Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-8bhkd Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-09T13:45:00.891Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Explaining Patterns of Corruption in the Russian Regions

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 June 2011

Phyllis Dininio  and
Robert Orttung
Robert Orttung
Affiliation:
American University American University
Get access

Abstract

Corruption is one of the key problems facing the Russian state as it seeks to evolve out of its socialist past. Naturally, regional patterns of corruption exist across a country as large and diverse as the Russian Federation. To explain these variations, the authors analyze 2002 data from Transparency International and the Information for Democracy Foundation that provide the first effort to measure differences in the incidence of corruption across forty Russian regions. They find that corruption in Russia is fueled by the size of government and by the level of development. Within each region, the amount of corruption increases as the number of bureaucrats grows and gross regional product per capita decreases. Russian policymakers can therefore work to reduce corruption by effectively reforming or scaling back bureaucracies and by encouraging economic development outside of the key centers of Moscow and St. Petersburg.

Type
Research Article
Information
World Politics , Volume 57 , Issue 4 , July 2005 , pp. 500 - 529
Copyright
Copyright © Trustees of Princeton University 2005

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Mauro, Paolo, “The Effects of Corruption on Growth, Investment, and Government Expenditure: A Cross-Country Analysis,” in Elliott, Kimberly Ann, ed., Corruption and the Global Economy (Washington, D.C.: Institute for International Economics, 1997)Google Scholar; Wei, Shang-Jin, “Corruption in Economic Development: Beneficial Grease, Minor Annoyance, or Major Obstacle?” (Paper presented at the Workshop on Integrity in Governance in Asia, Bangkok, June 29-July 1, 1998)Google Scholar; Kaufmann, Daniel, Kraay, Aart, and Zoido-Lobaton, Pablo, “Governance Matters,” Policy Research Working Paper, no. 2196 (Washington, D.C.: World Bank, 1999)Google Scholar.

2 Transparency International, Corruption Perceptions Index 2004, http://www.transparency.org/policy_and_research/surveys_indices/cpi/2004; and Corruption Perceptions Index 2003, http://www.transparency.org/policy_and_research/surveys_indices/cpi/2003 (both accessed March 7,2006).

3 Kaufmann, Daniel, Kraay, Aart, and Mastruzzi, Massimo, “Governance Matters III: Governance Indicators for 1996-2002,” Policy Research Working Paper, no. 3106 (Washington, D.C.: World Bank, 2003)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

4 Freedom House, Nations in Transit, 2003, www.freedomhouse.org/research/nattransit.htm (accessed March 5, 2004).

5 Coulloudon, Virginie, “Russia's Distorted Anti-corruption Campaigns,” in Kotkin, Stephen and Sajo, Andras, eds., Political Corruption in Transition (Budapest: Central European University Press, 2002)Google Scholar.

6 Granik, Irina, “Bortsy s korruptsiei ne nashli obshchego iazyka,” Kommersant, November 24, 2004.Google Scholar For the list of countries that have signed and ratified the UN Convention against Corruption, see http://www.unodc.org/unodc/crime_signatures_corruption.html (accessed December 11, 2005). For the Council of Europe's Criminal Law Convention on Corruption, see http://conventions.coe. int/Treaty/Commun/ChercheSig.asp?NT=173&CM=18cDF=&CL=ENG (accessed December 11, 2005).

7 Transparency International and INDEM Foundation, “Regional'nyi indeksy korruptsii,” October 9, 2002, http://www.transparency.org.ru/DOC/Presentation_index.doc (accessed December 11, 2005).

8 For efforts to explain these variations, see Stoner-Weiss, Kathryn, Local Heroes: The Political Economy of Russian Regional Governance (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997)Google Scholar; Gel'man, V., Ryzhenkov, S, Bri, M., Rossiia regionov; transformatsiia politicheskikh rezhimov (Russia of the regions: The transformation of political regimes) (Moscow: Ves’ Mir, 2000)Google Scholar; and Petro, Nicolai N., Crafting Democracy: How Novgorod Has Coped with Rapid Social Change (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2004)Google Scholar.

9 Salagaev, Aleksandr, “Ruka ruku moet: neformal'nie sviazi organizovannykh prestupnykh grup-pirovok s pravookhranitel'nymi organami respubliki Tatarstan” (Manuscript, Center for Analytical Research, Kazan, 2004)Google Scholar, http://www.american.edu/traccc/resources/publications.html (accessed December 11, 2005); and LVovich, Ye. V., “Korruptsiia v VUZakh” (Manuscript, Saratov State Academy of Law, November 21, 2004), http://sartraccc.sgap.ru/Pub/lvovich(21-ll-04).htm (accessed December 11, 2005)Google Scholar.

10 Opinion poll conducted by the Yurii Levada Analytical Center, “Doverie Rossiian institutam vlasti,” September 27, 2004, http://www.levada.ru/press/2004092702.html (accessed July 17, 2005). The poll included 2,107 residents of Russia and was conducted September 1-15, 2004.

11 See, for example, most of the chapters in Heidenheimer, Arnold J., ed., Political Corruption: Readings in Comparative Analysis (New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction Books, 1978)Google Scholar.

12 See, for example, Transparency International, http://www.transparency.org/news_room/faq/ about_corruption (accessed December 11,2005); USAID, http://www.usaid.gov/our_work/democracy_ and_governance/technical_areas/anti-corruption/ (accessed December 11, 2005); and World Bank, wwwl.worldbank.org/publicsector/anticorrupt/ (accessed December 11,2005).

13 J. S. Nye, “Corruption and Political Development: A Cost-Benefit Analysis,” in Heidenheimer (fn. 11), 566-67.

14 Transparency International and INDEM Foundation (fn. 7).

15 Treisman, Daniel, “The Causes of Corruption: A Cross-national Study,” Journal of Public Economics 76, no. 3 (2000), 433–35CrossRefGoogle Scholar; World Bank, Anti-corruption in Transition: A Contribution to the Policy Debate (Washington, D.C.: World Bank, 2000), 28.Google Scholar

16 Treisman (fn. 15), 439.

17 Abed, George T. and Davoodi, Hamid R., “Corruption, Structural Reforms, and Economic Performance in the Transition Economies,” Working Paper, no. 00/132 (Washington, D.C.: IMF, July 2000)Google Scholar.

18 Treisman (fn. 15), 429.

19 Gosudarstvennyi komitet Rossiiskoi Federatsii po statistike (Goskomstat), Regtony Rossii: ofitsial'noe izdanie 2001 (Regions of Russia: Official publication 2001) (Moscow: Goskomstat, 2001)Google Scholar.

20 During many transitions from communism, for example, budget shortfalls meant that public sector workers were not paid for months at a time, which made bureaucrats more vulnerable to corruption. See World Bank (fn. 15), 29.

21 Jongsoon Jin, “Corruption and the Time Horizons of Politicians” (Ph.D. diss., American University, 2005).

22 World Bank (fn. 15), 20.

23 Johnston, Michael, “‘Micro’ and ‘Macro’ Possibilities for Reform,” Corruption and Reform 7, no. 3 (1993), 198;Google Scholar and Huntington, Samuel, Political Order in Changing Societies (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1968), 66.Google Scholar

24 Treisman (fn. 15), 404.

25 Kang, David, Crony Capitalism (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 46;Google ScholarAdes, Alberto and Telia, Rafael Di, “Rents, Competition and Corruption,” American Economic Review 89, no. 4 (1999)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

26 Jin (fn. 21), 168.

27 World Bank (fn. 15), 28.

28 Goskomstat 2003 (fn. 19), 414-15, 418, 420; and Popov, Vladimir, “Reform Strategies and Economic Performance of Russia's Regions,” World Development 29, no. 5 (2001), 877.Google Scholar

29 Tanzi, Vito, “Corruption, Governmental Activities, and Markets,” Working Paper 99 (Washington, D.C.: IMF, 1994)Google Scholar.

30 Treisman (fn. 15), 414, 436.

31 Segal, Lydia G., Battling Corruption in America's Public Schools (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 2004), 8.Google Scholar

32 Ibid., 66.

33 Gosudarstvennyi komitet Rossiiskoi Federatsii po statistike (Goskomstat), Sostav rabotnikov, zameshchavsbikh gosudarstvennye i munitsipal'nye dolzbnosti, po polu, vozrastu, stazhu raboty, urovniu obrazovanna na 1 ianvaria 2002 goda (The composition of employees holding state and municipal positions, by gender, age, length of service, and education level on January 1, 2002) (Moscow: Goskomstat, 2002).

34 For a fuller analysis of the Russian bureaucracy, see Brym, Robert J. and Gimpelson, Vladimir, “The Size Composition, and Dynamics of the Russian State Bureaucracy in the 1990s,” Slavic Review 63 (Spring 2004)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. By international standards, the Russian bureaucracy is quite small: Russia's public administration is only 1.2 percent of the labor force, compared with 10.0 percent for the twenty-one Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries. The problem is the composition of the Russian bureaucracy, with few qualified employees and high turnover, rather than its absolute overall size.

35 Treisman, Daniel, “Decentralization and the Quality of Government” (Manuscript, Department of Political Science, University of California, Los Angeles, 2000)Google Scholar; and Jin (fn. 21), 123-24.

36 Rose-Ackerman, Susan, Corruption and Government: Causes, Consequences, and Reform (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 114;CrossRefGoogle Scholar Kang (fn. 25).

37 For a discussion of the negative consequences of state capture in the Russian regions, see Irina Slinko, Evgeny Yakovlev, and Ekaterina Zhuravskaya, “Institutional Subversion: Evidence from Russian Regions” (Manuscript, Center for Economic and Financial Research, New Economic School, Moscow, March 25,2003).

38 Kang (fn. 25), 13-14.

39 Ibid., 14.

40 Tsebelis, George, Veto Players: How Political Institutions Work (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2002)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

41 Maclntyre, Andrew, The Power of Institutions: Political Architecture and Governance (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2003), 37.Google Scholar

42 Available at http://www.isn.ethz.ch/news/rrr/ (accessed December 11, 2005).

43 Orttung, Robert W., Lussier, Danielle N., and Paretskaya, Anna, The Republics and Regions of the Russian Federation: A Guide to Politics, Policies, and Leaders (Armonk, N.Y.: M. E. Sharpe, 2000)Google Scholar. Turovskii's rankings are posted at www.politcom.ru.

44 Orttung, Robert W., “Business and Politics in the Russian Regions,” Problems of Post-Communism 51 (March-April 2004)Google Scholar.

45 Rose-Ackerman, Susan, Corruption: A Study in Political Economy (New York: Academic Press, 1978), 213.Google Scholar

46 On the connection between participation and accountability, see, for example, Pennock, J. Roland, Democratic Political Theory (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1979), 441-42.Google Scholar

47 We are grateful to Andrew Konitzer, who recently completed his doctoral dissertation on Russia's gubernatorial elections, for supplying these turnout figures.

48 http://www.freepress.ru/arh/book_2000/002.shtml (accessed December 11, 2005).

49 Karlekar, Karen Deutsch, ed., Freedom of the Press 2003: A Global Survey of Media Independence (Lanham, Md.: Rowman and Littlefield, 2003), 1.Google Scholar

50 The data have already had a useful impact in Russia, where they have drawn analytical attention to the issue of corruption among policymakers and the public. The regional data angered some governors to the extent that they destroyed the print run of the newspapers containing them, according to INDEM director Satarov. See Satarov, Georgii, “Samye zhadnye chinovniki zhivut v Pitere,” Novye izvestiia, August 25, 2003.Google Scholar

51 OSCE/ODIHR Election Observation Mission Final Report, Russian Federation Presidential Elections March 14, 2004, 1, report issued in Warsaw on June 2, 2004, http://www.osce.org/documents/ odihr/2004/06/3033_en.pdf (accessed December 11,2005).

52 Although the researchers claimed that this sample size was unprecedented, it did not meet sample size requirements in all regions, making some of the findings indicative but not statistically significant.

53 For a critical analysis of using perception-based data in regard to the Russian regions, see Luneev, Viktor V., “Indeksy korruptsii,” Organizovannaia prestupnost', terrorizm, i korruptsiia, no. 1 (2003), 126-28Google Scholar; and Endre Sik, “The Bad, the Worse and the Worst: Guesstimating the Level of Corruption,” in Kotkin and Sajó (fn. 5).

54 For a detailed discussion of how Tl/iNDEM constructed the corruption indices on the base of the survey questions, see Transparency International—Russia, “The Methods Applied to Implement the Project ‘Indices of Corruption in Russia's Regions/” http://www.transparency.org.ru/proj_index.asp (accessed December 11, 2005).

55 Karklins, Rasma, “Typology of Post-Communist Corruption,” Problems of Post-Communism 49, no. 4 (2002), 31.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

56 Transparency International—Russia (fn. 54).

57 On the authoritarian nature of Tatarstan, see Ortfung, Robert W., ed., The Republics and Regions of the Russian Federation:A Guide to Politics, Policies, and Leaders (Armonk, N.Y.: M. E. Sharpe, 2000)Google Scholar. On Bashkortostan, see Hale, Henry E., “The Bellwether Battle for Bashkortostan,” PONARS Policy Memo, no. 293 (November 2003)Google Scholar, http://www.csis.org/media/csis/pubs/pm_0293.pdf (accessed December 11, 2005).

38 On criminality in Primorskii Krai, see, for example, Orttung, Robert, “Alleged Crime Figure Seeks Mayor's Office in Far East,” Russian Regional Report, June 8, 2004,Google Scholar http://www.isn.ethz.ch/researchpub/publihouse/rrr/docs/rrr040608.pdf (accessed December 11, 2005).

59 We chose ordinary least square estimates because they are efficient with small numbers of cases and are easy to interpret.

60 This number is the R square generated from running the regression with only two independent variables: the per capita gross regional product and the number of bureaucrats.

61 Rossii, Goskomstat, Regiony Rossii: sotsial'no-ekonomkheskie pokazateli, 2003 (Moscow: Goskomstat, 2003), 30.Google Scholar

62 World Bank researchers found that twenty-three large private owners control 38 percent of employment and 36 percent of sales in their sample of thirteen hundred large firms; World Bank, “Draft: From Transition to Development: A Country Economic Memorandum for the Russian Federation,” April 2004, http://www.worldbank.org.ru/ECA/Russia.nsf/bef4f7b517099c0a8S256bfb006e03e0/ fe49ab3fb21ae703c3256e6fD0410397/$FILE/Country%20Economic%20Memorandum%20(English).pdf (accessed December 11,2005).

63 Jin (fn. 21), 89-91.

64 World Bank (fn. 15), 26-31; András Sajó, “Clientelism and Extortion: Corruption in Transition,” in Kotkin and Sajó (fn. 5).

65 Daniel Kaufmann, Aart Kraay, and Pablo Zoido-Lobaton, “Aggregating Governance Indicators,” Policy Research Paper, no. 2195 (Washington, D.C.: World Bank, 1999).

66 See Segal (fn. 31), 170-76.

67 Hanson, Philip, “Federalism with a Russian Face: Regional Inequality and Regional Budgets in Russia,” in Reddaway, Peter and Orttung, Robert, eds., The Dynamics of Russian Politics: Putin's Federal-Regional Reforms (Lanham, Md.: Rowman and Littlefield, 2005), 2:Google Scholar 302.