Research Proposal On The Corruption Of The Political Regime

Corruption could be rightfully called an ancient phenomenon. Any definition you would choose, shall bring you up to rupture. As it commonly means the abuse of power for personal profit, it appeared the moment the power and authority started their existence and the personal interest, in its turn, was always inseparable from human being.
Corruption of the political regime may be considered as the most dangerous type of corruption, as it damages the core of the political system of the State. And damaging the core, it ruins all the efforts for effective future development strategies. It is an act, which involves illegitimate use of official power or trading the political influence in order to receive a personal profit. There are various kinds of political corruption, such as: bribery, embezzlement, extortion, drug and human trafficking, repression of political opponents etc.
The basic difficulty of combating corruption in political regime lies in the ill-defined law system, where it is complicated to differ legal and illegal actions of officials. Such an unstrained corruption condition of political system leads to kleptocracy (which could be literally defined as “the rule of thieves”). It provokes what could be expressed by the words of Tacitus: “In a state where corruption abounds, laws must be very numerous.” More and more legal acts are produced in a futile attempt of creating at least any kind of order that would help to clear the mainstreams of officials’ activity up. Instead of bringing facilitation it only causes the deepening of the already existing chaos. It is well-known that the most fruitful period for the promotion of corruption schemes is the time of reforms and changes – no one knows for sure what procedure is right and, thus, a broad basis for political manipulation appears. Such actions lead to a nearly full stop of the mechanism of political regime.
Corruption as the social phenomenon is politically colored. From one side it is the product of the authorities activity, and on the other – it directly influences forming and functioning of State institutions, and in such a way determines a gist of the public power. And, as public power is itself, firstly, a political institute, corruption – as the form of its’ misusage is a political phenomenon. This assumption brings us to the thesis that any corruption acts, performed by the representatives of State power or local self-government have political background and could be determined as the corruption of political regime. It generally has three features: the status of the subject of corruption violation, direction and motivation of his illegal activity and the nature of its consequences. Separation of the corruption of political regime is also needed for better understanding of the subject of corruption as a social phenomenon and, in such a way, increasing the effectiveness of combating it.
Political corruption has following aims: obtaining power; holding on, strengthening or broadening authority. The final result of the corruption of political regime is conversion of power resources officials have into material and values and other aspects of personal profit. This, in fact, differentiates such type of corruption from others by the scale of objects of interest. Its’ remarkable feature I would also like to pay your attention to is that reforms and laws, created with the view of combating corruption, are generally produced by the authorities, which are themselves subjects of corruption. It turns reforms that should become a rescue for the political regime, its’ own virus, which, instead, affects it.
These would be the main points I would pay attention to and deepen in my research paper.