"Thank you doesn’t butter
my bread"
Corruption in Russian
culture is pervasive to the extent that a list of phrases
such as this one had to be banned from government officials’ usage by the
Ministry of Labor[i]. In the order
of historical significance though, most instances of corruption in Russia
happened during the Catastroika[ii].
Oligarchs and Clans (Johnston, 2005) accumulated state wealth during a
period which was marked by the move from a planned to a market economy.
There was major economic downturn causing widespread inequality, unemployment
and organized crime. State assets were privatized, and so were they in the
hands of a few business clans. Reconstruction
of the state meant a weakening authority and institutional capacity, which
furthered corruption and violence.
The problem was identified to have Soviet
roots, emerging from the powerful state machine with an authoritative and
corrupt bureaucracy, which was answerable to no one. (Johnston, 2005) Some of the most prominent cases which came to
light include the case of Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the richest ‘‘oligarch’’ in
2003, who amassed considerable wealth through control of Siberian oil fields while
privatizing state assets. Similarly, another accused, Oleg Deripaska was part
of the takeover of the aluminum industry. The trend today is not very
dissimilar - Putin’s inner circles have been implicated in the Panama Papers to
have dwindled 2 billion dollars in offshore trails[iii].
Selective anti-oligarch measures happened till 2004 but corruption was so
rampant that its evidence became a saleable commodity. “Kompromat”, or
‘compromising materials’ was widely used as an effective threat to extract
rents for covering up the case of corruption.
(Johnston, 2005)
As anticipated by the West, the shift to the
market economy in Russia and the command of the invisible hand did not
bring about a collective social optimum. (Varese, 1997) There was a huge
increase in the number of lobbies created by companies to evade taxes and break
government regulations. (Varese, 1997) On
the one hand, an indication towards the general state of lawlessness and
insecurity, the inefficiency of the legal state apparatus and a decay of an “older
normative framework” as interpersonal relationships and trust loosened in
the midst of rapidly expanding economic potentials was noted. (Johnston, 2005) At
the same time, Varese identifies a new kind of co-operation that emerged in
the competitive economy. Corporates, who were chiefly the formerly
influential soviet officials, realized the incentives of bribing and crimes
against law and demanded more trust and state protection, leading to widespread
crime and corruption. (Varese, 1997)
The story unveiled here, is clearly then not
the same as a corruption scandal in a Western democracy. Corruption could be
characterized as an exception to the norm of universalism in liberal societies,
where certain individuals pay bribes to get a special treatment. (Mungiu, 2006)
This cannot be the typology of corruption in post-communist regimes like
Russia. In these countries, people have to pay bribes to get equal treatment as
their other privileged counterparts since particularism is the norm. (Mungiu,
2006) Therefore, any amount of democratization and anti-corruption measures
will not work unless the original distribution of power, spheres of influence
and particularistic ideals are questioned.
Our case of corruption is a case of “systemic
decay”, as postulated by Aristotle or Machiavelli. (Euben, 1978) MacIntyre puts
forward that politics should be a pursuit of certain “goods of excellence” –
agreement on values, say, “non-corrupt” which forms the basis of the social
contract, which would lead “goods of effectiveness” - the benefits achieved by
the society as a whole as a result of practicing the virtues, say, reduced
inequality. (Knight, 1998) For a typology of corruption that is inherently
political, it thus follows that we need goods of excellence, i.e.,
anti-corruption measures that are necessarily political too. These could
include ardent public demands for increased accountancy and transparency of the
transactions of the oligarchs and clans. One could also legally increase the
“butter in the bread” of civil servants to reduce the incentives for being
corrupt and to strengthen the law enforcing institutions.
Citations:
1. Johnston, Michael. Syndromes
of corruption: wealth, power, and democracy. Cambridge University Press,
2005.
2. Knight, Kelvin. The MacIntyre Reader. Notre Dame: University of Notre
Dame Press, 1998.
3. Mungiu,
Alina. "Corruption: Diagnosis and treatment." Journal of
democracy17.3 (2006): 86-99.
4. Euben,
J. Peter. "On political corruption." The Antioch Review 36.1 (1978): 103-118.
5. Varese,
Federico. "The Transition to the Market and Corruption in Post–socialist
Russia." Political Studies 45.3 (1997): 579-596.
[i] See Eldem, Miriam, “Russian officials told to stop using phrases
linked to corruption” http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/mar/07/russian-officials-phrases-linked-corruption
and http://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-news-from-elsewhere-24913099
for more information.
[ii] See Milne, Seumas,
“Catastroika has not only been a disaster for Russia” in The Guardian, 16, August,
2001.
[iii] See Harding, Luke, “Revealed: the $2bn offshore trail that leads to
Vladimir Putin” http://www.theguardian.com/news/2016/apr/03/panama-papers-money-hidden-offshore
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