Applying the post-structuralist approach to corruption, the aim of this paper is to explore, how the Presidents of Ukraine - Leonid Kuchma in 1994-2004, Viktor Yushchenko in 2005-2010 and Viktor Yanukovych in 2010-2014 - use an empty signifier of corruption, and how different concepts of "corruption" shape anti-corruption policies in Ukraine. Accordingly, the main question is: What meaning do the Presidents of Ukraine assign to corruption as an empty signifier and to what extent this temporarily fixed meaning unfolds potential to create social identities? The main challenge the Presidents face with this respect is creating a dominant public discourse and framing corruption in a way that represents themselves as "non-corrupt Self" and their competitors as "corrupt Others".
Main assumption of the paper is that the framing of corruption as a principal-agent problem shapes the anti-corruption policies in a way supportive to authoritarian consolidation of a hybrid regimes. Framing of corruption as a system results in a broad, anti-corruption initiatives that are impossible to implement due to the resistance of main political actors.
Methodologically, I conducted content analysis of the Presidential speeches and citations of Presidential comments and press conferences in the press, mentioning corruption between 1994 and 2014. The data covers about 1200 news articles, from the databases of Factiva and Integrum, documents with speeches and autobiographic books. Further, I analysed anti-corruption legislation since 1993. For data analysis, I used an inductive coding approach with the software MaxQDA.
