Anti-Corruption Expertise in Evaluating the Effectiveness of the Anti-Corruption Policy

The effectiveness of currently implemented wide range of strategic measures aimed at reducing the corruption and criminogenic potential in many spheres of life directly depends on their effectiveness in some key areas. The institute of anti-corruption expertise (ACE) of legislation, which now incorporates a considerable theoretical and methodological basis, requires further improvement and elimination of identified drawbacks. An almost decade of its history has been characterized by a steadily growing number of expert evaluations and the corresponding increase in the number of identified corruption-generating factors and the number of changes and amendments to normative acts. However, this dynamics is subject to controversial evaluations by analysts who talk about a routine formalistic approach and stereotyped, one-size-fits-all actions of experts and other parties involved in the multilateral mechanism of ACE. The analysis of information on the websites of professional bodies implementing ACE from the standpoint of quantitative indicators shows that this institute is effective. At the same time, the true criteria of effectiveness, connected with the improvements in the quality of the lawmaking process as a desirable result of implementing ACE, cannot be reduced to the evaluation of quantitative indicators alone. The monitoring of the effectiveness of measures implemented today within the ACE framework duly stresses the qualitative criteria of such effectiveness. Using them in the expert evaluation of municipal normative legal acts (NLA) and draft acts makes it possible to update the task of improving the quality of the lawmaking process at all levels of public administration. Municipal NLAs hold an important place both in the volume of the decisions made and the scope of public relations that they regulate, which sets the task of evaluating the quality of such acts to a new level. The analysis of the regional expert evaluation of municipal NLAs (using the example of Irkutsk Region) made it possible to compare the existing practices in this sphere and to identify typical circumstances that reduce the anti-criminogenic potential of ACE. The expertise aimed at identifying the corruption-generating factors in the law enforcement acts - in the personified decisions of the municipal bodies - is not common practice. At the same time, such NLAs at the individual level act as serious regulators of the legal sphere of peoples lives because they are connected with decisions on the provision of state support, the allocation of quotas, the distribution of expenses, etc.