Explaining patterns of corruption in the Russian regions

World Politics

Volumn 57, Issue 4, 2005, Pages 500-529

  Dininio, Phyllis ^a   Orttung, Robert ^a,b  

^a AMERICAN UNIVERSITY   (United States)

^b ETH ZURICH   (Switzerland)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

ADMINISTRATIVE REFORM; BUREAUCRACY; CORRUPTION; STRUCTURAL CHANGE;

EURASIA; RUSSIAN FEDERATION;

EID: 33744968850     PISSN: 00438871     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1353/wp.2006.0008     Document Type: Article

References (85)

1. Paol. Mauro, "The Effects of Corruption on Growth, Investment, and Government Expenditure: A Cross-Country Analysis," in Kimberly Ann Elliott, ed., Corruption and the Global Economy (Washington, D.C.: Institute for International Economics, 1997);
2. Shang-Jin Wei, "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);
3. Daniel Kaufmann, Aart Kraay, and Pablo Zoido-Lobaton, "Governance Matters," Policy Research Working Paper, no. 2196 (Washington, D.C.: World Bank, 1999).
4. Transparency International, Corruption Perceptions Index 2004, http:// www.transparency.org/policy_and_research/surveys_indices/cpi/2004;
5. and Corruption Perceptions Index 2003, http://www.transparency.org/ policy_and_research/surveys_indices/cpi/2003 (both accessed March 7, 2006).
6. Daniel Kaufmann, Aart Kraay, and Massimo Mastruzzi, "Governance Matters III: Governance Indicators for 1996-2002," Policy Research Working Paper, no. 3106 (Washington, D.C.: World Bank, 2003).
7. Freedom House, Nations in Transit, 2003, www.freedomhouse.org/research/ nattransit.htm (accessed March 5, 2004).
8. Virginie Coulloudon, "Russia's Distorted Anti-corruption Campaigns," in Stephen Kotkin and András Sajó, eds., Political Corruption in Transition (Budapest: Central European University Press, 2002).
9. Irina Granik, "Bortsy s korruptsiei ne nashli obshchego iazyka," Kommersant, November 24, 2004. 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=1&DF=&CL=ENG (accessed December 11, 2005).
10. For the Council of Europe's Criminal Law Convention on Corruption, see http://conventions.coe.int/Treaty/Commun/ ChercheSig.asp?NT=173&CM=1&DF=&CL=ENG (accessed December 11, 2005).
11. 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).
12. For efforts to explain these variations, see Kathryn Stoner-Weiss, Local Heroes: The Political Economy of Russian Regional Governance (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997);
13. V. Gel'man, S Ryzhenkov, M. Bri, Rossiia regionov: transformatsiia politicheskikh rezhimov (Russia of the regions: The transformation of political regimes) (Moscow: Ves' Mir, 2000);
14. and Nicolai N. Petro, Crafting Democracy: How Novgorod Has Coped with Rapid Social Change (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2004).
15. Aleksandr Salagaev, "Ruka ruku moet: neformal'nie sviazi organizovannykh prestupnykh gruppirovok s pravookhranitel'nymi organami respubliki Tatarstan" (Manuscript, Center for Analytical Research, Kazan, 2004), http://www.american.edu/traccc/resources/publications.html (accessed December 11, 2005);
16. and Ye. V. L'vovich, "Korruptsiia v VUZakh" (Manuscript, Saratov State Academy of Law, November 21, 2004), http:// sartraccc.sgap.ru/Pub/lvovich(21-11-04).htm (accessed December 11, 2005).
17. 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.
18. See for example, most of the chapters in Arnold J. Heidenheimer, ed., Political Corruption: Readings in Comparative Analysis (New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction Books, 1978).
19. See, for example, Transparency International, http:// www.transparency.org/news_room/faq/about_corruption (accessed December 11, 2005);
20. USAID, http://www.usaid.gov/our_work/democracy_and_governance/ technical_areas/anti-corruption/ (accessed December 11, 2005);
21. and World Bank, www1.worldbank.org/publicsector/anticorrupt/ (accessed December 11, 2005).
22. J. S. Nye, "Corruption and Political Development: A Cost-Benefit Analysis," in Heidenheimer (fn. 11), 566-67.
23. "Transparency International and INDEM Foundation (fn. 7).
24. "Daniel Treisman, "The Causes of Corruption: A Cross-national Study," Journal of Public Economics 76, no. 3 (2000), 433-35;
25. World Bank, Anti-corruption in Transition: A Contribution to the Policy Debate (Washington, D.C.: World Bank, 2000), 28.
26. Treisman (fn. 15), 439.
27. George T. Abed and Hamid R. Davoodi, "Corruption, Structural Reforms, and Economic Performance in the Transition Economies," Working Paper, no. 00/132 (Washington, D.C.: IMF, July 2000).
28. Treisman (fn. 15), 429.
29. Gosudarstvennyi komitet Rossiiskoi Federatsii po statistike (Goskomstat), Regiony Rossii: ofitsial'noe izdanie 2001 (Regions of Russia: Official publication 2001) (Moscow: Goskomstat, 2001).
30. 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.
31. Jongsoon Jin, "Corruption and the Time Horizons of Politicians" (Ph.D. diss., American University, 2005).
32. World Bank (fin. 15), 20.
33. Michael Johnston, "'Micro' and 'Macro' Possibilities for Reform," Corruption and Reform 7, no. 3 (1993), 198;
34. and Samuel Huntington, Political Order in Changing Societies (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1968), 66.
35. Treisman (fn. 15), 404.
36. David Kang, Crony Capitalism (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 46;
37. Alberto Ades and Rafael Di Tella, "Rents, Competition and Corruption," American Economic Review 89, no. 4 (1999).
38. Jin (fn. 21), 168.
39. World Bank (fn. 15), 28.
40. Goskomstat 2003 (fn. 19), 414-15, 418, 420;
41. and Vladimir Popov, "Reform Strategies and Economic Performance of Russia's Regions," World Development 29, no. 5 (2001), 877.
42. Vito Tanzi, "Corruption, Governmental Activities, and Markets," Working Paper 99 (Washington, D.C.: IMF, 1994).
43. Treisman (fn. 15), 414, 436.
44. Lydia G. Segal, Battling Corruption in America's Public Schools (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 2004), 8.
45. Ibid., 66.
46. Gosudarstvennyi komitet Rossiiskoi Federatsii po statistike (Goskomstat), Sostav rabotnikov, zameshchavshikh gosudarstvennye i munitsipal'nye dolzhnosti, po polu, vozrastu, stazhu raboty, urovniu obrazovaniia 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).
47. For a fuller analysis of the Russian bureaucracy, see Robert J. Brym and Vladimir Gimpelson, "The Size Composition, and Dynamics of the Russian State Bureaucracy in the 1990s," Slavic Review 63 (Spring 2004). 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.
48. Daniel Treisman, "Decentralization and the Quality of Government" (Manuscript, Department of Political Science, University of California, Los Angeles, 2000);
49. and Jin (fn. 21), 123-24.
50. Susan Rose-Ackerman, Corruption and Government: Causes, Consequences, and Reform (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 114;
51. Kang (fn. 25).
52. 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).
53. Kang (fn. 25), 13-14.
54. Ibid., 14.
55. George Tsebelis, Veto Players: How Political Institutions Work (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2002).
56. Andrew MacIntyre, The Power of Institutions: Political Architecture and Governance (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2003), 37.
57. Available at http://www.isn.ethz.ch/news/rrr/ (accessed December 11, 2005).
58. Robert W. Orttung, Danielle N. Lussier, and Anna Paretskaya, The Republics and Regions of the Russian Federation: A Guide to Politics, Policies, and Leaders (Armonk, N.Y.: M. E. Sharpe, 2000). Turovskii's rankings are posted at www.politcom.ru.
59. Robert W. Orttung, "Business and Politics in the Russian Regions," Problems of Post-Communism 51 (March-April 2004).
60. Susan Rose-Ackerman, Corruption: A Study in Political Economy (New York: Academic Press, 1978), 213.
61. On the connection between participation and accountability, see, for example, J. Roland Pennock, Democratic Political Theory (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1979), 441-42.
62. We are grateful to Andrew Konitzer, who recently completed his doctoral dissertation on Russia's gubernatorial elections, for supplying these turnout figures.
63. http://www.freepress.ru/arh/book_2000/002.shtml (accessed December 11, 2005).
64. Karen Deutsch Karlekar, ed., Freedom of the Press 2003: A Global Survey of Media Independence (Lanham, Md.: Rowman and Littlefield, 2003), 1.
65. 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 Georgii Satarov, "Samye zhadnye chinovniki zhivut v Pitere," Novye izvestiia, August 25, 2003.
66. 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).
67. 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.
68. For a critical analysis of using perception-based data in regard to the Russian regions, see Viktor V. Luneev, "Indeksy korruptsii," Organizovannaia prestupnost, terrorizm, i korruptsiia, no. 1 (2003), 126-28;
69. and Endre Sik, "The Bad, the Worse and the Worst: Guesstimating the Level of Corruption," in Kotkin and Sajó (fn. 5).
70. For a detailed discussion of how TI/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).
71. Rasma Karklins, "Typology of Post-Communist Corruption," Problems of Post-Communism 49, no. 4 (2002), 31.
72. Transparency International - Russia (fn. 54).
73. On the authoritarian nature of Tatarstan, see Robert W. Orttung, ed., The Republics and Regions of the Russian Federation: A Guide to Politics, Policies, and Leaders (Armonk, N.Y.: M.E. Sharpe, 2000).
74. On Bashkortoston, see Henry E. Hale, "The Bellwether Battle for Bashkortostan," PONARS Policy Memo, no. 293 (November 2003), http:// www.csis.org/media/csis/pubs/pm_0293.pdf (accessed December 11, 2005).
75. On criminality in Primorskii Krai, see, for example, Robert Orttung, "Alleged Crime Figure Seeks Mayor's Office in Far East," Russian Regional Report June 8, 2004, http://www.isn.ethz.ch/researchpub/ publihouse/rrr/docs/rrr040608.pdf (accessed December 11, 2005).
76. We chose ordinary least square estimates because they are efficient with small numbers of cases and are easy to interpret.
77. 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.
78. Goskomstat Rossii, Regiony Rossii: sotsial'no-ekonomicheskie pokazateli, 2003 (Moscow: Goskomstat, 2003), 30.
79. 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/ bef4f7b517099c0a85256bfb006e03e0/fe49ab3fb21ae703c3256e6f00410397/ $FILE/Country%20Economic%20Memorandum%20(English).pdf (accessed December 11, 2005).
80. Jin (fn. 21), 89-91.
81. World Bank (fn. 15), 26-31;
82. András Sajó, "Clientelism and Extortion: Corruption in Transition," in Kotkin and Sajó (fn. 5).
83. Daniel Kaufmann, Aart Kraay, and Pablo Zoido-Lobaton, "Aggregating Governance Indicators," Policy Research Paper, no. 2195 (Washington, D.C.: World Bank, 1999).
84. See Segal (fn. 31), 170-76.
85. Philip Hanson, "Federalism with a Russian Face: Regional Inequality and Regional Budgets in Russia," in Peter Reddaway and Robert Orttung, eds., The Dynamics of Russian Politics: Putin's Federal Regional Reforms (Lanham, Md.: Rowman and Littlefield, 2005), 2:302.