- In 1990, he created the Center for Applied Political Research INDEM (“Informatics for Democracy”) together with S.B. Stankevich;
- from February 1993 to February 1994 - member of the Presidential Council, participant in the Constitutional Conference on the development of a new Constitution of the Russian Federation;
- from February 1994 to September 1997 - Assistant to the President B.N. Yeltsin;
- in 1994 - member of the joint commission for the coordination of legislative activities;
- since May 1997 - member of the commission for the development of the draft State Construction Program in the Russian Federation;
- from 1997 to the present – President of the INDEM Foundation (successor to the INDEM Center).
Georgy Alexandrovich, could you describe those historical forks in the history of new Russia that determined its future?
One of the first forks in the history of new Russia was the April 1993 referendum and its consequences. It was preceded by a serious political struggle - both for the holding of the referendum itself, and for the issues brought up for it, which, ultimately, were dictated by the IX (Extraordinary) Congress of People's Deputies of the Russian Federation. There were two questions about Yeltsin: do you trust the president and do you approve of the socio-economic policies pursued by him and the government? And the other two are about early elections of the president and people's deputies.
The result was unexpected for everyone. The Russians said “yes” to the first two questions, but “no” to the third and fourth questions. That is, we approve of Yeltsin and his policies and do not want re-elections of either the president or the congress. In general, work! So the country passed the first fork - and immediately ran into the second, followed by the tragic autumn of 1993.
Why did this happen? Immediately after the announcement of the referendum results, both Ruslan Khasbulatov and Alexander Rutskoi publicly spoke about the fact that “only drunks and drug addicts” voted for Yeltsin. With such statements they actually disavowed the results of the referendum. What’s even worse: this position of representative power - and even in alliance with the vice president - inspired and provoked the “irreconcilable opposition” to clash with riot police during the May Day demonstration. Police officer Vladimir Tolokneev died - he was crushed by a truck driven by one of the demonstrators.
It seems to me that Yeltsin missed the moment then - it was necessary to dissolve the congress. On the wave of victory in the referendum on April 25, 1993, he could do this completely calmly. Boris Nikolaevich later wrote in his memoirs that he had been carrying the draft decree in his inner jacket pocket since May. The text of the document was repeatedly changed and edited, and only on September 21, 1993, he signed it - Decree of the President of the Russian Federation No. 1400 “On phased constitutional reform in the Russian Federation.”
- Why not earlier?
My version is related to the debunking of the myths that have long been formed around the figure of the first president of Russia. Many of them were completely untrue. For example, it is difficult for people who did not know Boris Nikolaevich closely to believe that he was characterized by fantastic compromise. He began to go on a rampage only when, entangled in his own compromises, he came to a complete dead end. But first he always looked for a compromise solution.
So in the summer of 1993, instead of dissolving the congress as having disavowed the results of the referendum and going against the will of the people, the president sought a compromise in the constitutional process. Moreover, there were forms to rely on. Even before the IX Congress, at which the decision was made to hold a referendum, the idea of a Constitutional Agreement arose - on temporary authorities until the adoption of a new Constitution. Moreover, this agreement was accepted by both the president and the Supreme Council. There was a draft of a new Constitution developed by the Constitutional Commission of the Supreme Council, and other projects. The idea of a Constitutional Conference was already floating around, finally formalized in June by Yeltsin’s aides. Therefore, the first version of the future decree appeared in May, but the president signed it only after he received information that the opposition was collecting weapons. The constitutional compromise failed. By his decree, Yeltsin dissolved both the congress and the Supreme Council. Then there was the October tragedy.
The country has taken the path of building a presidential rather than a parliamentary republic. Was this the best option? After all, most developed countries, including almost all of Europe, have chosen a parliamentary or predominantly parliamentary system. The countries of the former Soviet bloc are also following this path.
The choice in favor of a presidential republic was made primarily based on economic considerations: it was believed that with a strong president it would be easier to carry out economic reforms, which were opposed by the majority of the population - sometimes to their own detriment. I am convinced that this was the right choice, and not only for economic reasons. There are serious political science works on the stability of young democracies, in which the presidential republic is considered as one of the stabilizing factors. This is a classic.
The new Russia was born as a result of the victory of democracy in the August putsch. And the outcome of the putsch, of course, was determined by Yeltsin’s legitimacy. They were even afraid to arrest him; the putschists did not allow themselves to do to Yeltsin what they did to Gorbachev. The difference was that Yeltsin had full legitimacy - he was elected in the first popular elections in the history of Russia, while Gorbachev had, to put it mildly, dubious, he was elected as a result of voting at the Congress of People's Deputies of the USSR. This, by the way, was a decisive fork in the road for Gorbachev.
However, you will agree that the consequences of switching to the presidential path were not the best. In Russia the state is deified. The majority of Russians, to put it mildly, have an autocratic worldview; officials are perceived not as servants of the people, but as conductors of the highest royal will. We do not support the state, but it is obliged to feed, finance, and clothe us. Didn't the choice of a presidential republic lead to the conservation of such views?
Of course, the mentality and consciousness of citizens change much more slowly than laws. This change can be accelerated by the awakening of citizen activity “from below” - at the level of local government. But we have not used this resource. It’s good that we managed to convince Yeltsin to go for the election of governors. I think it was a feat on his part. However, this was not enough. True democracy, the growth of civic consciousness of the population, that is, their transformation into citizens, is possible only, as the British say, from the “grass level.” The majority of our fellow citizens - including those of democratic persuasion - prefer to evade self-government even at the level of a house, village, microdistrict or city.
To promote self-government in Russia, we need a reasonable housing and communal services reform that puts citizens in the position of masters, whether they want it or not. The skills of local self-government will sooner or later give rise to the skills of democratic governance. But today there are few hunters to carry out such a reform.
Over the past 18 years, the country has already experienced both poverty and wealth, when money was “sterilized” by hundreds of billions. Now we have fallen into a crisis pit. However, all the changes only strengthened the trend of centralization of both political and economic power at all levels - along the lines of the presidential one. To get out of this impasse, isn't it worth changing the presidential republic to a parliamentary one?
It is not necessary to repair a watch with an ax... Our problem is not that the country has too strong a president. The trouble is different: the power of the Russian president is “glued together” from two halves that are difficult to compatible. On the one hand, he is a guarantor of the stability of the political system, rights and freedoms, and on the other hand, he is a participant in operational management or even its head. These parties need to be separated: strengthen the role of the guarantor and weaken the operational management function.
“But the president will never give up operational control, because these are the real levers of power.
Well, of course. There are only two options here. First: self-restraint of the highest power. The current one is not capable of this - if only because of fear for its capital. The second option is dramatic: when no one asks the president. We saw this happen in 1991.
The first thing all our presidents did was to fight corruption. Skeptics argue that this fight is and will not be of any use, since the existing presidential system itself - with lackeys on all floors - does not allow for an effective fight against corruption.
I believe that there is no direct relationship between the level of corruption and the form of government. For example, Italy is a parliamentary republic, but there is a fairly high level of corruption there, life is built on the principle: you - for me, I - for you. Again, there are non-corrupt monarchies - albeit constitutional ones: Sweden, the Netherlands, etc.
- And yet, in your opinion, is corruption connected with the political system?
More precisely, with the political regime. But the regime is determined not only - or rather, not so much - by the Constitution, which sets the form of government, but by the practice of power and the connivance of society. Russia is a typical example of a regime of uncontrolled bureaucracy. During Yeltsin's time, all branches of government, including the president, were subject to external control. Boris Nikolaevich himself was shackled by the opposition, which, although it did not expect to come to power, was noisy and quite seriously limited his freedom of action. Take, for example, the scandal in 1997 over the fact that a group of high-ranking officials received large fees for publishing a book about the history of privatization in Russia. I do not go into a discussion of whether the attacks were fair, whether the punishment was adequate, etc. The scandal in the media was enough for serious personnel changes; all these officials were dismissed. Today such a situation is even impossible to imagine. Under Yeltsin, at least three governors were imprisoned for corruption. Since then - not one...
The reason, in my opinion, is the wrong, unpromising idea that was initially implemented during Putin’s presidency: limiting democracy for the sake of a “liberal breakthrough relying on the bureaucracy.” Two years later it became obvious that there could be no such support, and on the scale of Russia this idea was unrealizable. Then, instead of capitalism on a national scale, they began to build personal capitalism - on the scale of a dacha cooperative. And this makes you cling to power with all your might.
For the last ten years, the INDEM Foundation has been conducting research on the level of corruption in Russia. A stunning increase in bureaucratic theft and arbitrariness has been recorded. It became clear what caused it. When a bureaucracy is left to its own devices and is not controlled by anyone from outside, it works for itself and not for society. This “work for yourself” is corruption in all its forms.
It is not enough to write in the Constitution the phrase that the people are the source of power. It is necessary that society, recognizing itself as a principal, wants and skillfully maintains the levers of external control over its agent - the bureaucracy. Civilization has developed several levers, or institutions, for such control.
The first is a legal opposition, if it is not controlled, like ours, by a bureaucracy and if it intends to come to power and control this bureaucracy. True, this requires real competitive elections (which has not happened for a long time!), real political competition.
The second is strong, independent media. They help reduce the impact of information asymmetry. We don't care about their motives. It is important that independent media exist and do their job: monitor the bureaucracy and report honestly on how it works.
The third institution is freely operating public organizations. Many of them are busy controlling government bodies.
The fourth is a fruitfully functioning parliament. True, for this it must be truly independent of the executive branch, and consist not of figure skaters and milkmaids, but of highly qualified professionals in the field of law, economics, and political science. And deputies must really depend on voters.
The fifth is an independent court. One entrepreneur we interviewed said: “Give us an independent court, we will solve all other problems ourselves.” Imagine that we, citizens - individual and organized - have the opportunity to sue officials for their corrupt decisions that cause us harm. Present - and win. Then we ourselves would be able to influence corrupt officials, without waiting for the police, the FSB or the prosecutor’s office.
The last two conditions concerning the independent branches of the legislative and judicial powers are the separation of powers. It is spelled out in the Constitution and destroyed during Putin’s presidency.
From your words it follows that at the turn of the century - at another historical fork in the road - Russia took the wrong road?
Let us remember the realities of the 1990s, which we easily forget, compliantly succumbing to constant propaganda. Let's jog our memory. We have already talked about the resignations in connection with the scandal surrounding the authors of the book on privatization - high-ranking officials, among whom were close associates of Yeltsin. Another example: the Federation Council repeatedly rejected the candidacies of judges of higher courts nominated by President Yeltsin, because it did not want his former employees or obvious like-minded people to be on it. This allowed the judiciary to maintain independence. A third example: in the 1990s, the president repeatedly issued executive orders to replace missing laws. The Duma challenged many decrees. She sent requests to the Constitutional Court, and it declared some of them unconstitutional.
No matter what the obedient media sang, no matter what people themselves thought angrily about the “dashing 90s,” this was the time when real democracy was being formed in Russia. It was she who created the conditions for external control over the bureaucracy and power in general. That is why the growth of corruption was quite moderate and was mainly due to the general influence of the transition period.
Our society and, above all, its current elite have failed to preserve the sprouts of the nascent democracy in Russia. We have rejected or profaned the institutions of democracy and reduced everything to the notorious administrative vertical - to a social structure that vividly resembles medieval Asian empires. This is a historical dead end.
An important conclusion follows from all this: in the conditions of modern Russia, in order to successfully fight corruption, it is necessary to restore external control over the bureaucracy, which is tantamount to the restoration of democratic institutions.
- Is this dominance of corruption really that scary? After all, we live...
We live much worse than we could live. Corruption causes the greatest damage to large state-owned companies. The scale of the damage is determined by the fact that they are associated, as a rule, with the supply of energy, transport, etc., and by the fact that intra-company corruption is linked to political corruption. Therefore, the executive branch “protects” the internal corruption of such companies, instead of controlling them. This “roof” allows these companies to do things that ordinary businesses cannot afford. All income is appropriated, and risks and losses are transferred to the state. But the state does not have its own money. It manages only our money received in the form of taxes, etc. Therefore, all risks and costs are transferred to us. And we cannot refuse, because we are accustomed to electricity, gas, and railways. Thus, our costs can only be reduced if control is established over such companies. And this is impossible under the current political regime.
As is known, losses from corruption can be divided into direct and indirect. Direct ones take place primarily in the formation of budget revenues. Corrupt transactions in the collection of taxes, customs and other payments lead to direct budget shortfalls. Thus, as a result of a prosecutor’s investigation at the end of 1996 - beginning of 1997 of the work of one of the customs points through which cargo with tobacco and alcohol entered our country, it was revealed that two-month losses due to shortfalls in customs duties due to corruption reached $150 million , per year - about 1 billion dollars! In terms of the customs service of the entire country, budget losses from customs corruption were comparable to the amount of federal budget revenue. Estimates at that time showed that effective tax and customs administration could at least double our budget.
It is important to note that customs corruption completely kills trading firms that are trying to work honestly. They are faced with a dilemma: cheat and share with customs officers, expecting that sooner or later they will come for you, or work honestly and will definitely go bankrupt, unable to withstand competition with goods imported under “gray” schemes. Domestic producers of analogue goods are also going bankrupt from such “competition,” and Russians are losing their jobs.
The second type of direct losses from corruption is related to budget execution. A powerful source of corruption is government procurement and orders. Here corruption takes the form of kickbacks. They generate two forms of direct losses. The first is budget money, which goes not for its intended purpose, but into the hands of an official (the “kickbacks” themselves). Here the assessment of losses is the size (share) of “kickbacks”. About ten years ago, the standard size of the “rollback” was 5-15%, now it is 3-4 times more. The magazine “Expert” wrote about three years ago that about 80% of the R&D line of our country’s military budget is stolen.
The second form of direct losses is ineffective use of funds. In countries with the highest level of corruption, the increase in the cost of state-ordered road construction reaches 30% of the market price. In Milan, after anti-corruption measures, the cost of building 1 m of metro or 1 sq. m of an airport was halved. In Moscow, according to experts, the real cost of 1 sq.m of new housing does not exceed 1.5 thousand dollars. Everything that the buyer pays above this amounts to kickbacks to Moscow officials and excess profits to monopolistic builders.
Indirect losses are much larger than direct ones, but they are not always quantifiable. It is obvious that large-scale corruption negatively affects the business climate in the country and investment attractiveness. It can be assessed by the market's ability to accept what the firm intends to offer and the extent of the obstacles to getting the business off the ground. Corruption increases the cost of project implementation. According to international consulting firms, Russia is the leader in the ranking in terms of project cost increases. They are increasing by 30%!
Well, if some foreign company leaves our market due to the high level of bribes, another will come... So what?
He may not come. A good reputation - of a person, a country, a market - takes years to build, but a bad one forms quickly. If a company comes along that is ready to play by our rules, it will rely on a short-term strategy of quick profits in conditions of high corruption risks. This will increase the price of its products. The company will not build a long-term strategy to ensure high quality products; it will not be interested in developing local production of components.
Corruption is sharply worsening the investment climate in Russia. The departure (or non-arrival) of foreign firms leads to negative consequences: there will be significantly fewer new technologies, the raw materials imbalance of our economy will continue, and additional jobs and new tax revenues will not appear. It is difficult to assess all these indirect negative consequences of corruption, but on a national scale they are enormous.
Corruption also oppresses domestic business. It not only involves direct withdrawal of funds through bribes, but also distorts competition and creates an aggressive environment for entrepreneurs to which they are forced to adapt. To everything that burdens foreign business, we must add other threats - from political extortion to the risk of simply losing business. Businesses are afraid to build long-term development strategies and are reoriented to short-term ones. As one large entrepreneur put it, why invest in business development if it can be taken away at any moment... No business development - no new jobs, no new products and new services. For every bribe “milked” from a businessman, we all ultimately pay for it. And it’s not just about bribes, but also about the general oppressive atmosphere of corruption that suppresses business.
- Corruption distorts and suppresses market competition.
Yes. Monopoly is growing. By merging with the authorities, business begins to suppress competitors using corrupt methods. And where there is a monopoly, there is an inevitable rise in prices and a decrease in the quality of goods and services. In such a market, the winner is not the one who better satisfies the consumer, but the one who gains an advantage due to the “roof”, preferences received from the authorities. And again, we all pay for this.
The growth of corruption is always associated with the growth of the shadow economy, that is, the economy located outside the tax zone. At the same time, bribes can be considered as a kind of tax on shadow turnover. This is scary because the government, living with corruption, is not interested in reducing the shadow economy. After all, a decrease in the latter leads to a decrease in the corrupt “tax base” and corruption income of officials. In addition, a business located in the shadows is easier to blackmail and “milk.” And here a positive feedback begins to work: the growth of the shadow economy spurs the growth of corruption, and the growth of corruption contributes to the growth of the shadow economy.
It would seem that if a businessman evades taxes, he can sell his goods and services cheaper. This is wrong. Having evaded official taxes, he fully falls under corruption taxes and pressure - he risks losing both his business and his freedom.
The shadow economy reduces budget revenues. This means there is not enough money for government spending - from the production of new weapons to payments to doctors and teachers. There is also culture, science, higher education. And if we underpay doctors and teachers, then they take bribes from us. A machine emerges in which one type of corruption spurs another. The result is a decline in the living standards of the population.
- Foreigners and domestic businessmen most often complain about the merging of government and business.
Indeed, the most terrible manifestation of corruption, entailing long-term negative consequences, is the merging of government and business. Moreover, this is terrible not only for honest entrepreneurs. This fusion is difficult to overcome and break. It is implemented, as a rule, in the form of two strategies. The first is “power grab”. By bribing officials, big business seeks to influence government decision-making and actually buys public power. An example is the activities of Russian oligarchs Berezovsky or Gusinsky. The second strategy is “capture of business by power.” Government officials use their powers to establish control over property to extract illegal income. Moreover, the form of ownership is not important. Currently, almost any dignitary is a major businessman.
The shadow influence of business on government is not compatible with public interests. The decisions made as a result of the takeover work for a specific business, creating preferences for it at the expense of other businesses, at the expense of citizens. As a result, goods and services become more expensive. Power captured or co-opted by business is unable to regulate the conflict of interests of employers and employees. As a result, wealth stratification is growing. And this is dangerous, this is a harbinger of unrest, disasters, revolutions.
The corrupt takeover of business by government is even worse. She strives to capture what is easy to “milk” and gives a large “milk”. This is what caused the Russian government to seize the oil and gas industry in our country, which is rising from its knees. As a consequence, two effects occur. First: the captured property (industry, market) degenerates due to the fact that the government is by nature a bad manager. To illustrate, look at the dynamics of oil production after 2003, when the authorities began to carry out renationalization. The second effect: a skewed economy is formed, in which artificial preferences are created in the area in which the hand of power lies. The mechanisms of competition are distorted and rotted, as in the case of the seizure of power by business. After all, players enter the market with clearly unequal chances. On the one hand there is business as usual, on the other there is the government, passionate about its business.
If, when a business seizes power, market competition is transformed into competition for the favor of the authorities, then when a business is seized, a bandit appears in the market who suppresses everyone, dictating his “concepts” and creating arbitrariness. Such “manual regulation” of the economy by statesmen destroys and devours it. And if a crisis comes, the authorities will collect money and quietly disappear, leaving behind a desert.
The authorities involved in the seizure of business are not engaged in the business for which they were formed. It cannot protect the country and citizens, provide fair justice, or help the weak. Moreover, it is not interested in the normal functioning of the economy. After all, the latter is possible only with functioning legal institutions. But the government that has seized business operates outside the framework of such institutions. She only needs their imitation.
- Corruption is not only a feature of our national culture, isn’t it?
There are no nations that are doomed to corruption by religion, culture, history or race. It is generally accepted that Western culture is historically less corrupt than Eastern culture. But a hundred years ago in England it was easy to buy the results of elections to the lower house of the English Parliament. The corruption of American police officers fifty years ago still echoes in fiction and cinema. The difference between countries in terms of the level of corruption is very large, no matter which group we take in Asia, Latin America or Europe. The regions of our country are even more diverse in this regard, even if we ignore the national republics.
So those who convince us of our doom are mistaken. It is impossible to defeat corruption, but it is possible to make it stop being the core of life. Never in history has the level of corruption decreased by itself, always as a result of serious efforts in the sphere of politics (in the sense of policy) or significant social changes that resulted from such efforts. Unfortunately, there was something else: corruption corrupted and burned entire states in the furnace of history.
- Corruption may destroy Russia, but it helps each individual solve his problems.
Scientists call this an “institutional trap.” Let's imagine that President Dmitry Medvedev appeared on television and called on everyone to refuse bribes. It would seem that if the overwhelming majority of citizens respond to this romantic call, then corruption in the country will decrease. But what will actually happen? Almost each of us, faced with the first corruption situation, will quickly assess the costs of honest behavior (the driver’s license will be taken away, the operation will be postponed, the son will not go to college, etc.). What about the winnings? Where is he? And when? No, it's better to give a bribe.
And there is one more important effect, which is usually called the “free rider problem.” When it comes to a public good achieved by independent common efforts, “sucking”, passing at the expense of more disciplined ones, is a very common and profitable strategy. So it is with abstaining from bribes. Most citizens will decide that, given the general honesty, their bribes will allow them to more easily achieve their goals, and will continue to solve their problems with their help.
Any corrupt deal is concluded because it is beneficial to both parties. So both citizens and officials are to blame for rampant corruption. The value systems of the entire people need to be changed. How? That's another question.
Georgy Alexandrovich, from your words it follows that there is no hope for a mass movement against corruption. Everyone seems to understand that you can’t live like this, but it’s more convenient and profitable for everyone to live this way. Is there a way out?
In any sphere of human activity, the road is blazed by individuals or small groups of people. Copernicus guessed that the Earth revolves around the Sun; others recognized this much later. If some active part of Russian society gets rid of the slave mentality and sets the task of reviving democracy in Russia, then sooner or later a government will appear that will restore democratic institutions and put the bureaucracy under the control of society. Of course, the government will do this, relying on the very active minority that will be given the weapon of law, that is, the right of citizens to prosecute in an independent court officials who commit crimes related to corruption.
The authorities have the resources to become an obstacle to corruption. Without her efforts, it is impossible to limit corruption, but they are completely insufficient. What is needed is the activity of society and the determination of the authorities. In Russian conditions they must be united by a democratic political system. Only then can you count on success.
Speaking about the role of power, we must understand that it has only two possibilities: either it changes itself, or others change it. When talking about changes by power itself, I mean changes in policy, personnel composition, and a combination of both. As for the second option, there is a wide range - from a peaceful change of power as a result of legitimate elections to bloody coups.
There are two countries in the world in which there is a minimum of corruption: Finland - a democratic civil society and Singapore - a rigid authoritarian state. But the anti-corruption technologies (declarations of the wealth of officials, a system of counterbalances, methods for determining the corruption potential of regulations) in these countries are similar and work. Should we conclude from this that it is possible to develop anti-corruption technologies in an authoritarian society, without fear of thereby strengthening authoritarianism, moreover, deep down hoping that the fight against corruption will ultimately help the transition from authoritarianism to democracy?
Let me remind you that in Singapore, anti-corruption policy began to take shape under conditions of external control - in the presence of the British administration. But even without this additional circumstance, comparing Russia with Singapore and adopting its methods is counterproductive. It is necessary to take into account the different scales of not only the phenomenon, but also the states. If Russia were the size of Singapore, which is equivalent to the former Cheryomushkinsky district of Moscow, then authoritarian methods of fighting corruption are possible. On a scale throughout Russia, this is unrealistic.
There is a concept of “administrative friction” - similar to physical friction. This friction cannot be avoided anywhere in social processes - it can only be reduced. On the scale of Russia, administrative friction leads to paralysis of the entire state mechanism, which is now confirmed by the non-functioning “vertical of power”. On the contrary, in small countries, in the presence of political will, which in fact is always insufficient, internal - more precisely, intra-bureaucratic - control mechanisms can work.
Such internal control mechanisms do not work for us. Only external ones can act: political competition, opposition, free press. If we want the level of corruption in Russia as a whole to decrease, then this can only be achieved in conditions of real democracy. It is precisely this that is a necessary condition for limiting corruption. The alternative to this is disintegration, turning Russia into 25 Singapores, and let everyone be treated for corruption separately.
If you ask a person “from the street”: what needs to be done to curb corruption? You will most often hear: put officials against the wall!
As for harsh punishments for bribe-taking officials, the repressive anti-corruption strategy has never brought sustainable success. An example of this is China. Of course, “a thief should be in prison.” The law enforcement machine must work effectively and maintain in potential corrupt officials the feeling of a high risk of punishment. But, as experience shows, this alone is clearly not enough. I repeat: we need to change the system.
Russia has signed and ratified the UN Convention against Corruption. Nevertheless, the criminal liability provided for by the Convention for unjust enrichment and lies in declarations is still not in our Criminal Code, nor is there a system for identifying facts of such enrichment. For comparison: in Sweden, if a citizen cannot explain where he got the “extra” 500 euros, this can lead to the collapse of his career and criminal prosecution.
In Sweden, the use of criminal sanctions is only a small part of a comprehensive anti-corruption system. It begins with the declaration of income and wealth - with mandatory publicity and external control. The press can investigate the lifestyle of an official, comparing real expenses and wealth with the declaration presented, and if there is a discrepancy, create a public scandal, regardless of whether he is a minister or a “small fry” (in our country, this is interpreted as extremism). If such a fact is discovered, parliament will definitely hold the prime minister accountable. I'm not even talking about the ability of ordinary citizens to influence the outcome of a case in court. That is, such measures work when they are included in the system.
President Dmitry Medvedev announced his income, setting an example for the rest - equally “disadvantaged” knights of service to the Fatherland. Do Russian officials need to declare income? Answer: of course, yes. We want to be sure that the official lives according to his income and that it is legal. And we believe that if an official knows this, he will be careful about stealing without measure. Because if we reveal this by the difference in income and expenses, this will serve as the basis for increased attention to his person, which can lead to criminal prosecution, fraught with serious prison time and even confiscation of illegally acquired property. This is what it looks like normally.
However, for the income declaration rule to work, it is necessary to supplement it with a number of conditions. We are informed about the legal income of officials, assuring us that there is no other income. How do we find out about the expenses of officials, about the wealth they have acquired, about bank accounts in Russia and abroad, about real estate, about the shareholdings of themselves and their close relatives? Who will tell us about this?
Can you imagine Russian media that will tell us about the lifestyle and expenses of, say, the first deputy head of the presidential administration, Vladislav Surkov, or Deputy Prime Minister Igor Sechin? Where is the opposition that would prompt parliament to question the government with partiality? Maybe the Communist Party of the Russian Federation? Or “A Just Russia”? Suppose the unlikely happened - and at the next government hour in the State Duma, a representative of United Russia, on behalf of the faction, addressed one of the deputy prime ministers with a philippic about the discrepancies between the way of life and the declaration of such and such a minister. And the convicted official was handed over by his superiors to be desecrated by law enforcement agencies. It’s not so scary: he faces “five years of probation,” which happens almost every time our courts suddenly receive cases from prosecutors against “their” statesmen.
The conclusion is obvious: in our conditions, the publication of income declarations of officials cannot serve as a measure to deter and limit corruption. Manifestations of corruption are included in an extensive network structure of causes and consequences, without taking into account which it is impossible to combat corruption.
- Our citizens are afraid of the police. What do you think can change the situation?
Corruption in law enforcement agencies also has a ramified structure. Anti-corruption measures should also form an appropriate structure, that is, direct action measures should be complemented by measures in the field of law, economics, taxes, finance and public administration.
Any form of illegal violence directed against citizens uses the powers (power) vested in the police by a principal called the people. Such violence is used by the police to illegally facilitate the performance of their duties (torture during the investigation, etc.) or as a way of profit (illegal initiation of cases with their closure after receiving a bribe, etc.). This means that the police use the power resource received from citizens not for its intended purpose, but for their own selfish purposes. As a result, instead of ensuring the safety of citizens, it becomes an additional, often dominant, source of danger. This means that the police are betraying the goals of their principal.
One of the reasons for this type of corruption is the complete lack of dependence of the police on their supreme principal, on the citizens. I am convinced that a radical reform of the Ministry of Internal Affairs is needed. In particular, it is necessary to completely separate the security police from the vertical structure of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, turning it into a type of municipal service similar to the sheriff’s service in the United States. In this case, the head of such a service must be elected by residents of the municipality or appointed by its representative body, also freely elected. It is clear that such a service should be financed from the municipal budget.
Is this possible today? Of course not! And the main obstacle is the current tax system, which contradicts both the federal structure of the country and the independence of municipal authorities from government bodies. The pyramid of the current tax system must be turned on its head. The share of tax revenues in municipal budgets should be sharply increased. Moreover, municipalities must form their own tax base. Due to what? One possible option: switch taxes to the municipal level, the collection of which increases with business development. You can limit yourself to small businesses or small and medium-sized ones. This measure sharply increases the interest of municipal authorities in business development. And this, in turn, helps reduce corruption generated by the pressure of municipal authorities on business.
- What to do with courts that have forgotten how to acquit the innocent?
The INDEM Foundation has just completed a large project devoted to the analysis of the transformation of the judiciary in Russia. One of his ideas: the work of the judiciary depends not only on its structure, specific rules describing the criminal or civil process, but also on the work of institutions associated with the court, authorities, the prosecutor's office and the police. That is, we are again talking about diverse and not always obvious interactions between government bodies.
An insignificant proportion of acquittals was also typical for Soviet justice, and now it is even less. Here is a story recently told to me by a lawyer. He prosecuted a criminal case and received an acquittal for his client. For this “crime,” the judge was expelled from the judiciary, and the case was sent for retrial. The same thing happened a second time - with the same outcome for the second judge. The third judge, completely frightened, pleaded and talked the lawyer into a deal: the minimum possible suspended sentence. The defendant is free, but his rights have been impaired.
Let's assume that the court provides citizens with services to restore justice. In our case, as it is necessary for us, citizens, the supreme principal. Instead, the court forms part of a single punitive machine of the state. It is this fact that is reflected in the extreme accusatory bias (primarily in criminal proceedings). Thus, we can state that judges often betray the interests and goals of the principal and use the power entrusted to them to achieve their own goals. And for what and why? The answer lies in a combination of psychological and institutional factors.
Our interviews show that Russian judges are dominated not by pride in their profession, as in the USA or France, but by fear. But other motives can serve as the basis for subordination to the vertical: benefits, career growth, legal consciousness of judges, who still consider themselves not independent arbiters, but part of a single state punitive machine. These motives are neither related to justice nor to the law.
If you look in more detail, you can find a lot of unexpected things. Imagine that the activities of the police and the prosecutor's office are assessed by abstract numerical indicators, the value of which determines career growth, titles, salaries, and bonuses. As always and everywhere, people will begin to work towards these indicators - this is an inexorable law of nature. If such indicators include the share of convictions in courts in cases initiated and transferred, the police and the prosecutor's office cooperate with the courts in every possible way, influence them in order to increase their indicators, and with them - the accusatory bias, and with it - to reduce fairness of justice. This is exactly our case.
Everything you say confirms the sad truth: the judicial system in Russia depends on the executive branch and is ineffective; the rights of citizens, especially the right to property, are not protected.
It's not all that bad. After all, we judge the judiciary in cases where there is outside influence, someone’s interest - political, administrative or financial. There, indeed, everything is often “pressed” or bought. But there are relatively few such cases in the total mass. According to our sociological data, the share of those who say they will never go to court again is approximately 11%. There are three times more people satisfied with the progress of going to court than those who are dissatisfied. And the percentage of cases that citizens win against the authorities is very high, especially regarding all kinds of non-payments provided for by law (close to 100%).
By the way, this is exactly why the “monetization of benefits” was started. Let me remind you of this story. In the 1990s, many populist laws were passed. There was such a “conspiracy” between the legislative and executive authorities. The executive branch said: well, pass these populist laws, we still won’t be able to implement them! And the legislative branch responded: we don’t need them to be implemented, the main thing is that we can tell voters that we have adopted laws, but the executive branch and the president do not implement them...
However, time passed, citizens went to court and won cases regarding these non-payments. The courts clearly sided with the legitimate demands of the Russians - and the Ministry of Finance had to pay. The process began to develop like an avalanche; by the beginning of the 2000s, the Ministry of Finance was already paying billions of rubles, which became too expensive for the budget. Then the decision was made to repeal these laws on payments, but it was necessary to come up with a decent legend for such an unpopular measure. This is how the idea of “monetization of benefits” was born, which Arkady Dvorkovich later spoke about.
Thus, we have no reason to say that in disputes between citizens and the state, judges always side with the state. In almost 90% of cases, Russian citizens win in litigation with their employers. Which, of course, does not exclude certain categories of cases where the executive branch seeks to realize its interests by any means. And although the proportion of such cases is low, the negative consequences for the authority of Russian justice are quite serious. This is an indisputable fact.
Another fact: the number of claims by our citizens to the European Court of Human Rights is many times higher than the world average...
But this, indeed, is due to the defects of the Russian justice system itself, which is structured in such a way that if some judge made a dubious decision that has a chance of being appealed in the European Court, the system will not admit the mistake, but will defend the decision.
- Russians are still deprived of the right to defend public interests in court...
Yes, in Russia there is no universal right to protect the interests of an indefinite number of persons - in other words, to protect public interests. In our country, it is enshrined in the laws “On Joint-Stock Companies” and “On the Protection of Consumer Rights”. But the Civil Procedure Code does not spell out the procedure, and judges refuse to accept such claims for consideration.
I was delirious with the idea of protecting the interests of an indefinite circle of people back in 1996-1997. But it was extremely difficult to break through, even as an assistant to the president. And here the stick must have two ends. On the one hand, a citizen must have such a right. And since it can be scary to go alone against an agency, a public organization, a temporary association of citizens created to solve a specific problem, should have this right.
On the other hand, I repeat, this right will not help achieve justice and fairness under the current judiciary, especially when it comes to corruption. Because while the court is dependent, all corrupt officials and their accomplices are tied into one ball. That is, in addition to the rights that should be granted to citizens, it is necessary to ensure the independence of the court by all possible means. And here there is still “the horse is not lying down” - starting from the institution of court chairmen, which is absolutely controlled by the bureaucracy, and ending with the financial and economic dependence of the courts on the executive power, on the presidential power, on the regional authorities. Corresponding reforms of the police and prosecutor's offices are also necessary. The court is interconnected with everything around it. So there is a serious tangle of problems that need to be addressed. But this is unrealistic in the presence of a political elite that is not interested in this. For her, an independent court is tantamount to death in political, administrative and financial senses.
It follows from your words that anti-corruption policy cannot be reduced to a primitive set of measures, each of which is aimed at a different type of corruption.
Yes, anti-corruption is a complex, branched, multi-connected system, which, moreover, must be constantly analyzed and corrected as the anti-corruption policy is implemented. After all, corruption, like a living organism, reacts to our influences, tries to evade, adapt and not give up. A successful anti-corruption policy must include the following components:
- in-depth diagnosis of the corruption situation in the country;
- determination of the main subject of anti-corruption policy - possibly the government authority responsible for its implementation;
- development of an anti-corruption policy strategy;
- development and implementation of specific plans and programs;
- implementation of a system for monitoring the corruption situation, based on its results - constant adjustment of plans, programs, and even strategies, audit of the implementation of plans and programs.
But, I repeat once again: the key to success is the restoration of democratic institutions in Russia!
Let's return to historical forks. Don’t you think that the implementation of the “successor” project became such a fork in the road? How did the idea of transferring power in such a way - democratic in form, but completely autocratic in content - come about?
I think the impetus was the 1998 default, which was a colossal personal shock for Yeltsin. He then practically stepped away from the leadership of the economy. But most importantly, he changed the type of successor to whom he would like to transfer the country. From now on, the successor was to appear not as a continuer, democrat and creator, but as a guardian - one who, at a minimum, would protect what had already been won. And Boris Nikolaevich began to look for such a “service man.” He went through a lot of people. At first, Vladimir Putin was just one of the representatives of this type. The choice could have fallen on Sergei Stepashin, Nikolai Bordyuzha or Yevgeny Primakov, if his team had not made so many mistakes.
- Has the idea of finding a successor also taken hold of the Democrats?
Yes. Moreover, in liberal democratic circles (not to be confused with Zhirinovsky’s LDPR), this idea of the “Chilean version” began to mature even earlier - almost immediately after the 1996 elections. Vladimir Putin, proposed by the president as a successor, clearly fit into the template “a la Pinochet”: young, energetic, defended his dissertation on the oil industry - he probably understands something. It seems like he listens to advice. With him it will be possible to make a liberal breakthrough.
The trouble is that the ideologists of the “breakthrough” at that time quite sincerely believed in the slogan: “We know what to do. The main thing is that we should not be disturbed!” It is strange that such words were uttered by people of completely democratic convictions. I had arguments with them about this. I warned them that this was a mistake, but I had no chance to seriously influence them.
With all the shortcomings of the presidential government system, it would seem to have one undoubted advantage: if there is political will, it is possible to quickly carry out reforms “from above” - administrative, judicial, to bring corruption within a reasonable framework... But in Russia, here too, there are endless problems. Why didn't administrative reform take place?
I believe that this is the result of our joint - Boris Nikolaevich and his assistants - being late. Administrative reform requires serious political support, political support, and therefore must be carried out under the leadership of a leader with the appropriate energy who can “push through” everything. Public support is also required.
But by 1997, when we realized that the process of strengthening and self-will of the bureaucracy had gone too far, we began to convince Yeltsin that the situation was completely neglected, the country’s governance system was a complete nightmare and it was necessary to urgently deal with it, it was too late. He no longer had that powerful energy that could cope with the resistance of the bureaucracy, primarily the government. Although, it would seem, what was she like there? After all, the country was ruled by young reformers... But we received absolutely devastating feedback from them on proposals for administrative reform. They - the winners, those in power - did not need it at all.
For example, in accordance with the draft of this reform, one deputy prime minister remained in the government. The elimination of dual power was envisaged, in which, along with ministries, there were specialized departments in the government apparatus. We proposed to abolish the departments and sharply reduce the apparatus, leaving it only with the functions of the government secretariat. But it will sharply increase the responsibility of ministries. But all this was torpedoed already at the project stage, first by Chernomyrdin and young reformers, then by all the other leaders of the country. The fact is that no one saw any benefit either in losing positions or in increasing responsibility. And in order to “suppress” this, Boris Nikolaevich no longer had either public support or personal energy resources.
By and large, administrative reform should have started immediately as soon as Yeltsin became president. Although at that time it was difficult: under the conditions of the USSR, the President of Russia did not have enough legally enforceable rights. It was not too late in 1994 - in parallel with economic reforms. True, it’s good to talk about this from the standpoint of today, but then there were plenty of other urgent problems.
Many countries have special civil service commissions. They are formed in different formats: either created on a parity basis by authorities and professional public organizations, or work within the framework of a system of special parliamentary control over the appointment of high-level officials. Maybe it’s time for us to introduce such commissions to increase the level of competence of our officials, as, for example, was done in Great Britain more than a hundred years ago?
This requires an indispensable precondition: an independent parliament, which can only emerge under normal political competition. Some developing countries have public commissions that have veto power over political appointees. In general, in world practice, various tools are used to solve such problems. But I will give a simple example from our practice. At one time, the internal security service of the Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs gave a negative review of the candidacy of police major Denis Evsyukov when he was appointed to the post of head of the Tsaritsyno police department. Nevertheless, he was appointed... It ended in tragedy: in a Moscow supermarket, he unreasonably opened fire on staff and visitors, killed the cashier and one of the visitors, and injured two more. The reason is a mental disorder due to family troubles. This example taught us nothing. After all, their own security services can work effectively only if they can file appeals if their recommendations are not followed. In the Ministry of Internal Affairs, these services are rigidly built into the system and depend on it, and not on citizens, the press or deputies.
The current bureaucratic system in Russia is built on clanism: officials appointed to command positions bring “their” people with them. This creates an atmosphere of mutual responsibility. Other countries have different procedures. In the USA, for example, an official who fails to report illegal actions of his superiors will himself bear administrative and often criminal liability. Experts say that without a universal reporting system, the path to the rule of law is blocked. Do you think so too?
There is discord between official and official. There are high-level officials on whose decisions policy depends. And there are specialists and office “plankton”. For example, the American public service is divided into two parts: these are political appointees, a limited number of whom the new president or governor has the right to bring with him, and all the rest are career bureaucrats who are subject to legislation on appointment, promotion, reporting, sanctions, etc. This the optimal way, because different control systems are involved: public appointees, in addition to journalists and ordinary citizens, are controlled by parliament, career bureaucrats are controlled by the system itself. We also laid down this approach in the unrealized administrative reform project of 1997, which we have already discussed.
As for the responsibility of an ordinary official for failure to report illegal actions of a superior, the State Duma removed this provision from the draft anti-corruption law. It's a pity.
There was another important fork in the modern history of Russia - in the choice of an electoral system. What do you think about it?
Since 1993, Russia has had a mixed system: half of the State Duma deputies were elected under a majoritarian system, half - under a proportional system according to federal lists of electoral associations, each of which, having received more than 5% of the votes, received a number of deputy seats proportional to the number of votes received. It was (and is still preserved) a proportional system with “linked” lists, where voters, voting for one or another electoral association, could not influence the list itself, the order of the names of candidates in it, and did not have the opportunity or right to cross out list of individual candidates.
The current proportional system was first formalized in the Regulations on Elections to the State Duma, which was attached to the presidential decree. Only half of the parliament was formed under this system. But now, when this system has shown its “controllability”, the entire State Duma is formed from “party representatives” little known to the population, who do not bear any responsibility to the voters.
The fact that a grave mistake had been made became clear already in the 1993 elections. But it was not intentional, but was the result of a chain of accidents. It could have been avoided. It’s just that the employees of the Kremlin administration, through whom all the bills were passed, did not yet have experience.
The administration received a draft regulatory act on the election system, which was brought by the Democrats. According to the standard procedure, he went through referents and assistants - Mikhail Krasnov and Yuri Baturin, who did not find any legal errors (in fact, there were none) and handed them over to Yeltsin. He signed a decree, to which was attached the Election Regulations, which copied the draft. If I had been there, they would have shown me this project. I wouldn’t let him pass in this form; I would try to convince my colleagues that he was harmful. But, alas, this fork in the road was reached in my absence: in November 1993, I had a two-week tour of universities in England.
I will express my own opinion, which is shared by many political scientists: the thesis that the proportional system helps build parties is a myth. It does not help at the stage of formation of civil society either. The proportional system only works well when the country already has strong parties. And at the stage of the birth and formation of democracy, only a majoritarian election system is useful.
I'll try to prove this with an example. In 1993, 1995 and 1999, not a single LDPR deputy was elected to the majority constituencies. The presence in parliament of a faction with more than one person is a direct consequence of this law. To make it more convincing, I can add one more fact: in the entire recent history of Russian elections, while they were still more or less elections, only one completely “frostbitten nationalist” won in majoritarian constituencies. This exception only confirms the rule.
- Is there a connection between the presidential or parliamentary form of the republic and the electoral system?
In the first case there is no correlation. Let me remind you that Georgia is a presidential republic, which has exactly the same mixed system as we do, even the defects manifest themselves in the same way. The USA is also a presidential republic, but in it both houses of parliament are elected by a majority vote.
- And between the electoral system and corruption?
The relationship between the electoral system and corruption is a fact established by researchers. But it is determined not by the electoral system itself (majoritarian, proportional or mixed), but by the degree of freedom to enter the political market, the absence of unnecessary barriers and the degree of accountability of deputies to the population.
The proportional system destroyed accountability because elections under such a system created a parliament consisting of deputies whose views and experience were completely unknown to the population. They choose according to the picture, according to the television image of the first persons on the list. In Germany and the Baltic states, the proportional system is implemented on completely different principles: in each electoral district, the population votes not for parties, not for an abstract list in which one or the first three candidates are promoted. Votes are given to specific people - candidates from different parties who compete with each other in a given district. The situation is radically different from ours. And then the systems work the same way: how many votes do party representatives get in total - in this proportion, seats in parliament are distributed between parties. And the government is accountable to parliament.
- Why didn’t we take this path?
Apparently, because of the habit of simplifying everything by borrowing. They say, don’t make the system too complicated, people won’t understand it. They took a primitive - I would even say the worst - model of a proportional system and implemented it. Although not everything is so simple, maybe some politicians wanted it.
In 1993, a lot depended on the choice of voting system, primarily the education of voters in the spirit of democracy, when they choose their own government. And they will bear a very specific responsibility for this: choose correctly - you will get a free and prosperous country, make a mistake - alas... That is, education could turn out to be quite objective and visual.
The complex majoritarian electoral system required a lot of painstaking work by the party itself and its candidates with voters. And those who promoted a simplified proportional system, primarily Russia’s Choice and Yabloko, were confident in the complete control of the process: “they say, we won and we control everything. And when voting for party lists, success depends not on which deputies we nominate in the districts, but on what kind of campaign we will conduct in the media under our control, that is, through a simplified proportional system, on the shoulders of a defeated opponent, we will burst into parliament with an overwhelming number of votes.”
As a result, they got it “in full” - the LDPR became the leader. “Dizziness from success” played a role, and the election campaign was conducted extremely poorly. For some reason they “attacked” Zhirinovsky, causing the opposite reaction among voters and increasing the percentage of “protest voting”.
At the same time, in 1993, another defect of the simplified proportional system was revealed - it “splits” parties or, at a minimum, does not contribute to their unification. Since 1994, we have watched with bitterness the unsuccessful attempts to create a single party of Russian democracy out of three dwarf right-wing parties. There were many reasons for this, not the least of which was the lack of incentives for leaders to unite. Really, why? Each party has its own list, its own “locomotive”... So a swan, a crayfish and a pike sat in parliament - they fought with each other for the same electorate.
Currently, the Russian electoral system is maximally conducive to corruption in two respects: high barriers and a complete lack of party accountability to voters.
- What lessons can be learned from all this?
The main lesson: we confused the victory of the Democrats with the victory of democracy. This became clear to me only after 8-9 years. At those stages, we worked for the victory of the Democrats - to the detriment of the victory of democracy in the long term. For much of what we did “out of necessity” and “as an exception” later became common practice - often even exaggerated. And it was already working to strengthen authoritarianism in the country.
The same thing was repeated in the 1996 presidential elections, which I was actively involved in long before the start of the election campaign, sincerely trying to ensure victory for Boris Yeltsin and prevent the victory of Gennady Zyuganov. Alas, the logic of our reasoning was as follows: it doesn’t matter to us how it will happen, what matters is who wins.
I can’t say that we committed very serious violations like the current ones, but... Among the many definitions of what democracy is, there is the shortest and, perhaps, the most important: “democracy is a procedure.” And then we often sacrificed procedure for the sake of the victory of the democrats, but not of democracy.
Without this, would the 1996 presidential elections have become a fork in the road with a result that was not predicted in advance? Who knows... Irina Khakamada’s favorite reasoning on this matter: “This means that the August 1998 default would have fallen on the communists. The people would seek salvation from the liberals - and the machine of a change of power would start spinning.”
There are other opinions of political scientists about how events would develop in the event of a communist victory. Immediately after the election results were announced, the oligarchs would have invited Gennady Zyuganov to the AvtoVAZ Reception House, to see Berezovsky. The entire “seven bankers” of that time would have sat there. And they would say to the winner: “We helped you - congratulations. Now listen: you can do this and that, but you can’t do this and that under any circumstances. Understood?". After all, they really financed both sides back then, “put their eggs in all baskets.” And they could give commands to the winner, which they could not do with Yeltsin. In other words, market reforms would most likely continue. Although, of course, I cannot say with one hundred percent certainty that the communists, if they had won, would not have tried to remain in power forever.
However, I must also say that with the powerful election campaign that Yeltsin’s team waged, he could have won even without our “procedural violations”, with a stricter attitude towards them. His rating grew before our eyes. After the first round, we even underestimated it in official communications so as not to demobilize voters. And yet, it was then that the “gene for corroding” democracy as an institution was introduced into the system. The next project was the “successor”.
However, democracy is not built only by power. There is no need to think that if we have chosen the “right” president, we can “lie down on the stove” and he will do everything for us. In my opinion, one of the key lessons of these years is that democracy can only be created through the daily work and efforts of each of us. And if we talk about what we can’t delay any longer, I would put in the first place the most difficult thing, which requires the most work and time: civic maturation, judicial power and political competition.
Speaking about parliament, one cannot avoid the question of its professionalism, about the procedures that allow the adoption of good laws...
And this is closely related to the problem of corruption. In the summer of 1998, the INDEM Foundation published its first major report, “Russia and Corruption: Who Wins?” Ten years ago this question was open, but now, alas, the winner has been determined. The report stated that legal norms can create favorable conditions for corruption, and to identify such norms it was proposed to conduct an “examination for corruption potential” of laws and bills. We prepared the first methodology for such an examination and began using it in 2000. Gradually the idea took root and “went to the people.” We found experts and lawyers who productively developed and improved our methodology. The majority have saddled themselves with the idea for the sake of a harmless imitation of the fight against corruption for the authorities. A third category of interested parties has also emerged: traders in the results of the examination. The anti-corruption measure has given rise to a new type of corruption services.
Let’s assume that the whole country began to identify and correct corruption-prone norms in laws and bills in a single impulse. Will this help? No. What good are good norms if they are distorted, not enforced, or applied selectively for someone’s selfish commercial or political interests? The other reason is more fundamental. I do not share the point of view according to which corruption-causing norms appear solely as a result of the selfish intentions of specific individuals. This, of course, happens. But the main source of the systematic emergence of such norms is different - the ineffectiveness of the lawmaking process itself in Russia.
- What are its reasons?
The main reason is the political monopoly in parliament. It gives rise to this body's uncritical attitude towards bills. Any of us knows: an uncritical attitude towards our own work reduces the quality of the result. But even ten years ago, when there was no obvious political monopoly in parliament, as in the country, the quality of lawmaking suffered - but for different reasons. The fact is that both chambers of the Russian Federal Assembly establish regulations for themselves that set the procedures for their work, and they themselves easily change them for their own convenience and for short-term political purposes. Therefore, we do not have effective, strictly regulated and enforced procedures for the preparation and adoption of laws. Let me emphasize: procedures in the sphere of legislation can be likened to technology in the sphere of material production. Both are designed to ensure quality standards. The idea of adopting a special law on the adoption of laws, put forward by the administration of President Yeltsin in 1994, has not yet been implemented. The authorities do not want to constrain themselves with unnecessary procedural restrictions.
Our legislators not only do not like to be constrained by procedures, but also do not seek to develop procedures for others. Therefore, our laws are more like laws-wishes than laws-procedures. After all, it is much easier to write some bright wish into the law than to develop an effective procedure. Therefore, our laws are replete with reference norms that transfer, for example, the government the right to establish procedures through secondary legislation. But officials, developing them in conditions of secrecy and lack of competition, are more concerned about convenience for themselves than for citizens. This creates barriers for the latter, which means conditions for corruption. When it is necessary to prescribe procedures not for citizens, but for themselves (say, in laws on the functioning of departments), then officials go completely wild and create unlimited procedural freedoms for themselves, which is also fraught with corruption.
Examination of laws and draft laws for corruption potential is a kind of “technical control department”. But it loses its meaning if the results of its work are not linked to the “department of the chief technologist,” which must improve the production technology of products, in our case, the lawmaking procedures. What is the point of monitoring the presence of defects in products if their flow does not dry out and no one is doing anything to reduce it?
And here isolated measures do not work. But the topic of ineffective lawmaking is also instructive for others. Research has found that the poor quality of the electoral system contributes to the growth of corruption. In particular, we are talking about such a property of the electoral system as the degree of accountability of deputies to voters, which is ensured by a particular electoral system. Now we can see how this general proposition works. If deputies are not accountable to voters, then when creating laws, they are poorly oriented towards the interests of citizens. Laws are automatically filled with norms that work in the interests of the authorities and bureaucracy, which creates favorable conditions for corruption.
Another example: the ineffectiveness of lawmaking gives rise to bad laws, which are corrected by numerous additions, changes, and amendments, which creates an atmosphere of legislative instability. It creates additional conditions for businesses to go into the shadows. But the larger the shadow economy, the greater the level of corruption...
Interview conducted by Petr Filippov
September 2009
Corruption, that is, the misuse of power by an official for personal gain, is such a specific phenomenon that it almost always has a political nature. Since almost all areas of corruption, with the exception of such specific ones as medicine or education, are associated with government officials, which already implies a political element of corrupt actions. So, both corruption in the broad sense, in which civil servants are involved, and corruption aimed at manipulation in the political sphere can be called political.
Corruption is connected with politics initially precisely because of the very nature of this phenomenon: a corrupt official can only be a person who is entrusted with certain powers or resources that do not belong to him and which he uses in violation of the law for his own benefit, material, political or otherwise. As is already clear, most often such people are officials, that is, people who are representatives of the state and can perform various actions on its behalf. The phenomenon of corruption is based on a conflict between the interests of the official and the interests of the state. dishonest actions of an official harm the state and the interests of its citizens, which already means the political nature of this step
If we mean political corruption in its narrow meaning, in this case a possible corporate interest is added to the official’s personal interests, that is, the interest of one or another group of officials, one or another department, various party organizations or lobbying groups. But in any case, the decisive factor is the contradiction of these motives, interests and actions with the interests of the state and, more importantly, its citizens, the people as the bearer of supreme power. And here what comes to the fore is not the material component in the form of bribes, kickbacks and other incentives that are associated with corruption in business matters, but other instruments: an unscrupulous judicial system, restriction of freedom of the media, direct, with the help of controlled law enforcement agencies, or indirect (through the so-called “administrative resource”) influencing the results of elections and other procedures of political life.
There is no separate ranking of countries based on political corruption, primarily due to the difficulty of isolating this component from the general background of corruption. However, most experts believe that data on “general” corruption most often reflect the state of affairs in a particular country with political corruption, since political aspects in one form or another are present in almost all corruption processes. And in this regard, the most authoritative ranking of countries in the world in terms of the level of perception of corruption, compiled annually by the non-governmental international organization Transparency International, is very indicative. However, most countries that occupy low places in the rankings of this organization express skepticism about the objectivity of this “hit parade,” but this is not surprising.
So, over the past few years, throughout the short 21st century, Russia has occupied stable, very low places in Transparency International’s rankings for the level of perception of corruption. Which means that the experts of this organization assess the Russian Federation as one of the most corrupt, including politically, countries on the planet. Moreover, until 2010, for five years, Russia was increasingly declining in this rating, that is, the level of corruption was increasing. Thus, in 2009, Russia took 146th place in the list, and in 2010 it dropped to 154th place out of 178 represented in this rating. In 2011, judging by the Transparency International rating released on December 1 of this year, the situation improved somewhat. Russia rose in the ranking by several positions, taking 143rd place on the list out of 182 possible - this allowed it to catch up with Nigeria and expect to become a less corrupt country in the future than, for example, the Comoros. Some changes in legislation had a positive impact: in 2011, officials introduced the declaration of income and property, tightened sanctions for corruption, introduced fines that were multiples of damage from illegal actions, and the like.
Political corruption in Russia, like almost all phenomena and processes that fall on Russian soil or grow on it, has its own characteristics. First of all, this concerns the origins of Russian political corruption. Almost all researchers of this problem are unanimous that truly political corruption in Russia was born during the existence of the USSR - until 1917, corruption in the country, although it was on a huge scale, was limited to the economic sphere. In the USSR, under the conditions of a totalitarian regime, when the state saw one of its main tasks in the subjugation of all citizens and repression of the disobedient, political corruption was a legalized state policy against its people. Therefore, when in the conditions of modern Russia the question of political corruption arises, we must not forget that the country’s leaders, officials at all levels, and most of the population come from the USSR. Both representatives of the top management, accustomed to solving their problems without regard to the opinion of the people, as officials, accustomed to fulfilling their duties at the request not of the law, but of their superiors, and the people, for the most part accustomed to the fact that nothing depends on them in the life of the country .
Politics, as the practice of government, and corruption are always closely related. In domestic science, serious attention is paid to the study of the political aspect of corruption. At the same time, political corruption should be distinguished from bureaucratic corruption, characterized by the absence of political motives for corrupt actions. It is addressed to the bureaucracy - a management group that does not have the ability to make independent (without the participation of elite representatives) political decisions.
In a broad sense, political corruption is usually understood as the bribery and corruption of government officials, officials, as well as public and political figures in general, or criminal activity consisting in the use by officials of the rights and power entrusted to them for the purpose of personal enrichment.
According to some scientists, political corruption should be understood as corrupt (or related to corruption) forms of political struggle of ruling or opposition elites, parties, groups and individuals for power, i.e. with the aim of seizing or retaining it, as well as against political competitors . Some of its types are characterized by corruption acts against the constitutional rights and freedoms of man and citizen, against the foundations of the state system and state power.
Political corruption is extremely developed due to the fact that it covers all government bodies (executive, representative and judicial). It is based on the unlawful and selfish use of government resources, including in the non-state sector at the local government level.
Political corruption is characterized by the desire of its subjects to increase their power potential without obvious, at first glance, material gain. The fact is that selfish motives at lower levels of social organization (traffic police, lower-ranking officials, teachers, doctors, etc.) usually have a specific material embodiment: clearly defined amounts of money or volumes of requested services. In a situation with political corruption, both the amount of remuneration and the very fact of this remuneration are often hidden from the eyes of the public and law enforcement agencies. That is, the harmfulness of such a phenomenon is not always obvious to the average person. It is this feature that has contributed to the division of points of view among researchers of political corruption. The paradox is that an absolutely destructive, from the point of view of the law, phenomenon in the eyes of political management theorists turns into an original part of management tools, the corrosive nature of which is sometimes questioned.
Thus, in domestic science, as well as in foreign science, the following signs of political corruption are identified:
a) absence of obvious illegality;
b) focus on seizing, maintaining, strengthening and distributing power, both by individuals and their groups (parties, other stable communities);
c) use of both state and public resources to achieve these goals.
Most specialists who study political corruption consider it as a special type of corruption that arises in the political system of society as a result of violation of the electoral process, the purchase of votes during elections. Corruption here is expressed in the illegal financing of election campaigns, information support of elections by organizations and the media out of selfish or other interests, bribery of persons called upon to ensure the openness and transparency of the electoral process (observers, members of election commissions with advisory voting rights). Such corruption affects and deforms all branches of government and all spheres of the state, fundamentally changing the meaning and nature of the activities of state authorities. Here, indeed, there are all the characteristic signs of corruption, with the exception of the presence of an official.
As is known, elections ensure the correction of the socio-political course and economic progress of a civilized state. At the same time, violation of the mechanism for choosing power leads to irreparable consequences from the point of view of the formation and development of the political system of the state, its economy and social sphere, since it gives rise to such a deadly phenomenon for society and the state as political corruption. In this regard, some authors define political corruption as the actions of politicians, candidates or persons associated with them during the preparation and conduct of elections, appointment or confirmation to a certain public office, as well as the conduct of other political activities aimed at obtaining or maintaining a certain position or status, both for oneself and for other persons, committed through the use of official powers - both one’s own and other persons, the use of one’s own and others’ material resources contrary to the interests of the state, society and other persons in order to obtain political gain, personal enrichment, and also in favor of narrow group interests and political parties.
Thus, the main areas of political corruption are elections to legislative and representative bodies of government at all levels, the activities of political parties, as well as political lobbying, imposing certain decisions on state authorities and local self-government, or introducing representatives of certain influence groups into their governing bodies.
Due to the fact that such activities lead to the formation of power structures under the control of a significant part of Russian society and entire Russian regions, corruption here is the most dangerous, because its consequences are very difficult to overcome, and, moreover, contribute to the development of not only political, but also many other forms of corruption. Corrupt officials who have seized power in this or that state structure or in individual constituent entities of the Russian Federation can then maintain and increase their power for years using various types of corruption mechanisms and the administrative resource that ends up in their hands, including during the next elections. .
Thus, the report of the Public Chamber on Corruption noted that in recent years, the imperfection of the party-political system in Russia, the absence of full-fledged political parties that actually express the interests of specific social groups, led to the fact that parties began to develop in two directions: either to represent the interests of the executive vertical, or turn into a kind of business projects to attract financial resources by receiving support from the authorities in exchange for votes when considering a particular issue in the legislative body.
In view of these circumstances, the corruption component of the political process began to be expressed in the lobbying of some bills and the inhibition of others in the interests of specific financial and industrial groups that finance parties and economically stimulate the activities of deputies who are able to influence the decisions of legislative bodies. And since criminal communities have considerable resources of influence in the economic sphere, individual politicians and party functionaries, in essence, begin to express not only economic, but also criminal group interests.
It should be emphasized that political corruption in modern Russia has all the essential features of this political phenomenon, among which the following should be noted:
Actual distortion of the mechanism of the election process through falsification of election results, with the goal of retaining (usurping) power and the immutability of the existing political system of the state;
The formation and development of special financial and political groups, in whose hands enormous resources are concentrated and within which strategic government decisions are made in a narrow circle without their prior discussion in parliament;
The absence of real political competition and the absence of real political parties whose goal is to gain control of the state through political struggle;
The formation of executive authorities (government, administration) not on a professional basis, but on the basis of personal loyalty to the leader and mutual responsibility.
State (administrative, financial, economic, informational, etc.) support for the actions of one political group to the detriment of support for the actions of other political and social groups.
Thus, political corruption is a process of forced and illegitimate retention (usurpation) of the highest state power of one of the political groups (clans) for the purpose of unlimited and uncontrolled access to administrative, natural, production, financial, economic, information, electoral and other resources of the state with simultaneous deprivation of the rights of access to these resources to other political and social groups by falsifying election results or canceling (partial or complete) elections of this government.
What are the main, basic causes of political corruption? This is, first of all, the imperfection of political institutions and the entire mechanism of government. It is clear that perfect socio-political systems do not exist. But it is also clear that in democratic countries, where a system of public administration has been developed for decades, ensured by effective legislation and an established code of high standards of political ethics of the elite, political corruption is under the effective control of both the state and society. Therefore, in such countries (for example, the Scandinavian countries, Canada, the Netherlands, Singapore and many others) we observe a traditionally low level of political corruption. Where new socio-political systems arise, as, for example, in Russia, or conditions for the development of relations of corruption arise (for example, at one time in Italy), as a rule, for various reasons, there is a rapid surge in political corruption.
Another major reason for political corruption in the country is the low level of participation of the country's citizens in control of the state. The measure of this control is so low and the real possibilities of citizens to exert influence through the still weak institutions of representation (political parties, interest groups, pressure groups), other forms of participation in making certain decisions are so insignificant in the Russian political system that we can only talk about the mechanisms of influence of civil society on the state emerging in the Russian Federation.
The most important reason, and, at the same time, a consequence of the two previous causes of political corruption in the country, is what is called the state of “honesty of power”, the standards of political ethics of the bureaucracy, which are directly dependent on the political will, values and standards of political ethics of the ruling political elite of the country . It is obvious that the degree of corruption of bureaucrats, as an instrument of power of the political elite, depends on control over its activities by the ruling political elite, on the internal control of the bureaucracy itself (the current professional and ethical standards of the corporation), and on control (pressure) from the public. Since the role of the public in the processes of making and monitoring the implementation of political decisions in the country is negligible, the ruling political elite and bureaucracy become the main subjects of the “rules of the political game” and the political regime in the country. They determine its main characteristics, “measures” of the fight against corruption, “dosage” the conditions for the formation of civil society and an activist type of political culture of Russian citizens in the country.
An example is the “party in power” - “United Russia”. The corruption potential of this political organization is too reduced by the specifics of its “controlled” existence. A close connection with the executive branch, or direct involvement in it, does not give members of this party the opportunity to conduct independent lobbying actions. It does not follow from this, of course, that representatives of United Russia are the most honest representatives of the Russian elite, but political officials, as a rule, realize their “corruption opportunities” outside of party activities. For other “bribery-intensive activities” (for example, trading places on electoral lists) there remains little scope due to tight centralized control. The main “competitive advantage” of the party in power is “administrative resource”. But this is already a subject for study by the prosecutor’s office and other supervisory authorities, for which it does not matter which party, say, the director of a state-owned enterprise is a bribe-taker.
Ex-candidate for the President of Russia, leader of the newly formed “Our Choice” party, Irina Khakamada, in the midst of the election race, actually purchased prestigious housing in Moscow. Two apartments in house No. 5 on Petrovsky Lane, not far from Tverskaya, to which it was subsequently decided to add an attic of 200 square meters, cost Irina Mutsuovna and her husband Vladimir Sirotinsky a very tidy sum.
And everything would be fine, but the thought crept into the souls of many of Khakamada’s comrades on the right flank that part of the election funds were spent on this property. It is no secret that Irina Mutsuovna’s campaign was financed from abroad, primarily from the funds of one of the leaders of YUKOS, Leonid Nevzlin. The media even mentioned the amount of these investments - $10 million. But the fact is that part of this transfer was supposed to go to the needs of the Indem fund, which is headed by Georgy Satarov. However, the funds that Indem needed to better fight corruption never reached the recipient. Six months later, Satarov decided to clarify their fate, but he was told that the money was spent on election campaigning. It was then that the notorious apartment came to mind. So, while Irina Khakamada is trying to unite liberals under her banner, Georgy Satarov is wondering whether he has become an unwitting sponsor of her housewarming party.
It is common knowledge that corruption, like the mafia, is immortal. In recent years, corruption relations in modern Russian society have not only not decreased, but, on the contrary, have expanded, become more complex and have become a factor that hinders the positive socio-economic development of the country and threatens national security. Meanwhile, there is perhaps the only way to, if not eradicate, then at least maintain the level of political corruption at a level acceptable to society. This method has long been known and is widely used in civilized countries (of course, each with its own specifics). It consists in creating an effective political system that generates political competition to the greatest extent, which in turn ensures, in combination with free elections, the formation of capable parties, party coalitions, parliament, government consisting of professionals, independent trade unions, the media, courts, and prosecutors.
One of the most important tasks in the fight against corruption in the public service system is the formation of a state strategy that provides for the following anti-corruption mechanisms:
Political mechanism (political will of the country’s leadership, involvement of civil society institutions, etc.);
Legislative mechanism (improving anti-corruption legislation, eliminating shortcomings of the current mechanism of legal regulation of the public service, etc.);
Institutional mechanism (strengthening the “transparency” of management, pursuing an open information policy; creating state-public structures for monitoring the activities of the civil service, ensuring the independence and efficiency of the judicial system, prosecutors and law enforcement agencies, etc.);
International mechanism (signing and ratification of international protocols and laws; involvement of international anti-corruption experts in legislative work, etc.);
Educational mechanism (revival of such a concept as civil servant ethics; increasing legal literacy of the general population; educating a new generation of civil servants).
In conclusion, I would like to note that political corruption in the conditions of modern Russia is a deeply natural phenomenon. It is not just widespread and pervasive. It is one of the forms of a kind of integration of the political space, connecting everyone with everyone - businessmen with politicians, oppositionists with government officials, crime bosses with fighters for law and order.
Corruption in Russia cannot be explained by the personal greed of politicians and officials, to whom the classic formula of Mikhail Bulgakov is quite applicable: people are like people, only the housing issue has spoiled them.
Moreover, the experience of the Russian opposition shows that it is impossible to engage in elections, campaigning on television or other forms of work with “political technologies” without getting dirty to one degree or another with corruption schemes. Political technologies and corruption schemes are fundamentally inseparable, at least in the conditions of our country.
On the other hand, objective reasons for corruption do not relieve politicians of personal responsibility. Moreover, in practice we see the desire of political leaders not to minimize, but, on the contrary, to maximize corruption schemes.
The only way out of the situation can be the emergence of a new generation of opposition politicians and organizations more closely connected with society and mass movements. The advantage of a mass movement is that although it also does not have absolute immunity to corruption, it spontaneously “extinguishes” corrupt impulses - it is impossible to bribe everyone, you cannot bribe every picketer.
On the other hand, the response to the development of corruption in the opposition ranks is openness and a transition to democratic practice. Mass participation in itself is not a guarantee against corruption (as the experience of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation has shown) if there is no openness and democratic procedures.
Under conditions of democratic procedure and open debate, politicians will not stop taking money from donors (otherwise they will simply not be able to participate in elections), but they will lose the opportunity to trade their political position, since they will not be able to carry out the line agreed with the sponsor through democratically elected and publicly functioning organs.
In this regard, the key issue is not transparency regarding the sources of funds, but democratic procedures for making decisions on the use of resources and monitoring the implementation of these decisions.
A specific mechanism for combating political corruption can be the institution of primary elections (“primaries”), involving activists and party supporters in the formation of electoral lists. Left forces may be recommended to open “primaries” with the participation of activists from social movements.
The unpreparedness of a particular political force for open and democratic procedures can serve as an indicator of the potential level of corruption, even if it is a new force, at the stage of formation and has not yet tarnished itself in any way.
Ultimately, the fight against corruption in politics, if we approach it not propagandistically and demagogically, but systematically, turns into work to reform the entire system of political parties and organizations, their relationships with the state and society. We are thus talking about moving towards a new political system.
Hello, friends!
The art of governing a state is how the word politics is translated from Greek. If there is a state, then there is a policy, and with it the government that carries out this policy. Well, when there are those who rule and those who obey, there will certainly be violations.
Corruption in politics is a phenomenon characteristic of both the countries of the world community and Russia. Political scandals in our country have become one of the signs of recent times. Corruption has its own reasons and its own special features. Let's talk about this in more detail.
Two sides of the same problem
Official - sounds... not proud
Since, in a broad sense, corruption is the abuse of official position for personal gain, the activities of a high-ranking official often manifest themselves in precisely such abuses.
Just over the past few years, citizens of our country have witnessed several corruption cases against officials at various levels. Examples include cases against regional officials, in particular, the governors of the Kirov and Sakhalin regions; entrepreneurs of VimpelCom, T-plus and Renova.
Several cases were opened against security forces, as well as officials heading departmental structures, in particular, the Ministry of Roads in the Kaluga Region. The case of former Russian Minister of Social Development Alexey Ulyukaev received the greatest resonance.
Officials at the top of power resort to various methods to use the positions given to them by the state not at all for the benefit of society. They take bribes, extort controlling stakes in companies, etc.
Especially many violations are revealed when concluding government contracts, when huge kickbacks are taken to make a decision in favor of one of the tender participants. Corruption scandals permeate society, which is both an example of their presence and evidence of the fight and counteraction to corruption in Russia.
Take it - get it
The very concept of corruption is generalized. There is no article of the Criminal Code under which one can be convicted of corruption. However, it does contain articles – giving and receiving bribes, abuse of official position, illegal participation in business activities, etc.
Officials who commit these criminal offenses must receive appropriate punishment. Unfortunately, political corruption also manifests itself in the fact that judicial and law enforcement agencies are susceptible to it.
That is why the case, as a rule, does not come to court and the majority of officials who have committed illegal actions continue to live without being punished.
However, even the examples we have listed indicate that often, especially recently, even very high ranks cannot avoid punishment. State policy in the country to combat this evil is not curtailed, but, on the contrary, is being pursued more actively.
The choice has been made. Question: how?
It would be incorrect to talk about political corruption in Russia only in connection with high-ranking officials. The second side of the issue lies in the implementation in the country of such a thing as suffrage.
The desire of a political party to come to power or to obtain a certain number of votes with the aim of acquiring benefits - not necessarily material - is also a manifestation of corruption. And there are more than enough scandals associated with election campaigns in our country. And this does not depend on the level of elections - federal, regional or municipal.
Violations are sometimes so egregious that they escalate into criminal cases. For example, in the small town of Elektrogorsk near Moscow, during the election of the head of the city, all the ballots were taken out of the administration building, where the territorial election commission was located. The presidential elections were disrupted and postponed until next year.
As an example of corruption, we can cite the widespread bribery of voters, which was noted in previous years; there are cases when enterprise workers, for a certain amount, were taken by busloads to a polling station for early voting.
Election results are often falsified, there is open state support for the party in power, and administrative resources are widely used to obtain the necessary results.
As a result, all this negatively affects the life of society, whose leaders come to power through not entirely legal means. Violating the law is the norm for them, since even before they began serving as officials, they actively violated it.
Causes and consequences
There are many reasons for the emergence of corruption in Russia. Among them, political scientists name:
- imperfection of the legislative system,
- shortcomings in administrative reform,
- large gap between the incomes of rich and poor,
- legal illiteracy of the population.
One of the most important reasons is the lack of a developed civil society and the weakness of its institutions. Unfortunately, the adopted regulations, including the law on corruption of 2008, are not in full effect - as always, there is a gap between the adoption of the law and proper monitoring of its implementation.
Political corruption is a widespread and extremely negative phenomenon. With its help, the shadow economy is supported in the country, influence is exerted on budgetary processes, and the interests of a certain party are lobbied, which often harm national interests.
In recent years, the fight against corruption and assistance in taking measures to prevent it have been one of the areas of activity of the President and the government. While still President, Dmitry Medvedev believed that the public, for example, a body such as the Public Chamber of the Russian Federation, should play a special role in combating corruption.
One of the President’s instructions is to prepare a report on the situation with corruption in the country. The OP makes such reports, but notes that the measures taken in the country are insufficient.
During the Soviet Union, corruption was fought decisively. There were few high-profile cases in the country, but if signs of corruption were discovered, the authorities acted harshly, protecting the interests of citizens and society as a whole. Those involved in the “cotton” and “fish” cases received what they deserved for corruption - many criminal cases were initiated, on which decisions were made.
Today in Russia, the fight against corruption, as stated by the President and other high-ranking officials, is the main focus of activity. It is no coincidence that the law on corruption is undergoing changes, and Presidential Decrees are being issued to strengthen this fight. Corruption is a threat to the national interests of society, something that prevents progress. The success of the fight against it largely determines the future of the country.
If you are interested in the topic raised in this article, share your opinion with us. We will be happy to have a dialogue and look forward to your responses and comments.
Georgy Alexandrovich Satarov
President of the INDEM Foundation (Informatics for Democracy)
Georgy Satarov:
Good afternoon dear friends! Everything is fine? Can you hear me well? Yes, even without a microphone I would be clearly audible, I’ll have to restrain my voice.
The topic of my lecture is “Political Corruption.” But if you expect to hear from me stories about the leaden abominations of life and bone-crushing incriminating evidence, then I must disappoint you, my task is completely different. I want to equip you with some intellectual tools with the help of which you will be able to think about this topic yourself and see what is happening around you differently. As experts in this field say, when you go to the forest to pick mushrooms, you need to know what mushrooms look like. This is obvious, but usually this simple thought is forgotten when you start thinking about a variety of things in the social sphere, simply because there is no appropriate knowledge and experience in recognizing the objects you are thinking about.
Our object is political corruption. We will talk about this now, first in theoretical terms, because, as one of the classics of Marxism-Leninism said: “There is nothing more practical than a good theory.” This is the eternal legacy of the ever-living teaching of Marxism-Leninism. Very rare, of course, but important.
I will start from the very basics, because first of all we need to agree on what corruption is in general. I must say that I am not satisfied with any of the standard definitions, including those appearing in laws or even in well-developed international anti-corruption instruments. It's all rubbish! Mura, this is, first of all, because corruption is a very complex, universal, ever-living, ever-living social phenomenon that will never disappear from life, just as friction cannot disappear from mechanical devices, it can only be reduced from human pain cannot disappear in the body, it can be overcome only by identifying its causes, diseases and treating these diseases, but only until the next signals of the disease appear.
It’s exactly the same with corruption. This is due to the fact that corruption is always a consequence of some ineffectiveness of institutions, ineffectiveness of social relations, and so on. And man, being a genetically extremely imperfect creature, cannot create anything perfect. In general, nothing perfect exists in nature, apart from us and our efforts.
Therefore, any institutions that we create always contain the germs of defects, and these defects appear for the reason that we always create or improve institutions for certain current problems, and life always throws up new ones. And this exacerbates the potential inefficiency of institutions, and this inefficiency is expressed in corruption.
So, this is a very complex phenomenon, and giving it any one comprehensive definition is absolutely pointless. I will also not define corruption; I will limit myself to giving a definition of corrupt behavior. Let's do it. I don't think all of you have studied institutional economics in depth enough. I'm not wrong? And those who studied probably forgot. Therefore, I will remind you of one simple model from this area. However, this is not only from institutional economics, this is from institutional theory in general, this is a model of principal-agency relations.
So, a principal, simply put, a boss, is a person, a person in the broad sense, it can be a single person like me, or it can be a group like all of us. This is a person who has certain resources, goals, and the desire to achieve these goals using his resources. But for various reasons it is not able to do this on its own.
Firstly, there may be so many resources and goals that it is simply impossible to do it all at once. Imagine a king or a president or a parliament, whatever. It is clear that it is impossible to do everything with your own hands. There is a second important reason: you simply don’t know how to do it. You know that you have resources, you know for sure that you have goals, but you don’t know how to use it all and achieve some other goals. But the principal, in order to realize his individual goals, using part of his resources, hires individuals. Again, these can be individual or collective individuals to whom he instructs to solve individual problems, transferring part of his resources to the agent.
What is our principal doing? When he hires an agent, he formulates goals for him, transfers part of the resources to achieve these goals, assigns remuneration, and, of course, sanctions if something goes wrong. Let's say if resources are wasted. And organizes control over the agent’s work.
Now the agent, of course, undertakes to work towards achieving the principal’s goal and to use the resources transferred to him for this purpose. And (I haven’t finished writing here), naturally, he is obliged to inform the principal about what he is doing to achieve these goals, how he is spending his resources.
Here we have a simple scheme: tasks, principal, the arrow goes down - tasks and rewards, information goes up - there are not enough resources, add more. In general, it's a common thing.
So, this is a very simple, harmonious model, which is interesting not because it is simple, but because in life it is implemented with a huge number of defects, and the achievement of institutional theory is that it describes in detail how deviation occurs in real life from this cute model. It seems that everything is clear, everything is fine, but life works differently. The whole theory is devoted to these deviations, and one of these deviations is corruption.
I am writing in advance a more general concept, perhaps it is familiar to you. This is so-called opportunistic behavior.
Imagine that you come to some office, see smart heads bent over computer keyboards, but as you pass, you notice that they are playing Tetris or something even greater (my knowledge of games has frozen at that twenty-year-old level , now it looks different), in general, they are playing some kind of games.
This is a typical example of opportunistic behavior when the task of the principal, in this case the boss of these employees, was set in such a way that as a result they are left with a huge pile of free time, they do not know how to spend it and, in particular, spend this time on games. I have an opportunity. Why not play during working hours, for the principal’s money, for your own pleasure?
So, corruption is a special case of opportunistic behavior, but it is very bad and dangerous. I read: “Corruptive behavior (I made this up, I still can’t remember) is a type of opportunistic behavior of an agent, in which the latter uses the principal’s resources not to achieve the principal’s goals, but to achieve his own goals.”
The following things happen here. The first is a breach of contract. The contract can be a formal contract, it can be an informal contract, including the idea of tradition, the norms for fulfilling the corresponding social roles, whatever.
The first is a breach of contract, in which the interests of the principal are betrayed and his resources are stolen. Betrayal and theft. For example, an ordinary traffic cop on the road who slows down a car that is speeding and takes a bribe from the driver instead of a fine. The fine is very large, and it is no coincidence that large fines are imposed so that a favorable corruption situation can be created, so that it is easier to give a bribe three times less, but not pay the fine. You save money, you save time, the one who gives the bribe, and the one who receives the bribe enjoys extra money.
What's the point here? Let's assume that the principal of this lieutenant who slowed you down is an honest person who has precisely assigned a task to this lieutenant, and the task is to maintain order on the road in order to ensure traffic safety on the road. This is the main task, traffic safety. To do this, it is necessary to maintain order, for this it is necessary to fine those who violate the order. What does the traffic cop do instead? He doesn't provide order, he doesn't provide security, and he breaks rules, regulations, and so on. From his boss, this lieutenant, he receives the most important resource - this is power over us, this is the opportunity to wave a wand, stop, make claims, get a fine, and so on. This is where the goals of this principal are betrayed and his resources are stolen. The power that is given to him, to wave his wand, is used not to ensure safety, our safety on the roads, but to replenish the family budget.
There are a huge number of types of corruption, and I’ll tell you right away that it is impossible to come up with a neat classification of types of corruption, because it is a very complex phenomenon.
If you say that this particular corrupt act, a corrupt deal, falls under a certain type, you can be sure that it will fall under three or four more. And they are not placed next to each other, they intersect, and this is normal. By the way, different types of corruption can be determined by who the principal is and who the agents are. You can also add clients to this scheme that agents must serve. For example, pedestrians on the road so that they are not run over by cars, ensuring safety, the natural implementation of the rules, just like the safety of drivers, so that pedestrians do not throw themselves under the wheels of fast-moving vehicles.
There is one very important type of corruption - this is political corruption, which is extremely specific, by agents and principals. It must be said that if we tried to define political corruption, say, in Tsarist Russia and in today's Russia, we would end up with different things. Because political corruption is counted from who is the supreme principal. This system of relations, principal-agent, is arranged in a complex way, at least like a kind of tree.
Let's go back to our example, a traffic cop and his boss. The traffic cop, this lieutenant, is an agent, and he has a principal, this is the head of the unit responsible for a certain part of the road. But this principal, the chief of this lieutenant, is also an agent, but of a higher principal, of a higher level. It's clear. And so we will get to the chief traffic cop of all Rus', and from the chief traffic cop of all Rus', we will get, it’s scary to think, to the Minister of Internal Affairs, and from the Minister of Internal Affairs we will get to the Prime Minister, and from the Prime Minister we will get to the President. Who is above the President? A? Louder, I can’t hear, I’m deaf!
Replica:
Also a principal.
Georgy Satarov:
Replica:
The highest.
Georgy Satarov:
Who is this? Name it, don’t be afraid, it’s only in Judaism that you can’t call the name of God. In our case it is simpler.
Replica:
God, you already said it. Big Putin.
Georgy Satarov:
Putin is President, for now.
Replica:
In theory, all the people.
Georgy Satarov:
Right! What is the name of this idea?
Replica:
Constitution.
Georgy Satarov:
Absolutely right! The Constitution says: “The bearer of sovereignty, the only source of power in the Russian Federation is its multinational people.” This position defines the people as the supreme principal. The people exercise their power directly, don’t think anything bad, and also through state authorities and through local governments, these are agents. Everyone who is not the people and is related to the government is simply its agents, and the people are in a principal-agency relationship with these agents, but not with everyone at once, but through some kind of hierarchy. Moreover, there are several of these hierarchies, and, in theory, according to the Constitution, they are independent.
There is a hierarchy of federal power, and more than one. There is one branch separately, there is another branch separately, they, intersecting, give rise to a third branch of the judiciary. And there is a separate hierarchy of regional authorities, there is a separate hierarchy of local government. These are different hierarchies, they are not subordinate to each other as normal, according to the Constitution.
Can you imagine? We. Our direct agents are those whom we elect: the mayor, the governor, the President, deputies of this level, these are our direct agents. And they are already creating agents under themselves, since they are no longer able to solve all the problems for which we expect them to solve. They hire lower level agents and go all the way up to this lieutenant and others. Political corruption is corruption in the system of relations between the people and those direct agents whom we choose. I see, right?
In fact, everything is simple: there is a principal-agent model, there is a supreme principal - you and me - and there are our agents. Let's see what corruption outrages can appear in these relations with them. The first thing, of course, maybe even the most important thing, is how these agents become our agents. Roughly speaking, this is the sphere of choice based on political competition. This is the first and very important layer of political corruption. Among you there are probably people of political conscription age, those who have already received the right to vote. There are probably some, right? At my age, I can’t tell the difference anymore. If someone is more than 20 years younger than me, I can no longer distinguish whether he is 18 or 28. There are certainly such people, right?
Replica:
Georgy Satarov:
Replica:
Georgy Satarov:
Me too. Moreover, I am a member of the precinct election commission, the lowest level, with the right to a decisive vote, by the way, I am very proud. I'm not happy either. The logic here is very simple; it is associated with the class of defects of the principal-agent model in institutional theory that are generated by the mistakes of the principal. In our case, with our mistakes. If as a result of our recruiting (I use a general term) agents, something completely obscene appears in the place of the agent, then this is, first of all, our problem, because we should be concerned about who will become our agents. The problem is also that we, especially we collectively, do not have ideal efficiency. Therefore, life works in a very funny way, it is not only a matter of who becomes an agent, but also as a result of what procedure he becomes an agent, and here the experience of mankind gives us an extremely wide range. For example, Aristotle called one procedure ideal. Do any of you know which procedure he said was the best?
Replica:
Contemplation.
Georgy Satarov:
No, I mean appointment, and this is not Aristotle, firstly, but secondly, I mean the recruitment procedure for positions of power.
Replica:
Georgy Satarov:
It's a lot, yes! Moreover, it was so, in fact, you will be surprised! And if any of you know the biography of Socrates from Plato, then Socrates also held a municipal position at one time. And it must be said that there was no person who mocked this fact more than Socrates himself, who believed that there was no person less suited to perform social functions than Socrates. But only Socrates was a supporter of the implementation of laws. This is how he actually died. When his friends suggested avoiding the death to which Athens had sentenced him, Socrates said, “Sorry, this is a law I must obey.” In the same way he, by lot. I don’t remember what he was in charge of, but he was in charge for some time. It’s somehow a pity that they abandoned the lot; other procedures are more vulnerable. On the one hand, elections are, of course, more interesting; they have additional very important functions as a political procedure, but they are more vulnerable, as practice has shown. We are forced to accept that now we have elections, and we will probably hardly move on to drawing lots, although in some places this remains.
Replica:
In the modern system, the lot is also rigged, that is, there is no point.
Georgy Satarov:
No, no, no, this argument can kill everything in the world. As soon as you were born and realized this fact, you need to immediately lay hands on him, wouldn’t you agree? In what very important procedure is lottery used, including in Russia? Recruitment of people performing power functions.
Replica:
Jury trial?
Georgy Satarov:
Certainly! This is from those times, so not everything is so bad in our procedures. We still have to see what will happen to these jurors next, but you must agree that in Russia at the moment this is the only procedure that is carried out honestly.
This is about the advantages of drawing lots, that he is less vulnerable. So why the lot? Why is he so good? The fact is that the lot is drawn among a large number of people, for example 30 thousand inhabitants of Athens, a wild number. Now, you performed your function, let’s say, you were responsible for public baths, it was an extremely important function in Athens, then in Rome, the most important, but it is not at all necessary that the lot will fall on you next time. This greatly reduces your opportunities for opportunistic behavior in the performance of your functions, including corrupt behavior. Any power function is associated with the fact that you have a certain reserve excess of authority.
Since ancient times, when power functions appeared in general, after civilization began to move from tribes without leaders to more serious political systems, chiefdoms appeared and so on, people, understanding the importance of this division of labor, preferred to endow those who must exercise power with certain inflated powers. To have the opportunity to solve some non-standard situations and so on. It is better to avoid the risk of any troubles than to lose power. The result is always this political rent, which can be used to one's advantage. The lot reduces the possibility of this opportunistic, including corrupt behavior for the exploitation of political rent.
Let's return to the elections. What happens to elections and political competition when we talk about political corruption? Here is a small list of types of political corruption in this area.
The first is the unjustified suppression of political competition in general. It was not by chance that I wrote “unjustified”, because there are always limiting norms that narrow absolute scope, complete freedom. This is the so-called background level of political violence, which we accept because we consider it beneficial to the safety of society.
Let's say the Constitution prohibits calls that incite hatred here, here, here and here, these are typical restrictions imposed on political competition, and this is normal. Unjustified suppression of political competition in general is always a narrowing of our opportunities as a principal, it is not only a narrowing of the opportunities of those who want to participate in political competition.
You know very well how the mechanism works: we cannot say about the principal called “the people” that he, as a single body, sets certain tasks for the authorities; this does not happen in a complexly organized society. Everything happens differently. In fact, a normally functioning modern society continuously generates some new ideas. These are ideas about how bad things are here, here and here, and they make it public. And these are ideas on how to solve this, this and this, and how to solve this, this and that. And then mediators called “competing political parties” scan what is happening in society. This is not difficult, because there are appropriate public institutions that develop, accumulate and publicize these ideas. They put it into their programs and say, “Oh, look what we came up with!”
In fact, the authorities never come up with anything; they are not able to do it. She always takes it from society, this is a normal division of functions. And then we are asked to choose: here are several presidents with programs or several parties with their own programs, figure it out. Unjustified suppression of political competition castrates or amputates our choice, if you want a more delicate staging, and this is a crime against our goals, for the sake of which we create this power.
We say: “You will never come up with anything good, but you find it, accumulate it, offer it back to us in the form of structured, different programs, and we will already choose how the majority will vote, and this will be the case in the next four years.” I’m saying this according to the old Constitution, of course.
Then the little things begin: unjustified restrictions on the political rights of citizens. The political rights of citizens are not only the opportunity to vote for who you want to vote for, it is the right to control how the competition takes place, it is the right to campaign for whoever you consider necessary to support. Now, I want to support X, and I have the right to shout to everyone: “X is the best for this reason, for this reason, and for this reason.” There are smaller rights.
Further. Unjustified restrictions on the political activities of potential competitors. Here we mean not only competition in elections, but also competition in general, competition for the minds of voters. For example, the information monopoly of one party, compared to all others, or the appointment of some special group of political players who are allowed to broadcast and use information channels, and tabooing the rest. This is typical political corruption. Search and extraction of unjustified advantages in the sphere of political competition. Here the most well-known, typical one is what is called the use of administrative and political resources. We give, for example, political power to our agents, and it is clear that we give it to them so that they solve some of our problems: the security of the country, safety on the street, good education, health, and so on. These are the tasks that we set for them. But if they use these resources not for solving these problems, but for self-preservation in power, then this is already called the selfish use of our temporarily transferred resources for personal purposes, political corruption. Discrimination in the sphere of political competition is more or less clear, I won’t waste time on it.
Creation of high barriers to entry into the political market. This is a typical situation for our country. From 2000 to this day, all changes to election laws have been introduced in one direction, this is the difficulty of access to the political market. At first it looked more or less harmless: well, the barrier was raised from 5% to 7% for the party, for example. Now they have already come up with so much that one lecture would not be enough for me to talk about all the barriers to different types of elections. Corruption is studied not only with the kind of chatter that I have at the moment, but also with the help of mathematical models. A separate branch of science is mathematical models of corruption. A favorite model is the model of the growth of corruption in China: after each campaign, corruption increases in a spiral. There are trigonometric models, depending on different variables. One such trigonometric model is that between types of electoral systems and the level of corruption in a country. What did these researchers do? They characterized all selective models existing in nature with two variables.
The first variable is barriers, the magnitude of the barrier to entry into the political market, such as a barrier in percentage, collection of signatures or money that must be contributed, and so on. We have a lot to do, for example, we need to collect signatures from municipal deputies or something else.
And the second is the degree of accountability of those who are elected to those who elect, how in a variety of ways the retention of a deputy in his seat depends on the opinion of voters. It turned out that the higher the barriers and the lower the accountability, the higher the corruption in the country, meaning corruption in general, not just political, any kind.
Avoidance of political responsibility and accountability. This is achieved in a variety of ways. For example, our proportional system is a system that provides maximum opportunity for evasion of accountability and responsibility. After all, you vote for a party, and who will be elected as a result of your vote, who will take the place of a deputy, does not depend on you, the party itself decides. It follows that the party cannot tell you that this particular deputy will screw you over. But why exactly him, why should you tell your lamentations to him? This is unstoppable, the party decided so. If he listens to you, and then nothing happens, you can’t do anything in the next elections, because the fact that it was he who spudded you and listened to your lamentations as voters in Uryupinsk has nothing to do with your votes.
This is how the proportional system works, although it is no longer used almost anywhere, only in our country, for one reason, because it allows you to evade accountability.
Purposeful malice, deception of voters. Well, I have nothing to talk about here, this happens all the time, on various occasions, you can tell me a lot yourself.
Bribery of voters. This is a well-known trick during elections, the distribution of vodka and other people who like what.
Trading access to the political market. This is not only trading, when parties trade places on the party list, everyone always does this. Since it does not depend on you, on your votes, whether a particular deputy will pass or not, then the sixth place on the list is a gigantic amount, and the 36th is smaller, and the 86th is feasible for very many in our country of those who, with the permission of the authorities , has the opportunity to continue doing business. But it is also a direct power trade. For example, in 2001, a meeting of the English Club took place (it resumed its activities long ago), a place where the elite gather and they chat about all sorts of nonsense. One mouthpiece of the current regime talked about how good things were there after the political reforms. And Vladimir Fedorovich Shumeiko, the former chairman of the Federation Council, was sitting there, and he said: “Yes, of course, this is probably very good, but I know how much a seat in the Federation Council costs.” How? This can't be true, it's all nonsense! Sorry, he said this publicly, on the record. Sorry, I personally was offered a place for 2 million dollars. It happened in 2001, but naturally I refused. A simple banal thing.
Purposeful and malicious manipulation of the procedures for preparing elections, conducting elections and counting votes. This is also more or less generally known, I won’t say. And, specifically, falsification of results. For example, rewriting the protocol. They bring one protocol, and the territorial commission introduces a completely different one, the “correct” one, of course.
Political corruption in the organization of powers. Here, of course, the field is not plowed, this is a different layer, they are already, as if, elected by us or somehow recruited, they are beginning to exercise their powers.
First, they themselves appoint agents to the next level. I know the dynamics of the cost of the post of Deputy Prime Minister in the Russian government between 1997 and 2004. The difference in hard currency, do you know what it is? 300 times. Can you imagine? The cost of a post has increased 300 times. A very important thing is preparation and making political decisions. In principle, any politician always makes a decision between Scylla and Charybdis. I don’t remember which one is which, I’ll name it randomly. Scylla, let's say, this is the public interest, this is what needs to be done, this is what he was elected for. Charybdis is the personal interests of a politician. When any, any, I emphasize, politician makes a decision, he, evaluating different options, compares these two things.
The diversity of political life in different countries, in different political systems, is determined only by the extent to which a particular politician can attach what weight to this Scylla and this Charybdis when making political decisions. Let's say 90% Scylla, that is, public interests and 10% personal interests, Charybdis. Or maybe vice versa, 10% is for public interests, and 90% is for personal interests. There is even more variation. What helps to increase Charybdis, the share of personal interests? Well, for example, the closeness of preparing decisions. Personally, if we talk about my intellectual and political trajectory, I put an end to the regime that appeared gradually from the end of 1999 to March 2000, at one specific moment.
At the end of 1999, when Putin was already prime minister and it became clear that he would be elected to the presidency, the Center for Strategic Development, CSR, was created, have you heard? No? Well, don't. It was headed by German Gref, the future Minister of Economy, now the Chairman of the Central Bank, you know, right? And the task was set - to develop a detailed program for the future presidency of Vladimir Putin. And they began to gather very good experts there, I would not be afraid of this word, the best. If I was invited, then, of course, the best, that’s understandable.
But the first thing they said: “Everything that is done here is an absolute secret.” And then I immediately said “goodbye” to them and put an end to this regime.
Why? I'll give you a simple example. A wonderful team was assembled to prepare administrative reform. Let's call it something else: for civil service reform. I know many of them personally, and these experts worked with me when I set the same task on behalf of Boris Nikolayevich in the Kremlin in 1997. And they, using the developments of 1997, have developed very decent things, including the main framework law on the state public service. Even such a shift has already been made that the word “state” was supplemented with the word “public”, as they do in the West.
This law, very seriously prepared, had a volume of 150 pages. This commission, by the way, was headed by Medvedev. The commission issued this law to Medvedev, he passed it on to the President, and the President sent this law to the main state legal department of the President of the Russian Federation, and from there the law, already signed by the President, went to the Duma for adoption. Do you know how many pages there were in this law, which has already been signed by the President? Fifteen! Everything serious was thrown to hell, all that remained was the classification of different types of service: diplomatic, law enforcement, and so on. All. The question is why? And from that moment on it was already possible to put an end to this reform, the one that stands now is already majestic. Why? For one simple reason, because all this was prepared in secrecy. Because in conditions of secrecy, society is not able to control how the most important decision for the country and citizens is prepared.
Now the question is why there are 15 pages left. Because the full text of this law reduced the opportunities of agents for their opportunistic corrupt behavior. This is about the issue of Scylla and Charybdis. You can do whatever you want in the dark.
Misinforming voters. I won't talk about it, turn on the TV.
Well, the inherent denial of access to information is also a well-known topic.
Political corruption in the legislative branch is a very well-known thing, of course. Usually, the standard saying is “buying votes.” Purchase for money, purchase for political, administrative, for some opportunities and so on, when another branch of government buys this branch of government. The decisions of committees and commissions are traded.
A wonderful story, from life, of course. I promised not to feed you incriminating evidence, but I give examples from time to time so that you understand that behind everything I say there is some specificity. In 1998, our foundation came up with an interesting feature called “examination of legislation for corruption potential.” We have developed the first methodology for this examination.
I must say that the authorities really liked this, which is quite understandable, because in a country whose life is governed not by laws, but by deviations from laws, you can do any examination of bills, then you can safely ignore them, pass some kind of law, and then do not carry it out. Therefore, as a form of imitation of activity, the authorities really liked it. I liked it at the very beginning. Already in 2000, there was a corresponding commission in the Duma about corruption, which said: “Well, they will do an anti-corruption examination.” 5-6 years later I meet with the former chairman of this commission, a fairly decent person, he exists somewhere on the outskirts of the deputy corps, he was once a very high official in the government. I ask: “How are you doing at the commission?” He says: “No, I left there.” - “Why so?” - “Well, they started trading in expertise.” That is, they can give the necessary conclusion for money. That's an example.
Next are parliamentary investigations, consideration of voters' appeals, sending requests. Very interesting, especially in the first half of the 2000s, when you were not yet interested in such little things, very interesting schemes were developed by businesses or certain industries for implementation, for solutions. Paid schemes, of course. For example, a request is sent on some issue from a group of voters. And this problem is, in fact, connected, like, shortages of sugar or something else, with the functioning of some industry. The deputy forwards this to the government. The government says: “Oh, we have the Center for Strategic Development, let them work out how to solve this problem.” Everything is developed, sent back to the government, the government makes proposals to introduce certain amendments to the law, and this law is adopted. So, the entire chain, from the initial request to the adoption of amendments, has been paid for.
Political corruption in the judiciary. Usually our current leaders, when asked about corruption, say: “Yes, we have terrible corruption in our courts.” I must say that despite all our justified claims to the courts, this is the government body with the least corruption of the three branches. This is just in case. But, of course, there are a lot of interesting things there too. Political trade in judicial appointments. This is not an appointment for money, this is an appointment for the possibility of future influence on these judges. You will become a judge, just keep in mind that you will have to solve certain specific problems that we will put before you. This has been a common thing for a long time. The careers of judges are also traded, respectively, political influence and administrative influence on the adoption of judicial decisions, and trade in judicial decisions. I emphasize again: this is on a smaller scale. To make it clear, the executive branch of government accounts for about 85% of corruption, and the remaining 15% is divided into legislative and judicial, with the judicial branch accounting for less.
What is important? Any attempts to use the word “win” are not entirely correct. I will comment on this. Any attempts to defeat corruption in the country are impossible if political corruption is not defeated. And this is not even because it is more or less fair that the fish rots from the head. You yourself, as an intellectual exercise, if you imagine and fantasize about counteracting corruption in Russian conditions, you can easily build various kinds of scenarios that converge on one thing - this is the collapse of this idea.
And the main obstacle is the presence of political corruption. Therefore, naturally, the question arises: what to do about it, and is it possible to do something? I will devote the rest of the part to this. It is clear that any list of anti-corruption measures may look something like this: legislative – adoption of the right laws; power - chasing and grabbing; political – the sphere of political competition; public is already the activity of society; and educational.
Why is it painted in two colors, red and green? In the conditions in which we find ourselves now, it is clear that the application of the first four is hampered by political corruption itself and its agents, and only what remains is in the hands of society. And it seems that our capabilities are so small that the task is unsolvable. But it's not quite there. To begin with, I will tell you a story that tells how this works in a more or less normal functioning modern society. In 1995, I had a trip to Washington. There was a large series of meetings, including a meeting with one absolutely wonderful person, unfortunately already deceased, Tom Lantos. He was at that time the chairman of the lower house of the foreign policy committee, this is one of the key committees in the Senate, just like in the lower house. Absolutely amazing man. This is a Hungarian Jew who was liberated by Soviet troops from a concentration camp, but chose not to remain in Hungary. Hungary is quite an anti-Semitic country, and he decided to immigrate. And he immigrated as a teenager to the States. Since he is a fantastically talented person, he somehow got into a political career and made it quite successfully. He was one of the most influential congressmen, suffice it to say that he held this post for about 25 years, he was re-elected and again occupied this post, one of the key posts in the House. He made an appointment for me in the evening right at the committee, ordered dinner there. He speaks Russian well, much better than I speak English. We are talking with him, it’s approaching 9 o’clock in the evening, he says to me: “George, voting time is approaching, I need to go to the hall,” and touches his breast pocket, where his card is, with which he votes. I jokingly tell him: “Tom, what’s the problem, give one of your colleagues your card, tell them how to vote, and that’s all.” He turned green and said: “What, if my voters find out about this, then that’s it, I’m done as a politician. Come on, you go to the gallery, I’ll go to the hall, sit and look.”
This is a gallery for visitors to sit and watch. Life there works like this: there are debates everywhere, usually 15-30 people sit in the hall, if there is some kind of excitement, then 50. Basically, those who want to speak sit. The congressmen themselves, as a rule, sit in their offices, they have live broadcasts, and so on. At 9 pm the voting hour begins, and everyone comes running like cockroaches, it’s an amazing sight to see how they run into the hall. Lobbyists stand at the door, handing out the latest leaflets in their lobbying program on how and why to vote on these issues.
Their program worked seriously before, but now it has come to a vote. The last decisive leaflet, they take their seats, there is a large panel with a light next to each name, and one of three colors lights up: green for “for”, red for “against”, white for “abstained”. There is a vote for one, another, a third, everything ends. Tom and I return to continue our dinner and our conversation, and I say to him: “Tom, why didn’t I see white lights on the board, “abstain”?” He says: “George, it’s very simple, voters want to know our position. If we hide it and abstain, it reflects poorly on us to voters, and the elections will take advantage of this.” And he told me this story. Not long before, he had the same operation as Boris Nikolaevich Yeltsin later had, coronary artery bypass surgery, when they open everything up, take the heart and what the hell do they do with it, and then sew it back up. Two days before the vote he had this operation. He is lying down, he has tubes, air, liquids, devices are connected, and so on. Voting is very important for his constituency. He had him brought into the House in a special chair. The chair where all these devices are located, everything is stuck into it, flows, reflects all the vital activity of its various organs. He voted and came back.
Despite the fact that, according to the regulations of both the Senate and the House, you can vote in absentia, you have such a right, but this is important for his voters, he must vote in person. The question is why? It seems crazy to us that you can’t hand over the card. In our Duma, only those on duty vote, who have piles of these cards, and they run through the rows of those who gave them these cards and press the same button.
This is because they are unaccountable. Why do they act this way and are so afraid of voters? Because there are a huge number of public organizations that constantly monitor what deputies do, and above all, how they vote.
Firstly, there is closed voting, where open roll-call voting is a rare exception. As a rule, all voting goes like this: you voted, it immediately appeared on the Internet resource, and you can immediately find out how your deputy voted on this issue on the website.
Previously, it was published on paper all the time, now it happens instantly. There is a public organization that monitors this matter, summarizes everything and tells voters. Let’s say some kind of organization “Americans for Traditional Values”. I say it almost verbatim. There are experts there who say that if a senator or congressman is for traditional values, then based on the 120 votes that took place during this time, he should have voted this way, this way, and that way. Because only such votes provide support and promotion of traditional American values. That's what the experts say, they are creating a standard.
Next, the vote of each specific congressman is taken and compared with this standard. A simple arithmetic procedure, and a rating is constructed: which of the deputies, senators, and congressmen are for traditional values, and which, excuse me, are for non-traditional ones. And they publish it in their newsletters, on their websites, and so on. And there are a huge number of such organizations. There are all-American ones, for example, “Americans for Freedom to Bear Arms,” a very respectable organization, and there are local ones, for a specific constituency.
Can you imagine that in California such information was given about any deputy? Hi everybody! California is the capital of high-tech. Or in Texas he is against oil production. Therefore, they are afraid of these organizations, they are afraid of the dissemination of this information, because it will affect the final result. This is normal. This norm does not begin to work immediately; conditions are needed for this to happen. But there is one obvious thing with which this begins and with which it should begin: when people who understand the meaning of what is happening and know how to extract, analyze and communicate information about it in an accessible way begin to do this systematically. We have a great compatriot, professor at Kaliningrad University, Emmanuel Kant. You know he's not a contemporary, right? He once wrote that “any reforms begin with reforms in the heads.”
The tragedy of Russia is that we forget about this. It is believed that now we need to pass the right law, and things will be fine for us right away. We are in a different period now, we are adopting the wrong laws, and it is getting worse, but before we passed the right ones, but that did not make things better. We need reforms in our heads, this can only be achieved in one way, when people who are able to influence this do not miss this opportunity. That's basically all I wanted to tell you. And, as you might guess, what I did today is exactly what I just talked about. Now your questions.
Question:
I'll probably leave the same comment as after the previous lecture. You are the second lecturer who talks to us about corruption, and this is both good and very bad, because yesterday we saw a man, he is quite active, it is clear that he is a huge practitioner, from whom energy simply splashes. He talks about...
Georgy Satarov:
Kirill Kabanov, yes, I know him.
Question:
And today we meet you, a systematizer who tells us about principals. Tells us about completely different things. And here there is a big background on some issues. For example, you have a very clear line that corruption is bad, this is the only way to fight corruption.
Then we start looking at your examples with Athens or examples of corruption in other countries, starting from antiquity and ending with other countries. What is corruption in another way? Sometimes it happens that this redistribution of some funds is unexpected, no matter how bad it is, but it performs this function, and for a certain stage of development this is good. If we start talking about it from the position of “let’s fight,” then after a while something happens.
Georgy Satarov:
I understand the question. You are absolutely right, it all depends on what “fight” means.
There was such a story, the Soviet Union collapsed, are you aware of the matter? It is quite difficult to say from a serious historical distance whether this is good or bad, but we will proceed from the fact that it is bad, and, accordingly, we will say that the factors that contributed to the collapse are “bad things”. One of the factors that contributed to the collapse of the Soviet Union was the fight against corruption that Andropov began. Naturally, he was motivated by absolutely good intentions.
What was the trick? The Soviet Union is an empire. One of the cements that holds the empire together is the so-called informal agreement of the elite. The metropolis says: “We give you the opportunity to do whatever the colonial elites want, but you ensure loyalty to the metropolis.” Metropolis - okay. The fight against corruption began at fairly high republican levels, Uzbekistan, cotton affairs, etc., at the level of the first secretaries of the Central Committee of the republican parties. This is a very high level. Regional elites, colonial elites, republican elites, to be precise, perceived this fight against corruption as a unilateral termination of the agreement of the elites, that is, one of the key cements on which the empire rests. Here is an example of what a careless fight against corruption is.
Now about the fact that corruption is useful. Undoubtedly! In at least two senses.
First, as I already said, corruption is a signal of institutional problems, of dysfunction, and in this sense, corruption is useful in the same way that pain is useful. Pain signals that something is wrong in the body, and normally we go to the doctor. The doctor makes a diagnosis, carries out treatment, and as a result, both pain and illness go away.
Naturally, I am describing an ideal situation. But you can do it differently, you can get drunk on analgin, drown out the pain, but then it can end in death. The same goes for corruption. The Soviet Union got drunk on analgin, and it ended in death. This was far from the only reason for its collapse, but one of them.
The main thing in a serious, careful, non-destructive fight against corruption is the elimination of the causes that give rise to corruption. This does not mean that there is no need to imprison corrupt officials, but the first thing is important. Secondly, this was invented before us today; in transitional societies, corruption is the lubricant of the reformed state machine. For example, during the Soviet Union, the police persecuted private property, but we declared that private property is equal to all others, and the same guys, the cops, must protect private property. From what hangover? They were taught this, they had been doing this all their lives: speculators, shadow traders who produced tights that a woman could wear without shame, unlike state tights, were the main enemies, and their power was persecuted. Of course, it is difficult to overcome this right away. But it is smeared, including by corruption.
Researchers, my colleagues from Chicago, have long described this effect. Sometimes corruption lubricates very well. The problem begins not when corruption lubes, but when you realize that, in addition to lubrication, you still have a huge number of problems. What is the situation here? Corruption is a consequence of certain dysfunctions, inefficiencies, but if corruption is large enough, it itself gives rise to new inefficiencies. And these new inefficiencies both exacerbate old corruption and give rise to new corruption. And we get a generator with positive feedback. What happens to such a device? Explodes! This is the problem, not that corruption is absolutely bad or absolutely good, but that it is neither one nor the other, it depends on the situation. Our situation is not the first type, that's pretty obvious.
Question:
Perhaps the question is formulated a little incorrectly.
Georgy Satarov:
Let's try again.
Question:
Let's try again. Yesterday there was a person who expressed one thought, today’s lecture confirms these thoughts. Maybe it just happened that way, I don’t know. In three days I will wake up and ask myself what corruption is. What's left after all this? You expressed, for example, your goal - to tell us so that it remains in our heads. The opposite idea to keep my thoughts spinning in my head is that corruption is not just, it is a given. Something was working in my head, something was clinging, opposing ideas. Perhaps it was not expressed, or, as it were, she did not exist. Now part of it has been revealed in the question. I'm starting to think about it, I'm starting to come to it. The point, the purpose of your story, in general of everything that happens here? I'm talking about this, okay?
Georgy Satarov:
Yes! You are absolutely right. I am already pleased that you suspect that you have the potential to think on this topic. I partially achieved my goal. Second. I can say, go to the website of our foundation, there is a lot of material there, including our textbook, of course, outdated, called “Anti-Corruption Policy.” You can find a lot of things there, and the results of a huge amount of research in this area. Soon we will publish a study in one neighboring country about corruption.
It's very interesting when you can compare different countries, amazing. I plan to write a separate book about this. I have to finish one in 3 months, and I’ll start working on the one that should satisfy your need. In 2003, we prepared this book, “Anti-Corruption Policy,” and now the understanding of this problem has changed incomparably and has become deeper and more serious. I try to do this not only at the “I Think” seminar, realizing that lectures are not enough. In addition, you will be left with my presentation, which you can download.
Question:
This is not enough, I’m 21, and I simply won’t go to the site or read this book.
Georgy Satarov:
Then you will remain 21 years old. This is a personal reluctance to spend time on this. Because you can read a huge number of books about institutional theory. You can start with a very good book by Alexander Alexandrovich Auzan, “Institutional History for Dummies.” Very useful.
Mikhail Komin, St. Petersburg:
Hello, thanks for the lecture. We have a limited amount of time left, so I will try to ask questions quickly.
The first question will concern the fact that, to be honest, I did not understand how the lot limits the possibility of opportunistic behavior.
Firstly, look, if you get a lottery, then your chances of getting into the same position next time are reduced, and you try to make the most of it. And the second point is that you are not responsible to the people who elected you, you were chosen by chance, and personal responsibility, which in all theories is present in representative democracy, is removed.
So, to be honest, I don't see how this reduces opportunistic behavior. This is the first question, my second question concerns thinktank, these thought factories. You talked about the TsSR and how it worked in 2001-2004. To what extent is such a classical analysis, political, political-economic, rather, in demand now, especially after the events that occurred in the south-east of Ukraine and Crimea? Because now we see that over the last six months or a year, decisions have been made rather purely politically, dictated by politics, aimed only at retaining power. And thinktanks, first of all, are focused on making some effective decisions for society. Thank you.
Georgy Satarov:
I can answer with an example. When Medvedev was President, he launched an anti-corruption program. It has already begun, absolutely stupidly. Suddenly, not without our help, it was realized that in general, if you are treating a person, you need to measure blood pressure, take a urine test, and so on, in short, you need a diagnosis.
Since we are the authors of the most, so to speak, sophisticated diagnosis of corruption that has ever been invented in the world, then, despite the fact that we are very disliked in the Kremlin, we were told: “Give us your methodology here, we will use it for a huge study of everyday life.” corruption." It’s clear what everyday corruption is, right? Solving our everyday problems.
“Okay,” we say, “but only on one condition, that the results will be public.”
“Okay,” they tell us, “let’s go.” We did it. To make it clear, the sample is 17.5 thousand. Can you imagine such a sample? This is to be able to compare other regions. You can find this on our website, on the website of the Ministry of Economy, I think on the website of Foma, who conducted the field, and they were partially involved in the analysis and preparation of the report.
When it came to the same study of business corruption, we were not approached. For one simple reason, because we work in an open environment. Sorry, if you propose to do such a thing for the taxpayer’s day, then it can only be openly, otherwise it is indecent. They didn’t contact us, they did it without us, and the results of this case are still classified. To make it clear the reasons why they didn’t contact us, the scale. If we measure corruption, we have introduced such a concept as the “volume of the corruption market”, roughly speaking, how much money in the form of bribes passes from one hand to another during the year. It is clear in which direction the money is moving.
The scale of the business corruption market is 100 times larger than the domestic corruption market, although the number of corrupt transactions per year in the field of business corruption is much less. The last time we did this, not with public money, was in 2005, the volume of the corruption market in the sphere of business corruption exceeded the total state revenues from the sale of hydrocarbons. Corruption is a sphere of economics, and it is such because it is theoretically taken into account by the sphere of national accounts, it should be included in the calculation of GDP. The leading area of the economy in our country is corruption. It is clear that five years later they did not want the results to be made public. Here is the answer to this question. Yes, and as for opportunism, this is with a colleague nearby, she will explain it to you.
Question:
I have a quick question. Thanks for the lecture. You said at the beginning that the principal in this case is the people, and the agent is the state. As far as I know, the principal-agent theory does not in principle imply any solution to this problem.
Georgy Satarov:
Actually, all research in this area is devoted to solving this problem. For example, the key problem of the principal-agent model is information asymmetry, that is, the principal always knows less about how the problem is solved than the agent who solves it. This is one of the key defects of information asymmetry. A huge amount of theoretical and practical research is related to how to reduce information asymmetry. There is a huge literature here, so you are not entirely right. You are probably right in the sense that the model itself does not provide a solution to this problem, because that is how it is structured. This means that our human activity does not provide a solution to the problem for the simple reason that social life, and this is the most complex thing we deal with, more complex than the brain, the cosmos, anything, much richer than this particular primitive model. And if we use our social knowledge, our attempts to find out more about this complex social fabric, then we use not only the principal-agent model, but use, if possible, the body of knowledge that we can obtain in order to solve a specific problem, so that tasks assigned to agents were solved better. I have already said how the principal-agent model helps. It helps analyze defects. And then, in order to reduce them, a variety of social and socio-psychological knowledge is already involved. It's clear?
Question:
Perhaps a fun, perhaps quite realistic question. In Ukraine now, a fairly fashionable way of fighting corruption is as follows: people gather, catch deputies and throw them in trash bins. How effective and interesting do you think this method is, does it force other deputies to behave differently?
Georgy Satarov:
I would say this: no single method of combating corruption has the concept of effectiveness; each individually is ineffective. But there is a set of factors that we must influence in order for corruption to decrease. And one of them, of the many components in this complex, is punishment for corrupt behavior. Proving corruption crimes is very difficult, and when society takes on this and finds such non-trivial and interesting solutions, I believe that this is useful, because it, for example, compensates for the weakness of the state at the moment.
But does this solve the problem of corruption? No, it doesn't. It can solve this problem if, in addition to the trash can, many other, much more important and sophisticated tools are used. Here's my answer.
Corruption, that is, the misuse of power by an official for personal gain, is such a specific phenomenon that it almost always has a political nature. Since almost all areas of corruption, with the exception of such specific ones as medicine or education, are associated with government officials, which already implies a political element of corrupt actions. So, both corruption in the broad sense, in which civil servants are involved, and corruption aimed at manipulation in the political sphere can be called political.
General nature of corruption
Corruption is connected with politics initially precisely because of the very nature of this phenomenon: a corrupt official can only be a person who is entrusted with certain powers or resources that do not belong to him and which he uses in violation of the law for his own benefit, material, political or otherwise. As is already clear, most often such people are officials, that is, people who are representatives of the state and can perform various actions on its behalf. The phenomenon of corruption is based on a conflict between the interests of an official and the interests of the state - the official’s dishonest actions harm the state and the interests of its citizens, which already means the political nature of this step.
If we mean political corruption in its narrow meaning, in this case a possible corporate interest is added to the official’s personal interests, that is, the interest of one or another group of officials, one or another department, various party organizations or lobbying groups. But in any case, the decisive factor is the contradiction of these motives, interests and actions with the interests of the state and, more importantly, its citizens, the people as the bearer of supreme power. And here what comes to the fore is not the material component in the form of bribes, kickbacks and other incentives that are associated with corruption in business matters, but other instruments: an unscrupulous judicial system, restriction of freedom of the media, direct, with the help of controlled law enforcement agencies, or indirect (through the so-called “administrative resource”) influencing the results of elections and other procedures of political life.
Corruption in Russia: the goal is to overtake the Comoros Islands
There is no separate ranking of countries based on political corruption, primarily due to the difficulty of isolating this component from the general background of corruption. However, most experts believe that data on “general” corruption most often reflect the state of affairs in a particular country with political corruption, since political aspects in one form or another are present in almost all corruption processes. And in this regard, the most authoritative ranking of countries in the world in terms of the level of perception of corruption, compiled annually by the non-governmental international organization Transparency International, is very indicative. However, most countries that occupy low places in the rankings of this organization express skepticism about the objectivity of this “hit parade,” but this is not surprising.
So, over the past few years, throughout the short 21st century, Russia has occupied stable, very low places in Transparency International’s rankings for the level of perception of corruption. Which means that the experts of this organization assess the Russian Federation as one of the most corrupt, including politically, countries on the planet. Moreover, until 2010, for five years, Russia was increasingly declining in this rating, that is, the level of corruption was increasing. Thus, in 2009, Russia took 146th place in the list, and in 2010 it dropped to 154th place out of 178 represented in this rating. In 2011, judging by the Transparency International rating released on December 1 of this year, the situation improved somewhat. Russia rose in the ranking by several positions, taking 143rd place on the list out of 182 possible - this allowed it to catch up with Nigeria and expect to become a less corrupt country in the future than, for example, the Comoros. Some changes in legislation had a positive impact: in 2011, officials introduced the declaration of income and property, tightened sanctions for corruption, introduced fines that were multiples of damage from illegal actions, and the like.
Features of political corruption in Russia
Political corruption in Russia, like almost all phenomena and processes that fall on Russian soil or grow on it, has its own characteristics. First of all, this concerns the origins of Russian political corruption. Almost all researchers of this problem are unanimous that truly political corruption in Russia was born during the existence of the USSR - until 1917, corruption in the country, although it was on a huge scale, was limited to the economic sphere. In the USSR, under the conditions of a totalitarian regime, when the state saw one of its main tasks in the subjugation of all citizens and repression of the disobedient, political corruption was a legalized state policy against its people. Therefore, when in the conditions of modern Russia the question of political corruption arises, we must not forget that the country’s leaders, officials at all levels, and most of the population come from the USSR. Both representatives of the top management, accustomed to solving their problems without regard to the opinion of the people, as officials, accustomed to fulfilling their duties at the request not of the law, but of their superiors, and the people, for the most part accustomed to the fact that nothing depends on them in the life of the country .
Because of this, political corruption in Russia has a number of characteristic features: lack of real political competition; the formation and development of special financial and political groups within which strategic government decisions are made; state support for the actions of one political party; distortion of the mechanism of the election process through falsification of election results.
Alexander Babitsky
