Data-Mining Modeling of Corruption Perception Patterns Based on Association Rules

Corruption is one of the many challenges facing Ukrainian society. After the full-scale war, 89% of Ukrainian citizens consider corruption to be the most serious problem for the stable development of Ukraine. In the article, it is argued that neglecting the problem of corruption in society leads to a decrease in the level of trust in public authorities, economic losses, a decrease in the country's investment attractiveness, a loss of trust from international partners, as well as other economic and political turbulences. The study aims to develop an economic and mathematical model for determining the patterns of corruption perception in Ukraine based on association rules implemented using data mining methods. The Python Numerical Python library was used to build association rules. The study of the patterns of corruption perception was analysed in terms of the legislative (based on the activities of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine), judicial (based on the activities of the courts) and executive (on the example of the activities of the President and his Office) branches of government. The source of primary data was the data of a survey conducted by the “Join!” Public Participation Support Program together with the USAID project “Support for Leader Organizations in Combating Corruption in Ukraine”. 38 association rules were determined for the judicial system, among which the most informative consequences were “distrust in the judicial system” and “corruption is widespread in the courts”. For the executive branch of government, 27 association rules were built, where the informative consequence was “citizens can influence, namely participate in public councils or public hearings to monitor state institutions and their decisions”. For the legislative branch, 33 association rules were formed, where the informative consequence was “citizens can influence, namely participate in public councils or public hearings to monitor state institutions and their decisions”. According to the empirical calculations, a regularity was found that Ukrainian society is democratic and believes in its power to overcome corruption in any branch of government, but members of society do not show active desire and only revolutionary manifestations are possible in a critical situation. The Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine can use the results obtained during the improvement of Ukrainian legislation, the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine when approving the State Program for the Implementation of the Anti-Corruption Strategy and other state bodies in developing anti-corruption programs at various levels.