Starting July 1, the well-known anti-corruption law will take effect. When he signed the document, the President expressed confidence that it would help combat Ukraine’s perennial curse. Yanukovych emphasized that the law was drafted with help from international organizations specializing in corruption, which, in his view, should lend persuasiveness to its provisions. True, those international organizations themselves—specifically GRECO—expressed displeasure with the new anti-corruption document.
Yanukovych calculated that corruption costs Ukraine 20 billion hryvnias per year. The President considers this bad. He has therefore given the SBU and prosecutor’s office unambiguous instructions regarding the fight against corruption. The President also promised to develop an anti-corruption strategy as soon as possible. Under this strategy, related legislation will be modernized and will form the basis for the work of a future special anti-corruption body, which will be created under the new law. The President also did not forget about citizens, calling on them to report corruption via “hotlines.”
The press identified the law’s main “feature” as the declaration of expenses by officials and their family members. However, it later emerged that only purchases exceeding 150,000 hryvnias need be declared. Meaning, at present this provision has no real significance.
About this law
In my view, the law’s real “feature” is something else entirely. Neither income declarations nor expense declarations have any practical significance as long as the main cause that breeds corruption remains—and more on that below.
As for the law itself, it is undoubtedly a unique and even epoch-making document in some respects. It contains a remarkable definition of corruption, interpreting it as “unjustified interference” by officials. Yet, as we have written before, such a definition contradicts the very essence of the modern understanding of civil servant activity, which demands strict adherence to regulations. Under this understanding, a civil servant cannot “interfere”—whether “justifiably” or, especially, “unjustifiably”—he should only execute what is written in his paperwork.
The law thus fully legalizes any liberties officials take in interpreting and executing various norms, since such liberties can also constitute quite “justified” interference.
In reality, this law was adopted to regulate corrupt activity and attempt to manage it. The need for this is obvious. Our regime requires a vast army of oprichniki to maintain power. However, it is impossible to feed them from the budget, and if they were put on a budget ration, they would simply scatter. Therefore, from its very inception, Ukrainian power has been based on the principle that the official feeds himself. Now this activity has gone too far, and a need arose to manage it—hence this law.
I think everyone knows how difficult and dangerous a bureaucrat’s life is. If officials did not take money from us, one could only pity them, since their existence consists of constant struggle, backstabbing, intrigue, humiliation, and meaningless drudgery. Now this activity has acquired direct legal guidelines in the form of prospects of ending up on the “board of shame,” the need to constantly run to superiors to coordinate what to write in income-expense declarations, and the understanding that everything in one’s career depends on how other officials assess one’s interference—whether as “justified” or “unjustified.” This constitutes a set of rules. And the Ministry of Corruption—or whatever it will be called—that very “authorized body” mentioned in the law will manage this entire process.
It is easy to predict at least two consequences of this law’s operation. First, officials will now be far more eager to unite into obvious and secret syndicates, if only because everyone understands the inevitability of ritual sacrifices in the “fight against corruption” (the necessity for which the law directly provides) and no one wants to become such a sacrifice. Risk minimization for officials consists of uniting, placing their person in the Ministry of Corruption, and generally shifting intraspecies struggle to the highest possible level. Meaning, the very collusion the president so wants to avoid will only strengthen. Second, the very project of managing corruption is doomed from the start. Corruption in our version presupposes the free search for entrepreneurial profit by an official and is incompatible with any centralized management—even of a framework nature.
The cause of corruption
Let us now set aside this ill-fated law and talk, as promised, about the main cause of corruption as it applies to our country. First, let us consider whether it is even possible to do anything about corruption in our conditions if we follow the conventional paradigm. This paradigm is built on the implicit thesis that the norms produced by the state are unconditionally beneficial. Corruption in this paradigm is harmful precisely because it distorts and perverts this activity. It is these views that various international organizations, politicians, experts, and the general public follow. This paradigm assumes that the source of corruption is the official and that corruption is harmful because it distorts the state’s activity, which is beneficial by definition.
A Ukrainian can easily grasp the erroneousness—or more precisely, the one-sidedness—of this paradigm. For this, one need only consider what would happen if all Ukrainian laws and decrees were suddenly executed literally. If a Ukrainian is honest with himself, he will inevitably shudder in horror, since it is not difficult to see that precise and flawless execution of all rules and laws would immediately be followed by chaos, devastation, famine, civil war, an asteroid, and an explosion of the Sun.
Why does this happen? Let me explain using simple ideal models. Any society lives by rules that can be called customary law. Adherence to this law is, in fact, what allows society to exist. Within the framework of our topic, two ideal types of society can be distinguished (which, of course, do not exist in pure form anywhere in reality). The first type is one with predominantly horizontal connections. In such a society, the formation of the authority of superiors (constables, sheriffs, and so on) lies within the direct reach of its members. Superiors in such a society are maintained by its participants and serve to maintain order in those very norms of customary law that people follow in their daily practice.
A society of the second type is distinguished by a large number of vertical connections. Superiors in such a society appear “from above,” and the formation of their duties lies beyond the reach of ordinary people. Usually, such situations arise in societies subject to external occupation or centuries-long self-occupation (China). Numerous historical examples are known of how such systems arise and function. For example, during the Austro-Hungarian occupation of Italy, a previously unseen corruption appeared among Austrian officials. The Austro-Hungarians even established a special shortened term of service for officials in Italy in order to reduce corruption.
In general, in this system, superiors are appointed and fed by the central (external) authority. In this case, the task of ordinary people is to protect themselves and their way of life from the official’s execution of his duties. This task is solved through the systematic bribery of superiors by members of civil society, who, pursuing personal interests, nevertheless significantly paralyze the alien activity of the state.
Note that in both cases, it is about protecting the customary law that people use in their lives. Simply in the first case, the official’s activity falls within the framework of this law—he is, so to speak, generated by it and protects it—while in the second case, people try to protect this law from encroachment on the part of the state.
What to do with it
I think there is no need to say that in Ukraine, for the last couple of hundred years, the second model has held sway. There is also no need to explain that gaining independence changed nothing in this model and even, apparently, aggravated it. From the fact that former imperial officials became, as it were, “our own,” nothing changed. After the collapse of the USSR, Ukrainians quickly recreated the empire (without Moscow) and are now in a mode of self-occupation. We still have not developed that crucial thing that truly changes people’s attitude toward power—the practice of self-governance. Self-governance differs from its imitations primarily in that it is funded directly by those who constitute it. Such a practice did not exist and does not exist in Ukraine, and therefore the old imperial model of state aggression toward society and society’s defense against the state through corruption continues to work.
All anti-corruption ideas that we try to mindlessly borrow were born by people living within a different—“horizontal” model. And this is not surprising, since corruption for that model represents an immediate threat to the living fabric of society and to the customary law it uses. However, as we see, these ideas are poorly suited to our situation.
Of course, theoretically it is possible to “put officials in order”—reduce their numbers, optimize their work, punish them rigorously, pay high salaries, create an electronic government on the internet—but nothing will change as long as the official’s activity itself is destructive in essence, regardless of whether he steals in the process or not. As long as this does not change, corruption will be organically generated “from below,” as a defensive reaction of society to state aggression.
Therefore, if we talk about fighting corruption seriously, it must be conducted in two directions. The first is “from above”—this is reducing the state, and not numerically, but functionally. The second is “from below”—this is developing the practice of self-governance funded by the self-governing. As we see, these tasks themselves go far beyond “fighting corruption.” Corruption in this case is a secondary problem that resolves itself in the course of implementing such a policy.