Towards Effective Anti-Corruption Strategies in Ukraine: Removing the Cornerstone without Toppling the Building

Abstract

The work presents a theoretical framework, and offers a tentative analytical framework for building strategies for combating systemic corruption of the kind that is observed in Ukraine. It argues that, as in some other countries undergoing the process of modernization, corruption in Ukraine plays an important social role by filling gaps between formal (often impracticable) rules, and informal ones. At the same time, it creates incentives and provides the means for maintaining and widening these gaps, as in the critically important case of “capture” of the state by extorting officials endowed with abnormal administrative discretion and affiliated with crony businesses. Systemic factors of such kind make corruption so persistent and anti-corruption so necessary for development.