Sub-National Variation of Corruption in Russia: What Do We Know About It?

While corruption is generally accepted as a major problem for Russia, there exists a large variation of the level and forms of corruption across sub-national regions in the Russian Federation. Multiple quantitative measures of sub-national corruption levels in Russia in the last decade exist based on different methodologies and provided by different sources. While some of these measures have been actively used in academic research, others have received less scholarly attention. The aim of this paper is to provide a critical review of the available corruption indicators for the Russian regions, discussing their advantages and disadvantages and comparing the pictures of corruption different datasets provide for various regions of Russia.