Youth aspirtion survey in Republic of Macedonia management on the part of the government is a very important factor for 72.4% of the respondents, and an important factor for 21.1% of them(93.8% in total). This agreement in perceptions of the inefficiency of the government and its corruption(93.5%) could indicate only one thing: young people in Macedonia clearly envision corruption in the highest bodies of the authority, and they hold them the most responsible for the slow economic growth and for the presence of the corruption, which as a phenomenon obviously follows an octroi form of reflection (top to bottom). Youth in Macedonia perceive the corruption as a problem which is precisely located in certain bodies of the state. In this context they slightly differ in relation to the national average attitude of the population in the Republic of Macedonia, which has recently reached ceiling values(to March 2006 inclusive, according to data of the United Nations Development Programme- Macedonia 24 ). The comparison in this sense is rather revealing with regard to the distinction of the most corrupt bodies of authority, where the national average and the Youth Aspiration Survey indicate almost identical opinions. It is obvious that differences between the general population and the young people are slight, and that rankings of the most corrupted institutions are similar. Among young people this ranking from the least corrupted to the most corrupted institutions takes the following order: parliament, local government, education, police, health care, judiciary, ministries. Among the general population, the same ranking has the following order: education, police, parliament, health care, judiciary, customs office, ministries. While there slight differences in the rankings exist, it is obvious that the ministries and the judiciary in both cases have the dubious distinction of the most corrupt institutions. Table 7. Although the corruption pointed out is obviously a destructive problem, the research of Youth Aspiration Survey shows another worrisome dimension. Namely, the issue of accepting and offering bribes among the young generation is more prevalent when compared with the national average. As the scores show, a high 37.9% of the young people had witnessed the accepting and offering of bribes or were directly asked for favors in return for the rendering of goods or services they were legally entitled to. 26 This points out that young people are faced more often with corruptive practices, probably because of the degree of the social activity of this specific group, which certainly is worrying and suggests a perpetuation and transfer of negative habits from the elders to young people. The fact that 23.1% of the young respondents declared that they would accept a bribe if they had a chance to do so also suggests the culture of the corruption is perpetuated and transferred as a traditional form of conduct in the Republic of Macedonia. Even with the overall very negative attitude towards corruption, which is on the level of a social consensus, and an awareness of its harmful influence on the economy, almost one quarter of the young respondents would not avoid this harmful practice. If we also add to this the group of 19% of the respondents who didn't have an answer or didn't want to directly give an answer to this hypothetical scenario, the situation attains hypocritical dimensions, which is a really disastrous fact considering that the group of young people between the ages of 18 and 30 is in question. It highlights not only the power of traditions in transferring matrices of social behaviour, but also the hopelessness of the great many young people in Macedonia. We should not forget that 22.3% of the young people in Macedonia have estimated their own living conditions as bad or very bad, or that 87.8% consider that the economic situation in Macedonia is bad or very bad. That some of the young people follow the path of least resistance under such circumstances is expected behaviour. The overall data regarding corruptive practices in the Republic of Macedonia demonstrates the need for an organized and coherent approach in order to face and fight this problem, bearing in mind that the previous approach obviously is not achieving visible results, especially among the young population. A high percentage of the young YAS – Percentage of young people who declared that there is a corruption in: Early Warning Report – UNDP 25 Percentage of respondents who declared that there is a corruption in: Ministries 89,7 88,7 Parliament 80,5 83,9 Police 84 79,2 Judiciary 89,6 87,8 Health care 88,3 84 Education 82,9 77,3 Local Government 81,2 / Customs / 88,2 Table7. Comparative analysis of the perceptions of the young people in relation to the corruption at the organs of the state in relation to the national average _____________________________________________________________ 24 This increase of perception of corruption in the country is confirmed by the fall of the Republic of Macedonia on the rank order list of the Transparency International for 5 places. See Table 6. 25 Data taken from Early Warning Report of UNDP(March 2006) available on www.ewr.org.mk. 26 The national average according to data of the Early Warning Report of UNDP in March 2006 is 18. 1%. Friedrich Ebert Stiftung 20