Criminal Responsibility for Bribery of Voters and Referendum Participants: International Experience

Abstract

This purpose article is concerning on comparative study of criminal legal provisions on responsibility for bribery of a voter, a referendum participant in post-Soviet and European countries in order to identify advantages and disadvantages, to accumulate positive international experience and to establish prospects for its use in Ukrainian legislation. The place of criminal legal norm on bribery of a voter, a participant of the referendum in the system of Special part of criminal legislation of foreign countries as well as the existence of a relevant separate article in the legislation of countries which established responsibility for these crimes have been determined. Actions that constitute the objective side of bribery of a voter, a referendum participant in accordance with foreign legislation, main measures of criminal response to such crimes and conditions of exemption from criminal responsibility have been outlined. Methodology. To achieve this goal, general and special scientific methods have been used. The common dialectical method of scientific cognition was the methodological basis of the study and made possible to analyze various aspects of legislation on criminal responsibility for bribery of a voter, a referendum participant in their development, interconnection and interinfluence. Among The following specific scientific methods have been employed: historical and legal (to clarify some aspects of formation and development of criminalization of bribery of a voter, a referendum participant); system-structural (to establish the place of the norm in question in the structure of Special part of Criminal Code of foreign countries); comparative legal (for comparative analysis of criminal liability regulation for investigated crimes in the legislation of different countries). The scientific novelty of the obtained results is in improvement of theoretical understanding of international experience of criminal legal regulation of responsibility for bribery of a voter, a referendum participant, as well as in carrying out the comparative legal analysis of modern world models of such regulation in order to utilize positive international experience in the development of national legislation. Conclusions. A comparative legal analysis of the criminal legal norms of certain foreign countries, where responsibility for bribery of a voter, a participant of a referendum is established, has been carried out with regard to a number of criteria. As a result of the research, it was found that Ukrainian legislation is consistent with the vast majority of those in European countries that stipulated criminal responsibility for such crimes within a separate norm of the Criminal Code. In addition, such an analogy is also evident in the classification of this body of crime in the domestic legislation as crime against the constitutional (electoral, political) rights of citizens in the context of study of structure of Special Part of Criminal Code. At the same time, Ukrainian and European legislation discrepancies have been revealed namely concerning nature of the main measures of criminal legal response to crime in question. European practice mainly operates with penalties, which may to some extent be caused by the absence of a social need to choose more severe punishment. It was found reasonable, given the high latency of bribery of a voter, a referendum participant, to introduce the norm of exemption from criminal responsibility on special grounds in many European countries, in particular concerning voters and referendum participants who voluntarily revealed such acts to law enforcement agencies.

Keywords: bribery; voter; participant; referendum; international experience; criminal responsibility; legislation.