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PERCEPTION OF CORRUPTION, INFORMALITY AND SOCIAL ORDER IN THE PUBLIC OPINION OF RUSSIA

A. V. Odintsov

Abstract

Research of corruption is mostly limited by legal perception of this phenomenon being exceptionally referred to as a consequence of criminal nature of actions practiced by the corruptionist. Meanwhile, the fact that corruption has not only social grounds but also social functions is often ignored. The author claims the approach which treats corrupt and its milder complementing informal practices as both products and mechanism of social order in some communities to be more productive. In 2016, a mass telephone survey was conducted in the form of an interview (CATI) with a sample of n = 700. The mass survey toolkit has been developed on the basis of techniques applied by the World Values Survey and Independent Public Foundation INDEM (commonly used for analyzing corruption and its prevalence in Russia) in order to effectively compare the data of Russian and large international research projects. Besides, additional scales which were tested during the qualitative stages, namely, the scale of the evaluation of the phenomenon of justice, the scale of the justification of corruption in healthcare and education, were added to the study. The data collection software was prepared for CATI (Computer Assisted Telephone Interview) on survey-studio.com. The key findings of the study are as follows: 1. Perception of a corrupted society and justification of corruption are directly interconnected. The hypothesis of "infectious" character of corruption put forward by B. Dong, W. Dulleck and B. Torgler has not been confirmed, but a series of in-depth interviews proves its relevance for certain professional communities (particularly, for health professionals). 2. The assessment of corruption is interrelated with perception of "informality" in public opinion. The concepts of A. Ledeneva, I. Kuzminov on the separation of "informality" (profitable connections, bribery or guancxi) and corruption exist only as for research purposes, but do not reflect fully the perception of corruption in public opinion. 3. The paper findings have partly confirmed S. Kordonsky's argument on different perceptions of corrupt and informal practices by various social and vocational groups (healthcare, education, security and law enforcement professionals), specifically for health care system.

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DOI resolver: doi.org/10.5593/sgemsocial2018/1.2/S01.022

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