Interrelations between transparency of local authorities and corruption: Evidence from municipal surveys in Ukrainian regional cities

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Considering Ukraine’s corruption scandals at all levels of public governance, combating corruption and enhancing transparency have become a pivotal factor in maintaining the trust of Ukrainian citizens and foreign partners in central and local authorities. It is also an essential prerequisite for Ukraine’s prospective membership in the EU and the allocation of financial assistance from external donors. The study aims to examine how transparency in local governance influences the level of corruption in regional cities of Ukraine. The paper examines how transparency in local authorities relates to different types of corruption, including bribery within municipal services, healthcare, and other public sectors. Utilizing panel data from 24 Ukrainian cities collected between 2017 and 2020 (all-Ukrainian sociological municipal survey and project ‘Transparent, Financially Sound and Competitive Local Governments in Ukraine’), the study employs both random and fixed-effects panel regression analyses to assess the impact of various governance indicators on corruption levels across different sectors, including municipal services, healthcare, and education. The findings suggest that higher transparency of the local authorities is generally associated with lower levels of bribery in the housing and communal services sector (estimation coefficient = –0.204226), in registration and licensing institutions (–0.5353756), in healthcare institutions (–0.2032171), and experience of bribing local authorities (–0.2505674). The analysis concludes that enhancing transparency may significantly reduce corrupt practices within local government operations, thereby strengthening public trust and bringing Ukraine closer to meeting European Union standards.

Acknowledgment
Serhiy Lyeonov, Serhii Drozd, and Yaroslаv Reshetniak thank the project 0123U101945 “National security of Ukraine through prevention of financial fraud and money laundering: war and post-war challenges” for carrying out their part of this research.
This study was funded by the European Union grant “NextGenerationEU through the Recovery and Resilience Plan for Slovakia” (No. 09I03-03-V01-00130) and project VEGA – 1/0392/23 “Changes in the approach to the creation of companies’ distribution management concepts influenced by the effects of social and economic crises caused by the global pandemic and increased security risks.”

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    • Figure 1. The confidence intervals for the panel regression coefficients
    • Figure 2. Scatter plot matrix X, Y3, Y4, Y6, Y8
    • Table 1. Input data
    • Table 2. Random effects panel regression for the dependent variable Y1
    • Table 3. Summary of independent variables whose influence was found to be significant
    • Software
      Artem Artyukhov, Yuliia Yehorova, Serhiy Lyeonov, Serhii Drozd
    • Resources
      Artem Artyukhov, Yuliia Yehorova
    • Writing – original draft
      Artem Artyukhov, Yuliia Yehorova, Lesia Tykhonchuk, Yuriy Vasylyshen, Yaroslаv Reshetniak
    • Writing – review & editing
      Artem Artyukhov, Yuliia Yehorova, Serhiy Lyeonov, Lesia Tykhonchuk, Yuriy Vasylyshen, Serhii Drozd, Yaroslаv Reshetniak
    • Conceptualization
      Serhiy Lyeonov, Yaroslаv Reshetniak
    • Supervision
      Serhiy Lyeonov
    • Validation
      Serhiy Lyeonov, Serhii Drozd, Yaroslаv Reshetniak
    • Project administration
      Lesia Tykhonchuk, Yuriy Vasylyshen
    • Visualization
      Lesia Tykhonchuk, Yuriy Vasylyshen, Serhii Drozd, Yaroslаv Reshetniak
    • Data curation
      Yaroslаv Reshetniak
    • Formal Analysis
      Yaroslаv Reshetniak
    • Investigation
      Yaroslаv Reshetniak
    • Methodology
      Yaroslаv Reshetniak