Document Type

Article

Disciplines

International Law

Abstract

The difficulties of developing transparent democratic institutions and efficient free markets in Eastern Europe2 show how common ideas can turn into a diversity of practices. It is not enough for everyone to understand the ideas in order for complex institutions to be reproduced. One also needs a certain amount of social and normative infrastructure to sustain an idea in practice as it moves from one context to another.

In particular, the idea of and practices surrounding corruption generate a great deal of cross-cultural confusion. As the Cold War has further cooled, Western advisors and investors going into the former Soviet empire have been outraged by the degree of corruption going on in these newly marketizing economies.' International organizations have responded with well-intentioned, but not notoriously successful corruption campaigns.4 The result is that Westerners very frequently misunderstand just what is going on in Eastern Europe, mistaking differences in practice for lack of comprehension of the ideas. And on their part, Easterners wonder why Westerners are so moralistic - or so dense.

What is corruption anyway, and why does it seem so widespread in the former Soviet world while being so relatively absent from Western economies?' In this short essay, I would like to call attention to some difficulties with using Western ideas about corruption to apply to situations in the new market economies of the former East. I will argue that while some of the unauthorized transfers of money and goods going on in the former Soviet empire would be considered corruption in any circumstance, a great deal of what Westerners call corruption is either (a) the residue of rational responses both to state socialism and to the economic chaos that has emerged in the name of "transition"; or (b) the transitional and incompletely institutionalized growth of new professions. Seen from this new angle, much of what appears to be the extraordinary corruption of the East turns out to be a cultural difference in how to understand human action in the midst of extraordinary social and economic dislocations. To get at these ideas, I will focus on (1) the abrupt revision of the public/private distinction in new market economies, since this is the point where the residue of rational response can be located; and (2) the incomplete institutionalization of interstitial roles in a market economy. Both of these factors, I will argue, are crucial to understanding the extent and types of "corruption" in the former Soviet world. But first, we need to think about what corruption is.

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