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Political Science Law OPEN ACCESS

Everyday Corruption: Mechanisms and Enabling Conditions Identified in Court Decisions

Zamirat Borsiyeva
Associate Professor, Independent Researcher, Law Enforcement Academy of the Republic of Uzbekistan, Tashkent, Uzbekistan
DOI Crossref DOI 10.37547/tajpslc/Volume08Issue11-02
tajpslc 2026
VOL. 8 / NO. 11 NOVEMBER
FULL TEXT PP. 11-20
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VOLUME 8
ISSUE 11
YEAR 2026
PAGES 11-20
RESEARCH OVERVIEW

Abstract

Everyday corruption, understood here as informal payments and exchanges that arise in ordinary dealings between citizens and public bodies, is seldom visible in official statistics, and its mechanisms are not always easy to separate from related offences such as fraud. This article considers what court decisions can tell us about such mechanisms and about the conditions that appear to accompany them. It draws on a qualitative content analysis of 19 court acts (18 verdicts and one ruling) issued between 2023 and 2026 in one district of Tashkent, together with a statistical profile of 46 recorded corruption-related facts. Each act was coded for its legal qualification, the factual mechanism, the purpose of the benefit, the role of an intermediary, the sphere of decision-making, situational conditions and the preventive response of the court, using a multi-label scheme based on the classical, structural, ethical and positivist approaches. Giving a bribe accounted for 34 of the 46 recorded facts (73.9%) and receiving a bribe for five (10.9%). Three mechanisms were identified in the acts: payment for the real or claimed ability to influence a decision (12 acts; 63.2%), direct giving or offering of a bribe to avoid a sanction (six acts; 31.6%) and direct receipt of a bribe by an official (one act; 5.3%). The first group concerned driving documents, employment, education and other procedures in which applicants could not readily verify the claimed connections or the status of their case. The material does not allow conclusions about how widespread such practices are or about the existence of a settled social norm. The results suggest that preventive attention may usefully be directed to the documentability, traceability and verifiable status of administrative procedures, to official payment channels and to confidential reporting arrangements, and indicators are proposed for each priority area.

RESEARCH TOPICS

Keywords

Everyday corruption bribery trading in influence

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