| Previous findings have shown that the level of corruption in a country tends to remain static over the short term, resisting attempts at change. In the Republic of Georgia, however, corruption sharply declined after the Rose Revolution of 2003, when the new administration launched a series of reforms in areas ranging from the police force to the government bureaucracy. By contrast, similar changes did not take place in Ukraine after the Orange Revolution of 2004, even though this event also brought a new, avowedly reformist leadership to power. In order to explain why reforms occurred in Georgia but not Ukraine, I draw on my own fieldwork in these two countries and an original dataset on the backgrounds of their senior officials in order to examine the effects each country's political leadership had on their anti-corruption drives. My results indicate that, contrary to previous studies that suggest decentralization can make state capture less likely and increase the possibility for successful reform, in this instance the Georgian government's greater consolidation of power aided its ability to reduce corruption. Because President Mikheil Saakashvili had near-complete control over the Georgian government, he was able to form a cabinet consisting of his preferred officials, who tended to be young, technocratically-trained, and more committed to the reform process. Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko instead had to recruit into his government established politicians, many of whom were more supportive of the corrupt status quo, in order to maintain a viable governing coalition. As a result, the Georgian administration was able to focus on pursuing its reform agenda, while divisions quickly arose in the Ukrainian one that led to gridlock and prevented action from being taken against corruption. Even though the Georgian government was less accountable to the public than was the case in Ukraine, the combination of its composition and its power allowed it to overcome pressures from vested interests and push against corruption in a way that would have been impossible elsewhere. |
