Corruption: institutional features, social determinants and consequences

The article considers the nature, causes, determinants and consequences of corruption. As a form of social deviation of a delinquent nature and as a type of crime, corruption has a destructive effect on all spheres of social life, primarily on their management - by redistributing their resources and by replacing social values and goals with group and personal ones. Corruption affects not only states but also international affairs; therefore, we need active opposition to corruption from the world community: International Anti-Corruption Day was included in the calendars of 187 countries including Russia. According to the World Bank, the annual global amount of bribes is 1 trillion US dollars. For many countries, corruption has become a threat to national security, which makes them seek and use effective and often radical measures to counter corruption, and to conduct comprehensive studies of corruption as an objective and widespread social phenomenon. The authors consider corruption on the basis of an interdisciplinary methodology with an emphasis on institutional and structural-functional approaches, which allowed to identify institutional features of corruption, its structure, functions and social consequences, and to assess the efficiency of anti-corruption measures. The article is based on the statistical data on the dynamics of corruption in Russia and the Republic of Bashkortostan in 2012-2020, and on the results of the sociological survey conducted by the Institute for Strategic Studies of the Republic of Bashkortostan in 2020 according to the methodology for assessing corruption described in the Decree of the Government of the Russian Federation. The survey focused on the problems in the interaction of citizens and employees of state and municipal authorities (everyday corruption), and in the interaction of authorities and business (business corruption) (the corresponding samples were 814 and 300 people). The study of everyday corruption was conducted by individual formalized interviews, of business corruption - by the online survey on the Google Forms.

Sweden

The Swedish Riksdag is often regarded as an ideal type for Scandinavian or Nordic parliamentarism. This relates to institutional features and party cohesion, but more often so to descriptive representation in terms of gender—an aspect where Sweden’s parliament has consistently occupied the top position among European parliaments during the last decades. However, and despite an unlikely-case-character, previous research has shown that gender biases exist in Nordic parliaments and the Riksdag in particular. This chapter follows this research and evaluates how gender and seniority determine legislators’ opportunities to speak in plenary debates. Our results show that the gender biases found in previous research persist to date and extend further to the past. Furthermore, low seniority amplifies the effect of gender; junior female legislators have the slimmest chances to speak in plenary debates.

Where Do Born Globals Come from? A Neoconfigurational Institutional Theory

Born globals, recently established firms that obtain a substantial share of their revenue from foreign markets, can help strengthen countries’ economic vitality and increase innovation levels. The extent of born global formation varies considerably across countries, yet it is unclear why this is the case. Drawing on the neoconfigurational institutional perspective, we develop a typology of institutional contexts associated with high born global formation rates. We posit that high rates of born global formation occur where institutional features favorable to border-spanning activities complement institutional features conducive to entrepreneurial activity, thus forming an institutional configuration that enables, equips, and motivates more societal members to launch born globals. Accordingly, we hypothesize a primary institutional configuration where international transaction facilitators, entrepreneurial educational capital, and entrepreneurial norms combine to propel born global formation. Further, we draw on the internationalization literature to propose two alternative types of institutional configurations conducive to born global formation. These two types provide functional substitutes for the primary type and are distinctly propelled by (1) escapism from low-quality public governance institutions or (2) immigrant entrepreneurship. Fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis on data from 66 countries supports our typology and illustrates why born global activity may thrive even in contexts with institutional weaknesses. Our study develops a neoconfigurational model to advance a holistic understanding of the born global phenomenon’s theoretical drivers, contributing to research on comparative capitalism and international entrepreneurship.

The Council of Europe’s Responses to the Decay of the Rule of Law and Human Rights Protections: A Comparative Appraisal

This article introduces the Special Issue on ‘The Responses of the Council of Europe to the Decay of the Rule of Law and Human Rights Protections’. The Council of Europe (CoE), a unique international organisation with its commitment to protect and promote human rights, the rule of law, and democracy, has been severely tested by the spread and consolidation of trends posing systemic threats to its foundational goals. The authors of this Special Issue assess how the European Court of Human Rights, the Venice Commission, the Parliamentary Assembly, the Committee of Ministers, and the office of the Secretary General have addressed systemic threats to the foundational principles of the organisation in the last decade. The Special Issue finds that the respective legal-institutional features and capacities of the CoE organs as well as the constraining influence of the broader political context in Europe on them vary significantly, hampering the CoE’s ability to produce timely, consistent, and co-ordinated responses against systemic threats.

What’s Law Got to Do with It?

Chapter 3 fills in some institutional features of the landscape of work that shape and illuminate managerial decisions about automation: the evolving law of labor and employment and the rise of “fissuring,” or outsourcing of labor needs to outside contractors. It argues that many of the mandatory legal rights, protections, and benefits that workers have won over the past century raise labor costs and tilt firms’ calculus toward both fissuring and automation; and that the prevailing legal responses to fissuring tend to strengthen the business case for automation. In short, the growing availability of automation—which offers firms a more complete exit from the costs, risks, and hassles of employing humans—confounds old and new legal strategies for improving the lives of ordinary workers.

Leading by Example in Socially Driven Organizations: The Effect of Transparent Leader Compensation Contracts on Following

Leading by example is one of the most powerful methods to encourage individuals to work toward a common objective. Despite the importance of leadership, little is known about how the effectiveness of leading by example depends on institutional features, such as the transparency and design of leaders' compensation contracts. We conduct two experiments to study this interplay between leadership and contracting in organizations with social missions (i.e., socially driven organizations). We find that under non-transparent contracts, leader contributions to the social objective positively influence follower contributions, reflecting effective leading by example. More importantly, under transparent contracts, the positive effect of leader contributions on follower contributions is diminished by an increase in the intensity of variable compensation and/or the amount of fixed compensation in the leader's contract. Our study informs the debate on pay transparency and demonstrates that organizations need to carefully consider the effects of contract design on leadership effectiveness.

Concealed Advantage

Chapter 3 traces the sources of the 2008–2009 and 2020 financial and economic implosions and the winners and losers of the Fed’s massive responses. Across two distinct crises, the Fed’s policies followed a similar pattern of favoring large financial institutions and big business while neglecting or altogether ignoring homeowners, small- and medium-sized businesses, and state and local governments. This conclusion is based on tracking detailed institutional features: the assertion of emergency power; the redefinition of the Fed’s boundaries to aid financial and corporate firms that previously lacked direct contacts with the Bank; the generous stretching of loan duration; and the considerable weakening of collateral requirements.