of network theory in political research: methodological synthesis as an analytical strategy”.