Corruption and its impact on society. The influence of corruption on the state of the country's economy. The Impact of Corruption on the Effectiveness of Economic Development

Corruption strongly and usually negatively affects the economic and social development any country.

The economic harm of corruption is associated primarily with the fact that corruption is an obstacle to the implementation of the state's macroeconomic policy. As a result of corruption in the lower and middle levels of the management system, the central government ceases to receive reliable information about the real state of affairs in the country's economy and cannot achieve its goals.

Corruption seriously distorts the very motives of government decisions. Corrupt politicians and bureaucrats are more inclined to channel state resources into areas of activity where strict control is impossible and where the possibility of extorting bribes is greater. They are more inclined to finance the production of, for example, warplanes and other large investment projects than publishing school textbooks and raising teachers' salaries. There is an anecdotal example, when in 1975 in Nigeria, a generously bribed government placed orders abroad for such a gigantic amount of cement, which surpassed the capacity of its production in all countries. Western Europe and in the USSR combined. Comparative cross-country studies confirm that corruption severely distorts the structure government spending: Corrupt governments spend much less on education and health than uncorrupt governments.

The main negative manifestation of the economic impact of corruption is the increase in costs for entrepreneurs (especially for small firms that are more vulnerable to ransomware). Thus, the difficulties of business development in post-socialist countries are largely due to the fact that officials force entrepreneurs to often give bribes, which turn into a kind of additional taxation. Even if an entrepreneur is honest and does not give bribes, he suffers damage from corruption, since he is forced to spend a lot of time communicating with deliberately picky government officials. Finally, corruption and bureaucratic red tape in the processing of business documents slow down investments (especially foreign ones) and, ultimately, economic growth. For example, the model developed in the 1990s by the American economist Paolo Mauro allowed him to conclude that an increase in the calculated "efficiency of bureaucracy" (an index close to the corruption perception index calculated by Transparency International) by 2.4 points reduces the country's economic growth rate by about 0 , 5%. According to the calculations of another American economist, Shang-Ching Wai, an increase in the corruption index by one point (on a ten-point scale) is accompanied by a 0.9% fall in foreign direct investment. However, when reviewing the corruption indices, it was already mentioned that there is still no clear negative correlation between the level of corruption and the level of economic development, this relationship is noticeable only as a general pattern, from which there are many exceptions.

As for the negative social consequences of corruption, it is generally recognized that it leads to injustice - to unfair competition between firms and to an unjustified redistribution of citizens' incomes. The fact is that it is not the most efficient legal firm, or even a criminal organization, that can give a larger bribe. As a result, the incomes of bribe-givers and bribe-takers grow, while the income of law-abiding citizens decreases. The most dangerous is corruption in the tax collection system, allowing the rich to evade them and shifting the tax burden onto the shoulders of poorer citizens.

Corrupt regimes never enjoy the "love" of citizens, and therefore they are politically unstable. The ease of overthrowing the Soviet regime in 1991 was largely due to the fact that the Soviet nomenklatura had a reputation for being a thoroughly corrupt community enjoying deserved contempt from ordinary citizens of the USSR. Since, however, in post-Soviet Russia the Soviet level of corruption was many times surpassed, this led to the low prestige of the Yeltsin regime in the eyes of most Russians. However, the participants in the discussions on corruption put forward the opinion that corruption has not only negative but also positive consequences.

Thus, in the first years after the collapse of the USSR, it was believed that if officials were allowed to take bribes, they would work more intensively, and corruption helps entrepreneurs bypass bureaucratic slingshots. The beneficial concept of corruption does not account, however, for the very high degree of lack of control that politicians and bureaucratic officials acquire in corrupt societies. They can create and interpret instructions at their discretion. In this case, instead of an incentive for more efficient activity, corruption becomes, on the contrary, an incentive to create an excessive number of instructions. In other words, bribe-takers deliberately create more and more barriers in order to then “help” to overcome them for an additional fee. Corruption apologists also argue that bribery can reduce the time it takes to collect and process bureaucratic documents. But bribes don't necessarily speed up the speed of clerical work.

It is known, for example, that high-ranking civil servants in India take bribes in the following way: they do not promise the bribe-giver faster processing of his documents, but offer to slow down the process of processing documents for competing companies. The argument that corruption is an incentive for economic development is especially dangerous in that it destroys the rule of law and the rule of law. Some Russian criminologists argue that in the early 1990s, in post-Soviet Russia, “with the best of intentions,” punishments for official abuse were actually temporarily canceled, and this led to an increase in bureaucratic extortion, which exacerbated the economic crisis.

In discussions about the current state of Russia, large-scale corruption has become one of the main and generally accepted theses. At the same time, it is still viewed as just one of the types of crimes inherent in immoral officials. Extremely poorly aware Negative consequences corruption, which, of course, aggravates the tolerance towards it.

There is no doubt that corruption has a corrupting influence on all aspects of life. So, summing up ...

Economic implications.

1. The shadow economy is expanding. Shadow economy - socio-economic relations between individual citizens, social groups on the use of state property for selfish personal or group interests. This leads to a decrease tax revenues and weakening the budget. As a result: the state loses financial levers of economic management, social problems due to non-fulfillment of budgetary obligations.

2. The competitive mechanisms of the market are violated, since often the winner is not the one who is competitive, but the one who was illegally able to obtain the advantage. This entails a decrease in market efficiency and discrediting the ideas of market competition.

3. The emergence of effective private owners is slowing down, primarily due to violations in the course of privatization, as well as artificial bankruptcies, usually associated with bribery of officials.

4. Budget funds are used ineffectively, in particular, in the distribution of government orders and loans. This further aggravates budget problems countries.

5. Prices rise due to corrupt "overhead costs". As a result, the consumer suffers. The main victim of corruption is always the supreme principal - the people.

6. Market agents develop disbelief in the authorities' ability to establish, control and observe fair rules of the market game. Is getting worse investment climate, and, consequently, the problems of overcoming the decline in production, renewal of fixed assets are not being solved.

7. The scale of corruption in non-governmental organizations (in firms, enterprises, public organizations) is expanding. This leads to a decrease in the efficiency of their work, which means that the efficiency of the country's economy as a whole decreases.

Social implications.

1. Colossal funds are diverted from the goals of social development. This aggravates budget crisis, the ability of the authorities to solve social problems decreases.

2. Sharp property inequality and poverty of a large part of the population are consolidating and increasing. Corruption spurs unfair redistribution of funds in favor of narrow groups at the expense of the most vulnerable segments of the population.

3. Law is discredited as the main instrument for regulating the life of the state and society. In the public consciousness, an idea is formed about the defenselessness of citizens both in the face of crime and in the face of power.

4. Corruption of law enforcement agencies contributes to the strengthening of organized crime. The latter, by merging with corrupt groups of officials and entrepreneurs, is further strengthened by access to political power and opportunities for money laundering.

5. Social tension is increasing, hitting the economy and threatening political stability in the country.

Political implications.

1. There is a shift in policy goals from national development to ensuring the rule of certain clans.

2. Trust in the authorities is decreasing, its alienation from society is growing. Thus, any good undertakings of the authorities are jeopardized.

3. The prestige of the country in the international arena is falling, the threat of its economic and political isolation is growing.

4. Political competition is profaned and reduced. Citizens become disenchanted with the values of democracy. Decomposition of democratic institutions arises.

5. The risk of collapse of the emerging democracy is increasing according to the widespread scenario of the coming of the dictatorship in the wake of the fight against corruption.

The economic losses from corruption are much broader and deeper than just the total amount of bribes - the price that individuals or firms pay to corrupt officials and politicians. The main losses occur due to the decisions that are made by agents who enter into corrupt relationships. For example, as a result of a dishonestly held tender, an order is received by an unscrupulous contractor. The losses associated with this circumstance are much greater than the size of the bribe that stimulated the dishonest decision of the tender commission. Real losses from corruption significantly exceed those that can be calculated on the basis of a relatively small number of detected corruption acts and investigations brought to completion.

Economic losses from corruption can be divided into two categories: direct and indirect. Direct losses from corruption are a shortfall in budget revenue as a result of corruption and ineffective spending of budget funds due to the same circumstance. Indirect losses from corruption are a general decrease in the efficiency of the economy associated with corruption. They also have two terms. The first term is the losses associated with the causes of corruption. An example is administrative barriers. They lead to corruption and at the same time reduce the efficiency of the economy. The second term is the losses caused by corruption itself. An example is a drop in investment inflows due to corruption. Calculating corruption losses is extremely difficult. But something is possible to evaluate.

As some studies show, various particular characteristics of corruption, and not just its general level, can play an important role. An example of such a particular characteristic is the unpredictability of services in corrupt markets: uncertainty about the corruption of certain organizations, the degree of non-obligation in the behavior of corrupt officials, etc. Thus, an analysis of the relationship between corruption and foreign direct investment showed that the role of awareness of the country's corruption and the level of bribes is very important: "uncertainty about corruption kills the propensity to invest."

Since corruption is closely related to the existence and volume of the shadow economy, measures to reduce corruption, in principle, can lead to a reduction in the shadow economic sector of the country. And this, in turn, can significantly affect the efficiency of the economy as a whole and, above all, the scale and effectiveness of social programs that depend on the amount of taxes collected.

The indirect damage caused by the decline in the prestige of the country, the growth of ordinary crime, spurred by corruption in law enforcement agencies, and the fall in the level of security have an important influence. national security due to corruption in the Armed Forces. However, a quantitative assessment of the relationship between corruption and similar socio-political phenomena requires not only the development of a special methodology, but also the collection of a large amount of microdata.

Representatives of various sciences are trying to explain the phenomenon of corruption. Economists have made a significant contribution to the study of the essence of this phenomenon. At the same time, there is a debate between various economic schools about the mechanism of corruption, the motives of its participants, the consequences for society, the expediency and limits of combating it. Let us present the main modern approaches to the study of corruption, outlining the views of economists of the neoclassical and institutional directions.

1. Neoclassical approach: corruption relations as a choice of rational agents

The economic analysis of corruption began to actively develop in the 1970s, when the neoclassical doctrine based on the principles of individualism and utilitarianism took over methodological leadership. Studies of corruption in the works of neoclassical economists build this phenomenon into the general logic of liberal methodology: subjects are trying to find the best way to realize their interests in conditions of limited resources (R. Vishny, S. Rose-Ackerman, V. Tanzi, A. Schleifer, etc.) ... In this case, the behavior of a politician, an official, or a businessman has no essential differences: they all try to use the existing resource constraints with the greatest benefit for themselves; only some operate with political capital, others with administrative capital, and still others with economic capital. At the same time, the goals of participants in corrupt transactions are not limited to only one material benefits... The range of claims of participants in corrupt relations includes re-election in elections, maintaining a position in the administrative hierarchy, and new business opportunities. High-level bureaucrats build behavior taking into account the impact of the bribe on the organization they represent, its reputation and level of activity.

To explain the reasons and essence of corruption relations, economists usually use the model "guarantor (principal) - executor (agent) - ward (client)".

In this model, the central government acts as a principal: it sets rules and assigns specific tasks to agents, middle and lower-level officials. Officials act as intermediaries between the central government and clients, individuals or firms. This means that an official (agent) implements the will of a powerful subject (principal), interacting with an individual or a firm (client). The principal sets the framework conditions, based on which the agent carries out operational management. For example, within tax service the principal is the state represented by the head of the tax service, agents are tax collectors, and all taxpayers are clients.

The interests of the agent and the principal are not identical. Corruption is a process in which an agent, for appropriate remuneration, acts in the interests of the client, while remaining within the managerial capacity allotted by the principal. For example, an employee of the tax service, checking the activities of a company, may “fail to notice” for a bribe that this company is evading taxes in full.

The principal is incapable of blocking corruption for three reasons:

Complex solutions are not subject to standardization, therefore, there are no criteria for their assessment. In addition, corrupt agents often support programs whose original elements are not available in a competitive market.
The effectiveness of control is limited by information asymmetry (the agent always owns more information than the principal);
Corruption of an agent does not necessarily mean blocking the principal's goals, they can be implemented simultaneously. Moreover, by valuing the place that brings corruption income, the agent can quickly and efficiently carry out all the orders of the principal.

The client can also go directly to contact with the principal, bypassing the agent, which gives rise to the division of corruption into political (at the stage of adoption of laws) and administrative (at the stage of their application). For example, a large company, wanting to evade taxes, may not bribe tax officials, but "render a service" to the regional governor (for example, make a large contribution to his election campaign fund) to lobby for a law on tax benefits.

Thus, corruption is viewed by neoclassicists as a kind of shadow tax on the private sector, which is collected by politicians and bureaucrats by virtue of a monopoly on making decisions that are important for business (“privatization of the state”).

The “principal-agent-client” model clearly shows that the main problem of fighting corruption in the bureaucratic environment is not the lack of political will and not the softness of laws, but the fundamental inability to eliminate its basic condition. We are talking about the freedom of officials to vary their decisions at their own discretion. Where there is no such right (for example, issuing a passport at the age of 14, subject to formal requirements), there is no corruption. But the specificity of management consists in the fact that without the ability to "act according to circumstances" at each level of the administrative hierarchy, the bureaucratic machine will rather quickly exhaust its management capabilities. The formal algorithm for making managerial decisions is suitable only in typical situations. (For example, the choice of the winner of the tender is clearly not one of them. It is justly believed that “in the localities they know better.” And local authorities take advantage of this.)

If the goal is to formalize any actions of an official, then if corruption does not disappear, then it will noticeably decrease. But this will increase the inadequacy of management, not to mention the high costs of the controlling apparatus. Society will pay too high a price to fight corruption. Therefore, the task of the state is not to eliminate corruption (which is impossible), but to limit it at an optimal level for society. The goal of law enforcement should not be to "eradicate" corruption, but to contain it at the optimal, from the point of view of society, level. This criminal optimum itself is quite mobile and depends both on the efficiency of the use of the resources allocated to them by law enforcement agencies, and on the "efficiency" of the criminals' activities.

The crime-fighting optimization model describes the fight against corruption at the macro level. There is also a microeconomic approach to the economic modeling of corruption and the fight against it. It is based on the economic theory of crime developed by the American economist G. Becker, which is built on the comparison of the expected benefits and possible costs of an offense.

Corruption (like any other type of criminal activity) is a high-risk activity, since the one who gives or takes a bribe runs the risk of being caught and convicted. If we try to depict in the form of a formula the dependence of the offender's net income on various factors, then it will look like this:

R = (1 -p) S + p (S-D) = S-p D,

where R is the offender's income; p is the probability that the violator of the law will be caught and punished; S is the amount of benefit from giving / receiving a bribe; D is the amount of losses of a participant in corruption relations that he will incur as a result of punishment.

Based on this formula, it can be argued that the two pillars of the fight against corruption in the bureaucratic environment are:

motivation to serve honestly and
sanctions for corrupt behavior.

The sanctions are estimated as the sum of the expected direct losses (fines, confiscation of property) and indirect costs (lost profits associated with arrest and loss of employment). In addition to the size of the sanctions, the likelihood of being caught is taken into account. That is, corrupt behavior is only partly limited by the punishment system. An equally important role is played by the encouragement of non-corrupt behavior, which increases the indirect costs of crime due to the loss of legal income, public respect, and privileges of government officials.

The risk assessment depends on the position of the official and the information available to him. The increase in the detection of corruption acts increases the subjective assessment of risk. At the same time, the dependence of punishment on the size of the bribe reduces the size of bribes, but increases their number. On the contrary, a high probability of being caught reduces the volume of corrupt services, but increases the lump sum of the bribe.

With all the variety of neoclassical models of corruption, there is a unifying principle. They virtually ignore social embeddedness. economic actors, understood as the involvement of the individual in the social environment. Morality, public pressure, although they are mentioned, are practically not taken into account. Institutional economists strongly rebel against this.

2. Institutional approach: corruption as interaction of socially rooted subjects

The main message of the work of institutionalists studying corruption is an attempt to look at corruption through the eyes of its participants, which cannot be reduced to the model of rational allocators of limited resources. These works are united by a critical perception of extra-historical and extra-cultural models of corruption.

Really, economic history knows a lot of examples when social norms restrained corruption, conditioned by economic expediency, or, conversely, gave it a scope that is difficult to explain. Ethno-cultural specifics, confessional characteristics, family structure, network contacts, corporate culture, professional ethics, ideology, customs and other "social shells" of an individual act as constraints on his behavior, significantly transforming his idea of what is proper and correct.

For example, the level of corruption varied significantly in the union republics of the USSR, which was associated with differences in national cultures. Chile and Mexico, which are very similar in terms of economic development, have a striking difference in the scale of corruption (Chile is "cleaner"). And the countries with Confucian culture (Singapore, Japan) are inferior in the scale of corruption to the Islamic (Pakistan, Turkey) and Indo-Buddhist (India, Indonesia) countries of the same region, which historically did not perceive Confucianism as a code of honor for an honest and wise official.

The importance of society can be traced in the fact that the legal definition of corruption may not coincide with the boundary of morally condemned behavior. People are able to condemn actions in which the law does not find corpus delicti, and, conversely, to justify actions that are interpreted by law as corruption. Social norms are extremely inertial, while the law changes as the elites need it. The authorities are capable, by changing the laws, to create a space for their legally permissible enrichment, but they are powerless to make these laws legitimate. For this reason, public opinion tends to exaggerate the extent of corruption, and the power elite tends to play down it.

As for the benefits of a corrupt official, it is not limited to the amount of the "business proposal", but includes the perception of a bribe as an element of the group ethics of a certain group, giving rise to a sense of belonging and group involvement. Corruption can arise not as a variant of selfish bribery, but as an act of demonstrative loyalty of officials towards relatives, political parties, former colleagues, etc.

The subjective perception of risk is reduced if an official shares a bribe with his superiors. A network of participants in a corruption transaction is being created; and the more numerous it is, the less guilt and the risk of ruining one's reputation in the event of exposure. The network approach refutes the methodology of individual rationality - despite the fact that the decision to bribe is made by the individual, it takes into account not only the balance of personal benefits and costs of this step, but also the norms of behavior in network structures. Social networks possess the potential for mutual assistance and solidarity, the rights and obligations of network membership may be more important than the utilitarian interest of the individual and his obligations to the organization.

Thus, it can be argued that there is institutional corruption in Russia - such a system of organization government controlled when decision-making, as a rule, is associated not only with the official duties of an official / politician, but also with his personal interests (including the position of an official / politician in social networks).

3. Impact of corruption on the development of society

The current relevance of the topic of corruption is associated with the variety of its consequences. In addition to the direct impact on economic processes, corruption has an outlet in the socio-political space. There are different points of view about what exactly this influence consists of.

The negative impact of corruption. Swedish economist G. Myrdal, founder economic research corruption, summarizing the experience of modernization of the countries of the "third world", denounced in the 1960s. corruption as one of the main obstacles to economic development.

This position is shared by many modern researchers who blame corruption on the following negative economic consequences:

funds accumulated through bribes often leave the active economic turnover and settle in the form of real estate, treasures, savings (moreover, in foreign banks);
entrepreneurs are forced to spend time on dialogue with deliberately picky officials, even if they manage to avoid bribes;
ineffective projects are supported, inflated estimates are financed, ineffective contractors are selected;
corruption encourages the creation of an excessive number of instructions in order to then “help” to comply with them for an additional fee;
of public service qualified personnel are leaving who do not morally accept the system of bribes;
obstacles arise for the implementation of the state's macroeconomic policy, since the corrupt lower and middle levels of the management system distort the information transmitted to the government and subordinate the implementation of the intended goals to their own interests;
corruption distorts the structure of public spending, as corrupt politicians and officials tend to channel public resources into areas of activity where strict control is impossible and where the possibility of extorting bribes is higher;
costs for entrepreneurs are increasing (especially for small firms that are more vulnerable to extortionists);
bribes become a kind of additional taxation.

As a result, corruption and bureaucratic red tape in the preparation of business documents slow down investments (especially foreign ones). So, developed in the 1990s. By the American economist Paolo Mauro, the model allowed him to conclude that an increase in the "efficiency of bureaucracy" (an index close to the Corruption Perception Index calculated by Transparency International) by 2.4 points reduces the country's economic growth rate by about 0.5%.

The negative impact of corruption on socio-political processes can be traced in the following:

social injustice is increasing in the form of unfair competition between firms and unjustified redistribution of citizens' incomes. After all, an ineffective firm or even a criminal organization can give a larger bribe. As a result, the incomes of bribe-givers and bribe-takers grow, while the income of law-abiding citizens decreases;
corruption in the tax collection system allows the rich to dodge them and puts the tax burden on the shoulders of poorer citizens;
corruption in the highest echelons of power, becoming public, undermines confidence in them and, as a result, calls into question their legitimacy;
corrupt management personnel are psychologically not ready to compromise their personal interests for the sake of the development of society;
corruption discredits justice, since the one who has more money and fewer self-prohibitions turns out to be right;
corruption threatens democracy by depriving the population of the moral incentive to participate in elections;
the slogan of fighting corruption can legitimize the turn towards dictatorship and the rejection of market reforms;
corruption in the apparatus responsible for law enforcement (army, police, courts) allows organized crime to expand its “predatory” activities in the private sector and even create a symbiosis of organized crime and these organizations;
corrupt regimes never enjoy the "love" of citizens, and therefore they are politically unstable. The reputation of the Soviet nomenklatura as a corrupt community largely legitimized the fall of the Soviet system. Since, however, in post-Soviet Russia the Soviet level of corruption was many times surpassed, this became one of the factors of the low authority of the government of B.N. Yeltsin in the eyes of most Russians.

A positive function of corruption. Participants in the discussion on corruption put forward the view that corruption has not only negative, but also positive consequences. He was one of the first to point this out at the beginning of the 20th century. famous German sociologist Max Weber. Rejecting the previously widespread tradition of moralizing, he showed the place of corruption in the formation of a rational bureaucracy as a historically transient form of government. This laid the foundation for a functional approach that views corruption as a mechanism to relieve tension between emerging and outdated norms.

Modern economists, supporters of the institutional approach, often tend to partially justify corruption from a functional point of view - as an opportunity to redistribute the resources of the old elite in favor of the new, avoiding a direct clash between them. Corruption is viewed by them as a rational alternative to an armed struggle for power. The more radical the change in the social course, the more widespread the corruption, the more distinct the discrepancy between the norms and intentions of the outgoing and emerging orders. On the example of first developing, and then developed countries the positive contribution of corruption to the plasticity and conflict-free transformation of institutions was shown.

Dedov Anton

Russian State Agrarian University -

Moscow Agricultural Academy named after K.A. Timiryazeva, Faculty of Economics, II course

Scientific adviser:

Gaisin R.S., Doctor of Economics, Professor

Corruption slows down Russia's economic growth. This problem is specific: it cannot be solved by spending cash or by improving the legal framework, because the decision depends mainly on the aesthetic concepts of a person, and not just one, but all, yes, namely ALL society as a whole. It is precisely because of corruption in Russia that they do not achieve successful solutions to many of the tasks set for the country.

Corruption has penetrated all spheres of Russian society. The lack of faith that it can be eradicated has become so ingrained among Russians that we are even talking about the "optimal level" of corruption.

The roots of corruption go back to the custom of giving gifts: the more expensive the gift, the more likely it is that you will be singled out from among other supplicants, for example, in primitive societies, paying a priest or leader was the norm.

Corruption in Russia has become a system of social relations that determines the shortcomings of the country's political, social and economic development.

Before talking about radical measures that can and should be applied to eradicate bribery in Russia, it is necessary to realize the devastating harm that bribery and corruption bring.

Writer Vladimir Voinovich writes : “My friend Boris left me after dinner in a strong drink. I suggested that he pick up the car tomorrow, but for now call a taxi. He asked: why? I said: "You drank. Aren't you afraid that the police will stop you?" "I'm not afraid, - he said. - I have a piece of paper with a portrait of Benjamin Franklin, it will always help me." “He showed me his driver's license and the one hundred dollar bill enclosed in it. Of course, I knew that the policemen took bribes on the road, but I suggested that some incorruptible one might get caught. “It can't,” objected Boris. “For the place where he stands, the policeman must pay the one standing over him, and from what will he pay if he does not take it himself? You don’t know that half of the new car owners drive on Moscow with purchased rights? And the inspection is carried out in absentia. The eccentrics who are trying to pass the inspection honestly will be tortured with nagging, but you stick a hundred bucks and you can ride even without brakes. "

Would a friend of Vladimir Voinovich get drunk behind the wheel if the Moscow police were incorruptible? Of course not. But the police, who for $ 100 turn a blind eye to drunk drivers, actually give the green light to this evil, posing a threat to the safety of children, the elderly and all other pedestrians and law-abiding drivers who may meet a drunk driver. The question arises "What is more terrible: drunk drivers on the roads or traffic police officers who create an atmosphere of impunity for drunkenness for a bribe and actually encourage it?" It seems that the latter is much more dangerous. Of course, this does not apply to all traffic police officers. We are talking about the flaws in the legal, organizational system, giving rise to such phenomena in other bodies.

Corruption distorts business development, reduces the efficiency of public administration, incentives for investment, hinders economic and political development, generates social inequality, and also introduces a certain instability in the political process.

We need to understand that corruption causes damage to our country hundreds, thousands and millions of times more than the entire total income, all that sometimes illusory profit that all Russian bribe-takers receive. Corruption, without exaggeration, is a cancerous tumor on the body of the Russian economy.

Corruption is measured using the Corruption Perceptions Index. According to this index, the minimum corruption is estimated at 10 points, the maximum - 0 points. Russia, for example, ranks 147th out of 180 in terms of corruption. The corruption perception index in Russia is 2.1. For comparison, the best countries in this regard are Denmark, Sweden, New Zealand, with indices of 9.3. The worst country is Somalia with an index of 1.0 .

According to experts, the size of bribes is almost equal to Russia's GDP. Every year we give 40% of our income to corrupt officials as an additional “tax”.

Figure 1 - Dependence of competitiveness on the corruption perception index (the higher the index, the lower the level of corruption), 132 countries of the world.

A source:http://www.corrupzia.ru

Each point in the figure corresponds to one country. The line in the figure - a trend, shows the tendency of changes in the competitiveness index depending on the corruption perception index, calculated according to statistical data.

The picture shows: in the worldthere is no country with a very high level of corruption and at the same time with a high level of competitiveness ... it general rule from which there are no exceptions. There are also no countries in the world with low level corruption and low competitiveness. This is also a general rule from which there are no exceptions. But it is the competitiveness of enterprises that is the determining factor for economic success on the world stage! So, by eliminating corruption in our country, we will spur the development of its competitiveness and enable small, medium and large businesses to develop, thereby ensuring a rapid growth in competitiveness. Russian enterprises and the economy as a whole.

Figure 2 - Dependence of the inflation rate of the countries of the world in% from the corruption perception index.

A source:http://rating.rbc.ru .

Statistical studies show that corruption in the world is higher where per capita income is lower, but corruption is very much dependent on such an indicator as the inflation rate in the country. The higher the inflation rate, the higher the level of corruption, as a rule. The conclusion suggests itself: if we want the inflation rate in Russia to be low, corruption must be eliminated!

Corruption poses a particular danger in the spheres on which the daily life of Russians depends - health care, security, housing and communal services, education, etc.

The desire to speed up the process of solving a problem is the most common reason for giving a bribe. If you don’t give a bribe, you will have to come to terms with the fact that your documents will take months to complete, and the issue will take years to resolve.

To effectively fight corruption, we must realize that corruption leads to an increase in crime, drug addiction, and has a detrimental effect on the economy of our country. In a sensecorruption is the root, the source of many problems and vices of society ... And without the elimination of corruption, it is impossible to reduce the crime rate, effectively fight drug addiction and terrorism, build an efficient economy, and reduce inflation. Fighting many of the evils of society without destroying corruption is like fighting windmills.

We also need to realize:corruption can and must be eliminated ... I will give several examples of foreign awareness of the elimination of corruption from the article by Alexander Plyasovskikh (he is the President of the public organization "Russia without Corruption", Doctor of Technical Sciences):

“Several years ago I was visiting a friend in Tashkent, who is far from being a poor person. He brought me home in his new Ford car. I was surprised that the car was without an alarm and asked: "Why don't you set the alarm?" His answer just amazed me. He said: “Why? We have introduced a law according to which they are given 15 years in prison for stealing a car, and now they do not steal cars.

I recently traveled from Russia to Finland by car, where there are quite large fines for traffic violations. Surprisingly, but those people who in Russia do not follow the rules of the road, crossing the border with Finland, instantly become law-abiding! "

These examples indicate that if an effective system of legislative measures were introduced in our country, under which it would be profitable to live honestly, and it would be very unprofitable to take and give bribes, then corruption in society would decrease significantly!

Now about the radical measures that need to be used in Russia.

How to get rid of large-scale bribery and corruption? First, it is necessary to introduce a powerful economic counterbalance to the selfish interest in a bribe.The bribe must be very unprofitable economically !

Dear defenders of the rights of bribe-takers: remember the terrorist act in the theater on Dubrovka and the exploded Tu-134 and Tu-154 planes. These events would never have happened if not for the corruption of law enforcement agencies. By introducing severe punishment for bribery on an especially large scale, we will introduce a non-cruel punishment, we will ensure the elimination of corruption and, along with it, the elimination of many of the vices of society, the source of which is corruption. We will cut one of the powerful roots of crime, drug addiction, sexual slavery, the slave trade and other vices in society.

And if some of the officials are not stopped by the introduction of such a harsh measure, then there is no need to feel sorry for them, because for money such a person will sell his own mother and all the Russians taken together. We need to get rid of such officials without regret, as from a cancerous tumor, plague and leprosy.

To ensure an effective fight against bribery, law enforcement officers should be encouraged in the amount of 50% of the amount of the fine for bribery. If, say, law enforcement agencies catch a bribe taker taking $ 100,000 by the hand, they should receive $ 200,000 as a reward, but not from the state pocket, but from a fine that the bribe taker must pay. This will make it possible to defeat corruption not at the expense of taxpayers, for whom corruption is already very expensive, butat the expense of the bribe-takers themselves .

Now about the execution of the bribe-takers. In Russia, for a bribe in the amount of $ 50,000 or more, not a physical, but a public political execution with wide media coverage should be provided. A bribe-taker should be publicly and for life deprived of the right to hold any government office and any “bribe-intensive” position, that is, positions where there is an opportunity to take bribes. He should be deprived of all privileges and titles for life. He should be deprived of all pension supplements and receive only the minimum pension. It would be nice to organize a "site of shame", where the details of the cases and the political execution of corrupt officials would be presented. It seems that this site would become one of the most visited Russian sites. The political execution of corrupt officials should be carried out without the right to rehabilitation. The term of imprisonment for bribery should not be reduced under any circumstances.

As soon as it becomes unprofitable to take bribes in Russia, they will immediately stop taking them!

We propose not increasing the punishment for bribery. We propose the complete elimination of corruption in our country by creating powerful economic levers to combat corruption, by creating powerful counterbalances to the selfish interests of corrupt officials, as well as by political execution of bribe-takers. In doing so, people will naturally stop taking and giving bribes, just as our drivers obey the traffic rules in Finland. Corruption in our country will be destroyed at the expense of the corrupt officials themselves. The cancerous tumor of corruption on the body of our country's economy will be cut out. Eliminating corruption in Russia is impossible without introducing such radical measures.

At the same time, all law enforcement officers, traffic police, all government officials, all teachers and doctors who worked in their posts because of the possibility of receiving bribes will be dismissed. But that's good! This will make our society safer, the level of drug addiction and crime in Russia will begin to decline, and road safety will become higher. The elimination of corruption will give a positive impetus to the development of the economy, to the improvement of legislation, and ultimately to the prosperity of our country.

Next, we will briefly consider the main measures proposed by the National Anti-Corruption Council. Russian Federation... The "Verbatim Report on the Meeting of the Anti-Corruption Council" will help us in this. dated April 6, 2010.

Almost two years have passed since the creation of the Council (this was in May 2008) and the approval of the National Anti-Corruption Plan, which was July 2008. What have we done with you? At least one thing we were able to do: we created regulatory framework, the formation of the regulatory framework, which should be the basis for combating corruption in the near future, has been practically completed.

An anti-corruption examination of regulatory legal acts has also been established. To date, about 800 thousand different laws and their projects have passed such an examination.

Another area of implementation of the National Plan was the improvement of the organizational framework for combating corruption. All state bodies have created divisions of personnel services for the prevention of corruption and other offenses. The Presidium of the Council monitors their work.

Due to the concentration of efforts of law enforcement agencies on the fight against corruption in 2009, compared to 2008, the number of registered crimes against the interests of the civil service and service in local self-government bodies increased by 6.5 percent, and the number of revealed facts of bribery - by 5 percent. In total, 13 thousand facts of bribery were revealed last year.

The number of heads of public authorities and local self-government bodies brought to justice has also increased. Thus, the facts of criminal activity of the Acting Deputy Prime Minister of the Republic of Karelia, Vice Governor of the Kurgan Region, Deputy Governors of the Bryansk, Volgograd, Oryol Regions were suppressed, officials the governments of the Amur and Novosibirsk regions, the chairman of the State Duma of the Stavropol Territory.

All this is the result of a more purposeful and effective work of law enforcement agencies to identify and suppress corruption-related crimes.

The key task of the National Plan is to increase the transparency of the work of the courts. Each court must have an official website on which decisions will be posted. Such sites have already been created in all commercial courts and federal courts of general jurisdiction. Since 2008, a specialized database of decisions has been operating, which contains decisions of all 112 arbitration courts. All judicial acts are published on the portal within five days. From July of this year, all courts, including magistrates, must publish information about decisions in the public domain.

From the very beginning of its work, the Presidium of the Council organized monitoring of the implementation of the provisions of the National Plan in federal districts... Let us name its main results. In 76 constituent entities of the Federation, laws have been adopted that regulate anti-corruption issues.

The process of adopting regional targeted anti-corruption programs is nearing completion. True, in a number of regions: in the Amur, Bryansk, Saratov, Yaroslavl regions, their funding is clearly insufficient.

Analysis of the implementation of the National Plan helps to develop vectors for the further development of the state anti-corruption policy. For this purpose, a draft National Anti-Corruption Strategy has been prepared. Its adoption is in line with the international obligations of our country and will make it possible to determine the basic directions of work for the future.

The unconditional priority of the strategy is the eradication of the causes and conditions that give rise to corruption in Russian society, and the key principles are the prevention and prevention of corruption, the criminal prosecution of perpetrators of corruption crimes and the minimization of their consequences. A new version of the National Anti-Corruption Plan for 2010–2011 has also been prepared. It systematizes a list of tasks for public authorities at all levels.

The elimination of corruption will contribute to the fact that our country will become a powerful, economically strong power, will occupy a leading position in the world arena. We will not depend on the US dollar and the euro, we will not be afraid of various kinds of world crises.

Verbatim report on the meeting of the Council for Combating Corruption [Electronic resource] http://www.korupcii.net/

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VOLGA HUMANITARIAN INSTITUTE

federal state autonomous educational institution higher professional education

"VOLGOGRAD STATE UNIVERSITY"

ECONOMIC AND MATHEMATICS FACULTY

Department of "Economic Theory and Management"

by discipline

"Legal framework for combating corruption"

Impact of corruption on the state economy

Student of retraining courses:

Rudneva E.V.

Scientific adviser:

Candidate of Legal Sciences,

Egorov Gennady Gennadievich

Volzhsky 2015

"If you don't grease, you won't go"

Russian proverb

Corruption is a social phenomenon that involves the activities of civil servants, their relationships with other members of society, associated with the use of their official position for personal selfish purposes, damaging the state public interests.

Corruption is a universal phenomenon, since it, having arisen together with human civilization, is objectively inherent in all models of social structure. Its emergence is possible from the moment of the isolation of the functions of managing society, the formation of appropriate institutions and the emergence of a group of managing people. It is in this case that an official has the opportunity to dispose of resources and make decisions not in public, but in personal selfish interests. And the rest of society members may have a desire to influence the rulers with the help of various forms of remuneration in order to obtain a solution that takes into account their interests on controversial or pressing problems of life.

At the same time, corruption is characterized by the following features: 1) the special socially privileged position of the ruling subjects as the main participants in corruption relations, 2) their illegal use of public and state resources, 3) the hidden, informal and conciliatory nature of corruption relations, 4) the ability of corrupt actions to constant change and improvement.

Corruption negatively affects all spheres of public life. It leads to the growth of the shadow economy, disruption of competitive market mechanisms, decrease in tax revenues, weakening state budget... As a result, the efficiency of the state administrative apparatus decreases, the population's confidence in government officials decreases, and the country's prestige in the international arena decreases. Due to the development of corrupt practices, there is an increase in property inequality and poverty of the bulk of the population. Corruption directly contributes to the criminalization of society, the strengthening of organized crime and the discrediting of law as the main instrument for regulating the life of the state and society.

World Bank experts consider corruption to be the main economic problem of our time: according to their data, 40% of entrepreneurs around the world are forced to pay bribes.

In Russia, the solution to the problem of corruption is still far from final. All quantitative indicators constructed by both domestic and foreign researchers indicate either an increase or a stabilization of the level of corruption. At the end of 2010, law enforcement agencies managed to suppress more than 31 thousand corruption-related crimes, of which about 10 thousand are facts of bribery. Damage from corruption crimes in 2012 is estimated, according to the Prosecutor General of the Russian Federation Yuri Chaika, at almost 21 billion rubles, during this period more than 40 thousand corruption crimes were revealed. Independent experts emphasize that official statistics and crime detection rates of this kind do not fully reflect the real volume of bribery and extortion: thus, according to the professor of the Russian Academy National economy and public service under the President of the Russian Federation Elena Rumyantseva, the damage from corruption is trillions of rubles a year.

The situation with the corruption of officials in the Russian state is largely due to sociocultural reasons. On the one hand, these include the stable reproducibility of corruption throughout the history of Russian statehood, the dominance of collectivist values and informal relations among civil servants, and a high level of power distance between civil servants and citizens. On the other hand, the reproduction of corruption is due to the transitional stage in the development of modern Russia, which entailed a decline in the economy and political instability, a drop in the general level of culture of the population, changes in the hierarchy of value attitudes of members of society towards the dominance of material needs over spiritual ones.

These socio-cultural foundations of corruption have led to the development of many forms of corruption in Russian society. In the civil service, such forms of corruption have become widespread as bribery, shadow lobbying, favoritism and nepotism, corruption protectionism, different ways misappropriation of public funds for private use; and political corruption.

Therefore, ignoring these grounds for corruption cannot contribute to the development of an effective anti-corruption policy, leading to a decrease in the prevalence of corruption relations to a level that does not harm the normal social functioning and development of modern Russian society.

In order to obtain a positive result in the fight against corruption, the Russian state must implement an anti-corruption policy that involves a whole range of measures. It should include a system of measures aimed both at the suppression and criminal prosecution of committed corruption acts, and at preventing their occurrence by eliminating the possibility of abuse of power.

Preconditions for the development of corruption

Among the instrumental prerequisites for the development of corruption in the executive branch are the following:

Low level of official income in the executive branch; corruption of official power

Low degree of responsibility of officials: the expected probability of punishment for corrupt behavior and its severity;

Low professional qualifications of the state bureaucracy;

Low efficiency of institutional control over corruption;

The lack of transparency of the current system of formal rules;

Loyal attitude to administrative corruption of the country's political leadership.

In the report of the World Bank experts on the competitiveness of the countries of the world for 2012-2013, among the factors hampering doing business in Russia, corruption ranks first (20.5%), followed by bureaucracy and inefficiency of the state apparatus (11.9%), financing difficulties (10.0%). ), high rates taxes (9.3%) and other factors.

Corruption and investment.

As numerous empirical studies show, the higher the level of corruption of officials in the state, the less attractive this state is for foreign investors. The fact is that investors are not threatened by bribes per se, but by the level of uncertainty inherent in a corrupt system: corruption, unlike taxation, is unpredictable and non-transparent. Almost always missing effective mechanisms ensuring the implementation of corrupt agreements.

Investment in the economy is one of the critical factors successful development of the country, and their share serves as one of the important indicators of the quality of growth. One of the important empirical studies of the relationship between corruption and investment is the research of Paulo Moro, including Corruption and Growth (PaoloMauro, 1995). He set out to "identify the channels through which corruption and other institutional factors affect economic growth and measure the magnitude of these impacts." For this, various indicators developed by Business International were used. A total of 56 investment risk factors were used for 68 countries. Respondents rated risk factors on a scale from 1 to 10. One of 56 factors was corruption, defined as “the level of involvement of corrupt or questionable payments in business transactions”. Indicators of corruption were also used, in particular “the quality of the judicial system” and “the degree of bureaucratic red tape”. The study showed that corruption has a negative impact on the ratio of investment to GDP, that is, a decrease in the corruption of bureaucrats leads to an increase in investment. The same conclusions are confirmed by other studies, for example, studies by the World Bank experts indicate that corruption significantly reduces the volume of domestic and foreign investment. Viewing corruption as a kind of "tax" on business, they believe that each increase in this "tax" by one percent reduces the inflow of direct investment into the country by five percent.

Corruption and economic growth.

Another very topical issue is the relationship between the level of corruption in a country and the rate of economic growth. Scientists have found a significant negative correlation between GDP per capita and the level of corruption in a country: poor countries,

tend to be more corrupt than the rich. This conclusion

confirmed by numerous statistical studies.

Corruption and government spending.

The impact of corruption on government spending has also been examined in a number of studies. Intuitively, high levels of corruption are expected to distort the entire decision-making process associated with public investment projects. By prioritizing large capital intensive projects through small projects social infrastructure, those who distribute resources may have more opportunities to generate illegal income. Concrete facts support this assumption. Statistical studies based on cross-country data (and among them a study by P. Moreau) show that the efficiency of government spending, and in particular spending on education and health care, falls with the growth of corruption in the country.

Corruption and international trade.

“Corruption makes relationships foreign investor with government officials, such as those required to obtain export licenses or production permits, are less transparent and more costly. In this case, the existence of a local economic partner reduces transaction costs for the foreign investor. ”SmarzynskaandWei.

Research on the impact of corruption on international trade complicated by the large number of indicators that need to be taken into account in such an analysis, in particular: language barriers, geographic extent, structure of exports and imports, trade barriers and much more. However, it has been proven that corruption is also a cause of trade barriers and, in particular, leads to a significant increase and variety of tariff rates on imported goods. The wide variety (i.e. complexity) of import duties increases the ability of customs officials to generate corruption revenues by manipulating the classification of imported goods.

Corruption and Macroeconomic Governance Opportunities.

Corruption affects the potential for macroeconomic policy. The growth of corruption reduces the revenue side of the state budget, since, on the one hand, as has been shown, corruption has a disincentive effect on the economic activity of individuals, and on the other hand, high corruption in the fiscal bodies contributes to a decrease in the amount collected tax payments... Corruption renders negative impact on the so-called coefficient of productivity of value added tax - the ratio of the share of collected VAT in GDP to the standard VAT rate. It is clear that theoretically, in the absence of corruption in tax authorities and, accordingly, massive evasion from the payment of this tax, these two indicators should be equal to each other. However, in practice, the correlation coefficient between the level of corruption and the coefficient of productivity of VAT is -0.34. Statistical analysis confirms that corruption is interconnected with the means of managing capital flows. There are two reasons for this: first, the more corrupt a country is, the less its ability to collect taxes, the marginal cost of collecting taxes sharply increases with the growth of corruption; second, foreign direct investment accounts for a relatively smaller share of capital imports in corrupt countries than in countries with less corruption. Corrupt countries have a more volatile savings portfolio, which in turn reduces the ability to manage macroeconomic management.

Corruption and the size of the shadow economy.

Shadow sector size in different countries has been the subject of study over the past two decades in numerous studies. There are apparently two-way relationships between corruption and the activities of the shadow economy. On the one hand, it is clear that any economic activity of any scale, not regulated by laws, needs bureaucratic and political patronage, which can only be provided illegally, most often through corruption. The demand for illegal activities can often be a consequence of the costs of legally registering and organizing and the bureaucracy's use of its powers. Legality means significant ongoing costs. In poor countries, the relative size of the shadow economy is more likely to be higher than in rich countries. It also finds that illegal structures must pay relatively more of their net income (in bribes) than legitimate ones. However, corruption itself is also causing firms to go underground. Moreover, corruption increases with the increase in the share of the shadow sector in the economy.

The positive empirical relationship between corruption and the share of the shadow sector in the economy is confirmed both theoretically and empirically, being one of the main mechanisms by which corruption is deeply entrenched in society. Corruption fees from the shadow economy that go to legal bureaucratic structures are very beneficial for them, and therefore the bureaucracy is more profitable to have the largest possible shadow sector if the country is highly corrupt.

Anti-corruption measures

To increase the effectiveness of combating corruption-related crime, it is necessary to carry out coordinated actions of all structures involved in combating corruption in the following main areas:

Development and implementation of public anti-corruption expertise of regulatory legal acts;

Ensuring transparency of all administrative and legal procedures and decision-making, their strict regulation;

Strengthening responsibility for corruption crimes and improving economic countermeasures (it is necessary for a corruption crime to be economically unprofitable);

Expansion of international legal cooperation in the field of combating corruption;

Eradication of the existing system of personnel selection in the state and municipal service on the basis of kinship, personal loyalty and friendship in order to create a team of "like-minded people". Strict regulation in the selection of personnel, strict control of the income of officials, an effective system of incentives for employees;

Development of a system of social control over human behavior, the functioning of institutions, enterprises and organizations, society as a whole;

Formation of anti-corruption resistance among citizens, i.e. a system of socio-psychological qualities to resist the temptations of abuse of office and authority, giving or receiving a bribe. This is possible through the development and promotion of the corresponding ideology, disseminated both by the state and public associations, the media.

The measures taken to combat corruption are only the first step and it is difficult for now to talk about serious results of such work. In the future, it is necessary to introduce these measures into the systematic practice of law enforcement agencies with active interaction with other authorities (legislative, executive, judicial), public organizations and the business community. Only universal efforts will reduce the level of corruption and its systemic manifestations, and accordingly the amount of damage inflicted on the socio-economic development of the country.

Modern Russia, due to the widespread and institutionalization of corruption relations, suffers all possible negative consequences from the spread of this phenomenon. Therefore, corruption has turned into a threat to the national security of the Russian state and indicates the objective need for a comprehensive anti-corruption policy that can solve this problem and provide normal conditions for the development of Russian society.

References

Levin M.I., Satarov G.A., Tsirik M.L. Russia and corruption: who will win // Russian newspaper. 2011.19.02.

Levin M.I., Satarov G.A. The phenomenon of corruption in Russia // Nezavisimaya gazeta. 12.2010

Rose-Ackerman S. Corruption and the State: Causes, Consequences, Reforms. - M .: Logos, 2011.

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