By Alexander
J. Motyl
When you think about Ukraine, corruption is probably
the first word that comes to mind. It’s undermining the country, hollowing out
the state, destroying society and preventing reform — or so the media says.
Western newspapers are awash in headlines like “Why Ukraine Is Losing the War on Corruption” and “Corruption Is
Killing Ukraine’s Economy.”
Concern is merited, of course, because corruption
remains one of democratic Ukraine’s greatest challenges. But the hyperbolic
language, and the implicit — sometimes explicit — claim that Ukraine’s
existence and transformation are incompatible with corruption, derives from six
myths. Like all myths, these serve as convenient oversimplifications that
overshadow the need for genuine understanding.
MYTH NO. 1: CORRUPTION IS THE
GREATEST THREAT TO UKRAINE’S EXISTENCE.
No way. The tens
of thousands of Russian soldiers,
tanks and artillery sitting along Ukraine’s southern and eastern borders are
Ukraine’s sole existential threat. If Vladimir Putin gives the
command, they could invade and possibly destroy large parts of the country.
Corruption, by comparison, could eviscerate Ukraine’s institutions, but only in
the long term.
MYTH NO. 2: CORRUPTION IS AN
OBSTACLE TO REFORM.
Ukraine has
embarked on impressive political, economic and social reforms since the Maidan
Revolution of 2014. Democratic institutions are now fully functional, no longer
hollowed out; banks are being fixed; energy prices have been raised to market
levels and energy dependence on Russia has been slashed. State procurements are
now transparent; bureaucracies have been trimmed; the health system is being
overhauled; education has been thoroughly reformed. If corruption makes reform
impossible, then how did Ukraine pull this off?
MYTH NO. 3: CORRUPTION IS THE GREATEST OBSTACLE TO
FOREIGN DIRECT INVESTMENT.
Nope. There is no correlation. Ukraine
experienced a boom of FDI during Viktor Yushchenko’s corrupt but pro-democratic
government from 2005-2010, a decline during the exceptionally corrupt and
dictatorial Yanukovych years (2010-2013), and a virtual halt since 2014. The
current government is the least corrupt and most democratic of the bunch, but
investors are staying away because of the war in Ukraine’s east.
MYTH NO. 4: CORRUPTION IS THE GREATEST OBSTACLE TO
ECONOMIC GROWTH.
Nonsense. If that were true, then highly
corrupt countries like Brazil, Russia, India and China — ranked 76th, 119th,
76th and 83rd out of 168 countries on the Corruption Perceptions Index,
according to Transparency International — wouldn’t have experienced impressive
growth rates. As for Ukraine, ranked 130th, its growth rates were negative in
the 1990s, positive in the decade-plus that followed and deeply negative since
2014. Corruption had nothing to do with it. The contraction in the 1990s was a
consequence of the collapse of the Soviet economy; subsequent growth took place
despite Ukraine’s remaining corruption; and the post-2014 contraction was the
result of Russia’s invasion of Crimea and the eastern Donbas.
MYTH NO. 5: CORRUPTION IS THE GREATEST OBSTACLE TO
DEMOCRACY.
Really? Then how did Ukraine make very
impressive strides toward consolidated democracy status since the Orange
Revolution of 2004, despite suffering from corruption?
MYTH NO. 6: CORRUPTION CAN BE ELIMINATED QUICKLY WITH
POLITICAL WILL.
Since corruption is largely the result
of bloated state apparatuses and inefficient market mechanisms, political will
and the attendant arrests of corrupt officials is never enough to get rid of
it. The costs and benefits of corrupt practices and, in particular, the
incentives and disincentives to engage in them must be changed. States and
economies must be streamlined. That takes some political will, but mostly it
takes sustained reform and time.
SO WHAT IS THE REALITY?
Corruption in Ukraine is both deep and
widespread, making it harder for survival, reform, investment, growth and
democracy to be pursued and consolidated. But it does not make it impossible to
achieve these goals. Were that the case, no country in the world — including
the United States, which was notoriously corrupt in the 19th century — would
have been able to become a functioning market economy and democracy.
Ukraine has made significant progress in
combating corruption in recent years and has still managed impressive reforms,
prompting former Finance Minister Natalie Jaresko to say that Ukraine has
changed more in the past three years than in the 20-plus years since
independence in 1991. On December 13, 2016, the EU concluded that Ukraine is
carrying out intense and unprecedented reforms across its economy and political
system, while its democratic institutions have been further revitalized. That
report, unlike years of headlines about corruption in Ukraine, did not catch the
media’s eye.
So why is the fixation on Ukrainian
corruption? Partly because it provides a simple theme around which to organize
ignorance about Ukraine, as well as a convenient rationale for Ukraine fatigue
in foreign policy. Corruption provides Westerners with an attractive us versus them picture: there, the bad, corrupt
Ukrainians; here, honest, virtuous Europeans and Americans. Russian propaganda
has managed to spread this image of Ukraine in a bid to reduce it to an
irredeemably failed state unworthy of the West’s attention.
But don’t buy into this corruption
narrative and its “failing state” corollary.
What it really represents is the
West’s failed imagination and policy more than anything about Ukraine, which is
doing almost as much as it can to combat corruption. If the United States and
Europe genuinely want to help Ukraine, they’ll have to discard their myths and
start seeing its true complexity.
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