Articles in English. Part 1

Advancing corruption prevention in Ukraine: a constructive approach

Ukraine’s anti-corruption reforms will have to undergo further evolution and expansion, challenged as they are by the ongoing war with Russia, peoples’ demand for a just society, and expectations of major governance shifts due to the start of the accession process to the EU. While the achievements of the past decade in building new anti-corruption institutions and practices are commendable, they require reinforcement. But what might this evolution look like?

Two types of prevention

Anti-corruption is not the opposite of corruption. It describes a continuous process by which different actors work through various means to minimise the impact of corruption in society, politics, and the economy. While there are several typologies that break down the facets of this broad agenda, in the wider reform discourse anti-corruption efforts are often organised around three pillars of reforms:

  1. Legalistic approaches that aim to establish legal liability and definitions of corruption through specialised regulations, normative frameworks, and general planning frameworks within national-level strategies, often aligned with international norms.
  2. Enforcement approaches that seek the investigation and punishment of corruption through punitive and detection mechanisms, such as specialised anti-corruption institutions and audits, as well as social accountability and broader openness and transparency.
  3. Preventive approaches that, in general, are about minimising the burden of corruption for legalistic and enforcement approaches; in other words, activities and interventions that can help reduce the occurrence of corruption.
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Article 5