Be Careful What You Wish For

Typically, a strong civil society and an active fight against corruption are considered crucial for the development and longevity of a democratic regime. In this article, I draw on the case of wartime Ukraine to show that, when institutional guardrails are weakened by an external crisis, the combination of the two may contribute to an illiberal turn in national politics. Based on an analysis of in-depth interviews with governmental and nongovernmental corruption fighters, the social media activity of Ukraine experts, and three major Ukrainian news outlets, I show that because of disproportionate Western investment in Ukrainian anti-corruption NGOs, local contestation over anti-corruptionism has grown increasingly polarizing in recent years. Specifically, I use the data to identify several indications that anti-corruption contestation has become dangerous for Ukraine’s democracy. These include upshifting, scaling, boomeranging, and convergence in the political contestation of where corruption is located and how to properly fight it. The article concludes with a discussion of how these processes have led to a drop in the institutional and generalized trust of ordinary Ukrainians, marginalization of moderate political voices, governmental attacks on civil liberties, and a rise in negative partisanship.