Theoretical and legal aspects of combating corruption in Ukraine
Authors: Harmatyuk V.O. 
Published: December 2022

It was determined that corruption is a complex not only legal, but also social phenomenon. The factors of successful anti-corruption have long been known and tested by the international community. These are, first of all, openness of government,transparency and clarity of state decision-making procedures, effective mechanisms of control over the activities of state bodies by civil society, freedom of speech, freedom and independence of mass media.Under the conditions of large-scale corruption, the emphasis is on the elimination of the causes, and not on the fight against specific manifestations.Thus, for the legal systems of some developed countries, the use of the term «struggle» in the legislation is not characteristic at all - the legislators lay down in the normative legal act the principles of the prevention of offenses related to a certain sphere of activity.

It was established that the formation of the content of the concept of undue advantage in the legislation of Ukraine is influenced by two different factors at once: 1) a broad understanding of this term in accordance with the tradition of the EU countries and 2) a narrow understanding in accordance with the tradition of the majority of CIS member states and the Istanbul Action Plan.In the author’s understanding, corruption is a socially dangerous phenomenon caused by the crisis features of the country’s social development, which is characterized by a deliberate violation of legal and ethical norms in the exercise of power by officials, on the one hand, and by interested subjects, on the other, which leads to negative consequences in all spheres of social life. This term is broader than the interpretation of the concept of corruption in the current legislation and in the concepts of many scientists, but it covers the main approaches to understanding the concept of corruption as a phenomenon. At the same time, it is possible to formulate the basis of the characteristics of the concept of corruption - the violation of social norms in the process of exercising power.At the same time, the concept of corruption without the element of exercise of power cannot be applied, since the process of exercise of power is the main categorical element of the concept of corruption. In normative acts, it is necessary to generalize the conceptual structure of corruption not as a crime, but as a phenomenon, because the processes that objectively exist in society, caused by the abuse of the official position of civil servants, need to be covered by this concept of various spheres of society’s life, in particular, political, socioeconomic and cultural and humanitarian. Such a state of affairs arises when, as a result of improper prevention and fight against the phenomenon of corruption, a subculture is formed among civil servants who equate civil service with the possibility of systematically using the official position for personal gain.In the future, the concept of the phenomenon of corruption must continue to be studied at the interdisciplinary level, when the methodological apparatus of political, economic and complex humanities will make it possible to categorically enrich legal science in the process of effective comprehensive interpretation of the concept of «corruption».