Modalities and Bribe Offers: Making Sense of Post-Soviet Corruption

Abstract

Why villagers in Azerbaijan prefer to invest in building mosques and cemeteries rather than schools and kindergartens? Why the Azerbaijani government's sudden decision to outlaw food or other treat in funeral ceremonies is important? Why insurance is not perceived as a sphere of business by the Azerbaijani population? This article is able to pose and asnwers the questions through a novel methodology of political culture analysis - the concept of modalities. Focusing on the analysis of attitudes toward and practice of bribe offers by the population in the post-Soviet states, we argue that corruption is associated with imbalance within pairs of psychological modalities of Symbol and Content, Local and Global, Passive and Active. Government's selective focus on bureaucratic graft neglects formidable argument that the problem of corruption is tightly woven into political culture of a post-Soviet society. Simple administrative measures cannot overcome fundamental value orientations within a society.

Keywords: Corruption, Informality, Bribe offers, post-Soviet politics, Azerbaijan