The Political "Destruction" of Statehood, or The "Noah's Ark" of Postmodernity

The article considers the grounds and consequences of the sustainable influence of reference groups of owners and controllers of large public resources on public decision-making. By giving a certain flexibility to hierarchical management structures, these communities - network by nature -generate the effect of "intertwined" institutions, which under the informal pressure of such associations begin to consistently lose their civil functionality and transform the direction of political and administrative actions. At the same time, there are no proper administrative and legal tools to control these network raiders in the state apparatus. The sustained pressure of network associations on public institutions takes decision-making centers beyond the administrative apparatus; a space of "decision nodes" is formed that de facto controls the formation of the political agenda and the distribution and redistribution of public goods and resources in favor of the privileged groups of society. Ultimately, the functioning of "decision nodes" contributes to the formation of a special space of business communications, acting along with the official hierarchy and organizing the flow of redistribution of resources outside the official system of public administration (at times, even without authorized officials' participation). Unlike scholars who consider these practices a deviation and a temporary departure of the ruling elite out of control, the article argues that these processes mark the emergence of a new historical trend in the organization of public power, which does not need the administrative vertical and the supreme power. The network type of distribution of public resources is already turning a number of individual states into a separate structure protected from society, a kind of "Noah's Ark" for a narrow group of beneficiaries who control "decision nodes" and use them as tools for the distribution of public goods and resources in their favor. In fact, this means not only the destruction of public norms and institutions, but also the gradual disintegration of the state itself as a special territorial form of communication between the authorities and the population that supports social order.

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