Margolin A.M.

The article examines a meritocratic approach, a system in which a person’s career growth and prosperity are determined by their level of professionalism and an objective assessment of their achievements. Meritocracy is currently experiencing a peak in popularity. However, it is crucial to be aware of the potential risks of completely trusting in the principles of meritocracy. These risks encompass the impracticality of establishing equitable initial prospects for candidates pursuing career advancement; bureaucracy and corruption, which often result in the composing of reports on achievements that are frequently fictitious; an emphasis on personal accomplishment that supersedes collective achievements; subjective evaluation of merits; and the application of double standards in the interpretation of facts and regulations, contingent on the interests of the interpreter. An unbiased discussion of these issues should help to develop criteria for selecting leaders of change. These leaders should best represent the ideals of meritocracy. These include moral and professional authority, strategic thinking, the ability to anticipate crises, effective management, responsibility, decisiveness, and stress resistance. To systematize the primary risks of meritocracy and the standards for advancing change leaders, the article uses the 5×5 method, which was introduced by H. Mintzberg and modified by the author.

The article demonstrates how the state’s role in society is objectively growing in the face of new social, political, technological, economic, environmental, and other challenges. This, in turn, imposes qualitatively new requirements for selecting and promoting leaders in the public administration system. This issue can be resolved using the meritocracy principle; however, because of several drawbacks noted in numerous studies, this principle cannot be used as the sole criterion for problem-solving. It is suggested that these criteria, which can be highly representative given the current procedures for professional diagnostics of civil servants and the identification of their leadership attributes, consist of the presence of strategic vision and the ability to make managerial decisions based on the harmonization of long-term interests of the state, business and civil society; the ability to solve complicated economic, social, and environmental problems in a complex; the capability to recognize and solve emerging challenges before they are transformed into emergencies; the presence of skills of effective management and moral authority.

Acquiring sovereignty is the top priority for socio-economic development in the new geopolitical reality characterized by the shift from a unipolar to a polycentric world. This is necessary to accomplish the Russian Federation's national goals. Furthermore, if the Russian Federation's military-political sovereignty is undeniable,then some issues,primarilyin education,must be resolved to consistentlyguarantee various forms of sovereignty, including technological, financial, trade, economic, informational, cultural, and personnel sovereignty. Among them, the formation of a new managerial elite possessing clusters of professional competencies with the following characteristics deserves special attention: ethics and values - «from the contemporary cult of consumption to achieving sustainable development goals and guaranteeing security»; interdisciplinary knowledge and strategic thinking - from an emphasis on maximizing short-term benefits to long-term priorities; communication - from excessive administration and authoritarian management to comprehending the growing demands of a contemporarymanager,the growth of digital competencies,and a corporate culture; effective management skills - minimizing professional risks, reducing the fear of making decisions, taking responsibilityfor inaction,and fostering trust between the government,private sector,and civil society; efficient resource management ,including resource conservation and waste reduction.

The external and internal conditions of the domestic economy are changing dynamically. These changes should be considered when adjusting the existing and developing new mechanisms to ensure the investment attractiveness of the economy. These also include the Federal Law “On Protecting and Encouraging Capital Investments in the Russian Federation”, implementation of special investment contracts, and further development of the “Project Finance Factory” program. The problem of improving the quality of investment policy should be addressed not only through the development of a system of measures aimed at the development of investment legislation and increasing state support for investment activities. The “evolution of values” is of fundamental importance here and contributes to the formation of an investment mentality. Strategic goals will dominate over short-term ones, and the strengthening of trust between the state, business, and civil society will be transformed into a real improvement of the investment climate, reduction of risk premiums and interest rates, as well as an increase in the volume of investments in public-private partnership projects. A necessary condition for the “evolution of values” is the creation of a specific system of education.

Practical use of the most well-known country ratings does not always allow obtaining objective information about the real situation in various countries and assessing the prospects for their development. Popular wisdom expressed by the aphorism ‘We have not noticed how the truth has been replaced with ratings’ is becoming increasingly popular. The article proposes a tool for analyzing the relationship between the positions of different countries in the most popular ratings, based on the use of a matrix of paired correlation coefficients, assessing their significance according to the Pearson criterion and the strength of the correlation connection on the Cheddock scale. Based on the calculations, it was found that the dynamics of the countries advancement in the Doing Business ranking did not have statistically significant correlation with almost any ratings and macroeconomic indicators characterizing the real dynamics of socio-economic development. Shortcomings in the methods of ranking countries by prosperity, social development, rule of law index, level of perception of corruption, global happiness index are considered. Arguments are made that once the Coronavirus pandemic has been overcome, it is more likely that ratings will be more in demand to assess the quality of national security and the extent to which sustainable development goals have been achieved. It is proved that it is advisable to include the Global competitiveness rating, Human development index and SDG index as the most promising ratings that clearly demonstrate the country’s specific achievements in economic reforms and the growth of its international prestige.

The author presents his vision of a network academy of public administration for the CIS countries; its main task will be realization, mostly of the professional development programs, as opposed to various existing network universities that are oriented at higher education. The key idea within the concept is transfer of credits from short-term training courses into high-level programs including master's programs and MBA, and the use of distance learning technologies for shaping of universal professional competencies of the students. The principles allowing to achieve the maximum efficiency during the development of the joint programs of the FVE (further vocational education) are proposed by the author. Besides, synchronization of the programs providing the unified set of knowledge and graduates' competencies is significant. The creation of the network academy of public administration allows to improve mutual trust between states and high rank public officials in various government bodies; it will promote higher speed of the integrational processes and confidential contacts in the economic sphere, provide stability and synergy effect of the economic development of the CIS member countries, affecting positively the competitiveness of each state. Among the existing problems of the present day of creation of the network academy necessity of finding the source of stable and sufficient financing, as well as the elimination of contradictions in the national legislations of the CIS countries regulating the educational activities are highlighted by the author.

The article explores the adaptation of the multicriteria analysis, a methodology used to evaluate the expediency of support to socially important investment projects from EU structural funds, to Russian conditions, as well as the application of budget efficiency indicators to provide better rationalization for managerial decisions concerning the coordination of long term interests of all participants of a government programme.

In the second part of the article (the first part was published in Issue Four of the Public Service Magazine) the author considers the two last elements in the 'corruption/infrastructure/innovations' triad and comes to the conclusion that the indispensable condition for the transition from crisis prevention measures to the creation of a competitive economy is a rapid recovery of trust between the state and businesses, the focus of joint effort to develop internal markets, key to which is countering corruption, creation of new and modernization of existing infrastructure, intensification of innovative activity in priority areas of global competition.

The article explores the key limitations to increasing competitiveness of the Russian economy and ways to overcome them. Special focus is on improving anti-corruption policy, industrial infrastructure development and creating conditions to bolster innovation.

Распространенная мотивация инициаторов законопроектов по амнистии капиталов заключается в возможности легализации и налогообложения "теневых" доходов. Однако в российских условиях такая мотивация не является единственной. Принципиальное значение имеет повышение взаимного доверия граждан и государства, которое в стратегической перспективе может стать более значимым фактором социально-экономического развития, чем однократно легализованные капиталы, вовлеченные в хозяйственный оборот. Нельзя сбрасывать со счетов и оценку возможностей использования амнистируемых средств для увеличения объемов инвестиций в основной капитал.

The unsuccessful experience of liberalization of the energy market in the state of California cannot cast doubt on the very idea of a phased introduction of competitive relations in the areas of generation and sale of electricity, since it is a direct consequence of gross errors made in the development and practical application of appropriate state regulation measures. It is precisely from the point of view of eliminating the possibility of repeating these mistakes that the California experience is of particular interest in planning reforms in the Russian energy sector.