ANTI-CORRUPTION POLICY AND SECURITYZATION OF SOCIAL PROBLEMS

Anti-corruption policy and discourse constitutes key elements of the political-administrative framework of neoliberalism on the global and nation-state level. At the same time, scholarly consideration of this topic requires disengagement from its normative ideological premise, which seeks to legitimize a particular level of the state administrative efficiency. In that context, corruption can be viewed as a social problem actively constructed by various public policy actors using a range of rhetorical strategies. Successful "public career" of a socially constructed problem, and its chances "to make it" into the institutional agenda of government bodies is determined both by the resources of the actors advancing it, and by essential elements of the problem - the means, by which a particular segment of social reality is thematically defined. If the scholarly focus is placed on institutional actors that participate in implementing various political courses, the phenomenon of corruption can be named "a convenient enemy" of the state. Reconstructing strategic behavior of defense and law enforcement agencies of modern states in the public sphere allows us to focus on the strategies they use to protect their stable functions, and building up careers of their members on the notion of the permanence of these social problems. Therefore, the agencies face a dual task: to constantly assert the gravity of corruption as a major problem while demonstrating the effectiveness of administrative and law enforcement practices of confronting it. Thus, corruption as a state's "convenient enemy" can potentially be subjected to securitization and designated as a security threat. Corruption as a securitized problem then becomes an activity target for professional technocrats and special services, which minimize involvement of civil society representatives in the process of solving the problem. Ultimately, the logic of securitization could lead to agency's monopoly in formulating problems and means to resolve them, and transforming relevant political procedures into extraordinary emergency based measures.