FROM ANONYMOUS DENUNCIATIONS TO DIGITAL TRANSPARENCY: THE EVOLUTION OF THE CITIZENS’ RIGHT TO PETITION — FROM AN INSTRUMENT OF REPRESSION TO A CONSTITUTIONAL GUARANTEE

Abstract

Research gap: despite abundant work on the administrative-legal status of the petitioner, Uzbek academic literature lacks a comprehensive theoretical model linking the repressive experience of anonymous denunciation during the Soviet period with the modern digital model of state identification and accountability. Methodology: historical-legal, comparative-legal, normative-dogmatic and statistical analysis. Novelty: the evolution of the institution of petitioning is theoretically substantiated for the first time as a transition from the “anonymity–abuse” model to the “identification–accountability” model; the author proposes the operational categories of “digital accountability” and the “principle of historical memory” — derived from J. Balkin’s concept of constitutional memory — together with a seven-stage conceptual model of the procedural chain of appeal. Key findings: the appeals system of the repressive period and that of New Uzbekistan represent structurally opposed types of state–individual relationship, confirmed by historical, normative and statistical data; a comparison with five foreign digital-identification models (Germany, France, Estonia, the Republic of Korea, Canada) and with the literature on digital constitutionalism (Lessig, Mayer-Schönberger and Cukier, Noveck, Susskind) demonstrates the international universality of “identification as a condition of accountability,” while also exposing its flip side — expanded surveillance capacity — which is counterbalanced by the principle of “digital equality.”