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.


Introduction
Corruption is the abuse of power or bribery to satisfy one's needs, obtain illegal benefits, or cause harm to others.It is a trust violation that can involve government officials and individuals in the private sector.Corruption can take various forms, such as extortion of bribes, improper use of public funds, abuse of power, lobbying for personal interests, etc.It is a serious problem in many countries, as corruption can lead to distrust of citizens in government structures, violate equality and justice, and slow down the economic development of the country.Corruption is one of the many challenges facing Ukrainian society.It is difficult to determine where corruption started in Ukraine, but its presence and negative consequences are obvious.These are a low level of trust in state authorities, which leads to disregard for laws; economic losses due to tax evasion and, in general, the growth of the shadow economy; low investment attractiveness; a decrease in trust from the world community, which affects the level of support in our time of need.
According to the national survey "The State of Corruption in Ukraine.Perception, experience, attitude", conducted by the Program for the Promotion of Public Activity "Join!" together with the USAID Project "Supporting Leader Organizations in Combating Corruption in Ukraine "VzayemoDiya" (SACCI) (USAID, 2023), the problem of corruption ranks second in importance after war.According to 2021 research, the state budget of Ukraine loses 455 billion UAH every year due to corruption, as well as about 500 billion UAH of unreceived potential investments, which is approximately equal to the volume of the country's state budget.
The perception of corruption is a complex concept, as it includes objective facts and subjective opinions of the population regarding the corrupt activities of various bodies, which can be influenced, among other things, by insufficient or distorted information.A comprehensive investigation of corruption in the Ukrainian government requires an analysis of violations by the state and the population, which relate to several factors and include cases of abuse of power, extortion of bribes, and other forms of unlawful personal gain.In this case, constructing a system of association rules will help solve the mentioned issue.

Literature Review
The study of the corruption processes is carried out in legal, social, political, and economic aspects, indicating its all-encompassing nature of influence on various spheres of activity of both an individual and the state.Combating corruption is important for forming a favourable business environment and compliance with the principles of social justice and law and order in society (Kuzior et al., 2022).Today, digital tools provide practical tools to ensure transparency, openness and effective resource management.Here are some key aspects of the importance of digitalization in the fight against corruption: e-Government ( Understanding the patterns of the spread of corruption is key to solving the problem of public sector dysfunction in many countries.Accordingly, it is essential to consider the peculiarities of existing research in terms of the following factors of corruption perception: ➢ corruption can cause negative emotions among the population and violate faith in the effectiveness of government institutions (Sopilko, Armash, 2018).
➢ everyone encounters corruption daily, which is characterized by identifying situations where corruption can be a daily reality, such as receiving services from authorities, courts, interaction with the police or other public services.This can lead to helplessness and loss of trust in the system (Solovyev, 2012).
➢ trust in anti-corruption institutions, namely the creation of anti-corruption bodies, such as the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine (NABU) and the Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutor's Office (SAP), was aimed at restoring trust in the justice system and fighting corruption.Citizens can evaluate the success of these institutions in combating corruption and bringing the guilty to justice (Musienko, 2019).
One should also note that corrupt practices lead to a lack of transparency in the procurement system, complicating control over the expenditure of funds and causing the possibility of inefficient state programs (Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine, 2014).According to the Financial Action Task Force against Money Laundering (FATF, 2023), the volume of money laundering in Ukraine is estimated to be billions of US dollars.These figures are only rough estimates, and the actual losses may be much higher due to the difficulty of measuring corrupt practices and their economic consequences.It is also important to consider that economic losses from corruption include direct financial losses and the general impact on the development of society and the country's economy.
In the modern conditions of the development of the economy of Ukraine, the issue of the country's defence capability is important because the transparent allocation of the budget for military needs requires a unique approach and clarity in setting priorities and determining the expediency of each decision.It should not have signs of corruption processes (Oliynyk, 2020).Juarez-Garcia (2020) asserts the existence of a dual nature of implementing corruption schemes: the first level is corruption among officials of state structures, the second level is the imperfection of the regulatory and legislative framework, which enables the presence of illegal activity and the lack of proper punishment for it.Thus, the issue of determining the regularities of the spread of corruption processes in Ukraine needs to be more researched and requires a more in-depth study.

Methodology
The purpose of the work is to determine the patterns of the spread of corruption phenomena in Ukraine based on the construction of a system of associative rules.Associative analysis is a data mining method to identify relationships and dependencies between elements in a data set.The basic idea behind associative analysis is to discover association rules between different elements in a data set that often occur together.
Basic terms and concepts in associative analysis: association rule, which states if set X occurs, then the probability of meeting set Y is also high: where X і Yset of elements.
where ABthe rule of association Interval support (Lift, L)a measure of the degree to which an association rule occurs more often than would be expected by chance.
A library for the Python programming language Numerical Python was used to construct the associative rules, which provides support for working with large, multidimensional arrays and matrices, along with high-level mathematical functions for working with these data structures.The source of the data was the data of the survey conducted by the Public Activity Promotion Program "Join!" together with the USAID Project "Supporting organizations-leaders in combating corruption in Ukraine "VzayemoDiya" (SACCI).For the economic and mathematical modelling of the perception of corruption in Ukraine, three groups of indicators were chosen, which are answers to the national survey questions.To construct association rules, a transition from quantitative to binary indicators was carried out, the results of which are presented in Table 1 (for the judicial branch of government), Table 2 (for the legislative branch of government based on the example of the activities of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine), Table 3 (for the executive branch of government based on the example activities of the President and his Office).The value of the binary indicator "1" is assigned if the answer to the question is a sign of corruption.

Results
Having developed the methodological principles of building associative rules and carrying out their practical implementation, the analysis of the obtained results becomes relevant.Associative rules were created that reflect chains of perception of corruption within three branches of government: judicial (judicial system), executive (President and his Office), legislative (Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine).Having developed the methodological principles of building association rules and carrying out their practical implementation, the analysis of the obtained results becomes relevant.Association rules were created that reflect chains of perception of corruption within three branches of government: judicial (judicial system), executive (President and his Office), legislative (Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine).Analysing the data presented in Table 4, one should note that only associative rules were selected, with the probability of trust exceeding 70%.Regarding the rules that should be considered based on the indicator of their support, we note that the greatest support is found in rules 34 and 37.However, they are obvious because if measures to combat corruption are not used, and corruption is widespread in the courts, then, accordingly, there will be no confidence in the judiciary systems.Based on this, their description and considering is not considered.Therefore, let us analyse associative rules numbered 17, 20, and 23, for which the support level exceeds 300 units.Therefore, the following patterns are relevant for the consequence of "Distrust of the judicial system": ➢ Anti-corruption measures are not used -unwillingness to defend rights before bureaucrats -corruption is widespread in courts; ➢ Measures to combat corruption are not used -citizens can influence, namely participate in public councils or public hearings to monitor state institutions and their decisions -corruption is widespread in courts; ➢ Measures to combat corruption are not used -the feeling that it is your civic duty does not encourage anticorruption activities -corruption is widespread in the courts.
While society believes that the state needs more measures to combat corruption, citizens are not ready to participate directly in organizations to combat it.Society understands its power but is not ready to fight corruption daily by defending its rights in public associations.Moving on to the analysis of the consequence "corruption is widespread in the courts", we note that, based on the data in Table 3, it is fair to conclude that this consequence is predominantly formed by the same three reasons as for "distrust in the judicial system".This is logical since these are elements of one chain of consecutive events.If there is total corruption in the courts, there will be no trust in the judicial system.The respondents answered similarly, i.e., it is fair to assume that the results of the judicial branch's analysis are quite adequate.In order to analyze the level of corruption perception in the executive branch, using the example of the President and his Office, the following terms were chosen, "Giving a bribe is justified if necessary", "Distrust of the President and his Office", "Unwillingness to defend rights before bureaucrats","Willingness to participate in councils", "The feeling that it is your civic duty does not encourage anti-corruption activities", "Corruption is widespread among the President and his Office", "Citizens can influence, namely participate in public councils or public hearings to monitor state institutions and their decisions", "I know anti-corruption measures or reforms in the last 12 months by the President and his Office".27 associative rules were constructed.However, the result was one: "Citizens can influence, namely participate in public councils or public hearings to monitor public institutions and their decisions" (Table 4).We exclude the term "Citizens can influence, namely participate in public councils or public hearings to monitor public institutions and their decisions" from the analysis to identify other possible implications for the analysis of the executive corruption perception.The result is 2 rules (Table 5).Therefore, based on the data in Table 7, two rules are fundamentally different: one defines the cause of distrust in the President and his Office, and the other defines the same as a consequence.Thus, the following pattern can be determined: as long as Ukrainians believe that a bribe is a justified measure to solve the problem specifically in their case, until then, corruption will be widespread among the president and his office and, as a result, there will be distrust in them.At the same time, if society does not trust the president and his office, it will not be ready to defend its rights against other bureaucrats.
Moving on to the study of the legislative branch, we note that 33 formed association rules with a confidence level of more than 70% received the following as a consequence: "Citizens can influence, namely participate in public councils or public hearings to supervise state institutions and their decisions" , which is not expedient from the point of view of forming an information base for making balanced management decisions.Thus, we will exclude the term "Citizens can influence, namely, participate in public councils or public hearings to monitor public institutions and their decisions" from the analysis to determine other possible consequences for the analysis of the corruption perception in the legislature.As a result, 17 rules have been formed (Table 6).Based on the results accumulated in Table 5, we note that the most popular reason for mistrust of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine and systematic manifestations of corruption in it is "Giving a bribe is justified if necessary".The very understanding that in Ukrainian society, it is possible to solve problems at any level with the help of a bribe leads first to "Unwillingness to defend rights before bureaucrats", then to "Feeling that it is your civic duty not to encourage anti-corruption activities" and, as a consequence, to widespread corruption in the Verkhovna Rada.To assess the adequacy of the corruption perception model in Ukraine, we will define an approach that is not based on quantitative calculations of reliability parameter model but an approach that assesses its qualitative characteristics.This is because the built model is unique, and the toolkit used in its calculation does not have classic parameters for checking adequacy.
Analysing the developed model of corruption perception in Ukraine in terms of the specified requirements, we note that out of 7 parameters, the developed model meets such requirements as reliability, efficiency, control over results and compliance with the management level.So, while focusing on reliability, we note that association rules reflect existing regularities; the task of researchers is to find out whether these regularities are actual or not.At the same time, 10% errors are allowed when entering relevant indicators and 10% errors when calculating the level of support and confidence, which also allows us to assert a high level of reliability of the model.Thus, it is fair to note that the researched model of promoting corruption in Ukraine is adequate from the point of view of credibility, efficiency, and the ability to control the results.

Conclusion
It was determined that the Ukrainian society has an ambiguous attitude to corruption, indicating that the formation and strengthening of us as a society are still ongoing.On the one hand, Ukrainians understand the existence of a corruption problem in the country and are ready to fight it, for example by participating in public councils or public hearings to monitor state institutions and their decisions.On the other hand, they are mostly not ready to defend their rights before bureaucrats who indicates a low level of understanding by citizens of their rights.During the implementation of the set goal, associative rules were defined in terms of three branches of government: legislative (using the example of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine), executive (using the example of the President and his Office), judicial (using the example of the judicial system as a whole).38 associative rules were defined for the Court system.The most informative are the consequences of "Distrust in the judicial system" and "Corruption is widespread in the courts", according to which the patterns of perception of corruption processes were determined.For the executive branch, 27 associative rules were constructed, of which one resulted: "Citizens can influence, namely, participate in public councils or public hearings to monitor state institutions and their decisions".33 associative rules were formed for the legislative branch.A significant consequence with a confidence level of more than 70% was "Citizens can influence, namely participate in public councils or public hearings to monitor public institutions and their decisions".
The obtained results can be used by the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine during the improvement of Ukrainian legislation on the principles of state anti-corruption policy and during thematic parliamentary hearings, anticorruption examination of draft laws in the committee on anti-corruption policy.The Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine can use the results of the study when approving the State Program for the Implementation of the Anti-Corruption Strategy.It was determined that the Ukrainian society has an ambiguous attitude to corruption, which indicates that the formation and strengthening of us as a society are still ongoing.On the one hand, Ukrainians understand the existence of a corruption problem in the country.For example, they are ready to fight it by participating in public councils or hearings to monitor state institutions and their decisions.On the other hand, they need more time to be ready to defend their rights before bureaucrats, which indicates a low level of understanding of their rights by citizens.
During the implementation of the set goal, associative rules were defined in terms of three branches of government: legislative (using the example of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine), executive (using the example of the President and his Office), judicial (using the example of the judicial system as a whole).38 associative rules were defined for the Court system.The most informative are the consequences of "Distrust in the judicial system" and "Corruption is widespread in the courts", according to which the patterns of perception of corruption processes were determined.For the executive branch, 27 associative rules were constructed, one of which resulted in: can influence, namely, participate in public councils or public hearings to monitor state institutions and their decisions".33 associative rules were formed for the legislative branch.A significant consequence with more than 70% confidence level was "Citizens can influence, namely participate in public councils or public hearings to monitor public institutions and their decisions".
Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine can use the obtained results during the improvement of Ukrainian legislation on the principles of state anti-corruption policy and thematic parliamentary hearings, anti-corruption examination of draft laws in the committee on anti-corruption policy.The Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine can use the results of the study when approving the State Program for the Implementation of the Anti-Corruption Strategy.

Table 1 .
Input Data for Determining the Reasons for the Spread of Corruption in the Judicial System Ukraine?, do you know about any anti-corruption measures, reforms or campaigns, which were conducted in the last 12 months by the Verkhovna Rada, in your opinion, how widespread is corruption in the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine?To analyze the perception of corruption among the President and his Office, we leave for analysis questions 2, 4, 6, 8, 9 and supplemented with new questions: To what extent do you trust the President and his Office?, Do you know about any anti-corruption measures, reforms or campaigns, which were conducted in the last 12 months by the President and his Office?In your opinion, how widespread is corruption among the President and his Office?

Table 2 .
Association Rules for the Consequence "Distrust in the Judicial System" (fragment)

Table 3 .
Association Rules for the Consequence "Corruption is Widespread in Courts" (fragment) Bribery is justified if necessary; mistrust of the judicial system; anti-corruption measures are not taken 210 0,7836 13 Anti-corruption measures are not taken; mistrust of the judicial system; willingness to participate in

Table 4 .
Association Rules for the Executive Branch of Government (fragment)

Table 5 .
Associative Rules for the Executive Branch of Government with the Exception of One Term

Table 6 .
Association Rules for Analyzing the Corruption Perception in the Legislature (Fragment)