“Surgery” and “therapy” of corruption: The conflict studies dimension

Abstract

The article reviews the conflictive nature of corruption qua a systematically organized social phenomenon. The authors arrive at the conclusion that the roots of corruption lie in the social order itself which is being eroded and disrupted by conflict. At the same time corruption, recognized as some kind of a means which destroys social order, becomes equivalent to conflict. The authors emphasize the conflict studies paradigm’s heuristic detecting the potential of corrupt relations to disrupt society to a point beyond which it cannot reproduce itself as a solid and stable organism. The authors demonstrate in the article that the conceptualization of the interdisciplinary method of conflict detection and localization is considered to be the most sought-after method for the state which has declared war against corruption. The article pays special attention to the main points at issue of the interdisciplinary analysis of the corruption phenomenon and research approaches to its examination. Moreover the article makes clear that the economic subjects’ interaction may be denoted by the concept of “competition”, while in the social sphere this interaction may be denoted by the concept of “strife”, in political science it may be called “political competition”, “political tussle”, “crime”, “opposition”, “protest”, “uprising”, “revolution”. Which conceptual denomination is acquired by the mean of interconnection depends on the ultimate sphere in which this interconnection terminates while it takes various shapes as well. In the article the authors analyze corruption as a process of the transformation of an activity and its results into a commodity which has a “uncommodified” nature as a result of a joint, non-contractual, illegal exchange of resources between officials and others. The authors substantiate the necessity of interpreting the term corruption through the lens of a goods/money relationship, by a process which comprises the entire total of social bonds and relations and in first place; i.e., property relations. Also, the authors put a special focus on the corrupt relations with respect to relations where public commons are turned into individual private property whereby the official only passes to a private actor something that does not belong to him ipso jure. Refs 29.