The Social Construction Of Corruption In Europe

The volume demonstrates the suitability of the theory of social constructivism in portraying and analyzing the diversity of the phenomenon of corruption. The approach of social constructivism taken in this volume is able to reconstruct the 'construction of corruption' both from a societal perspective, by assessing it as generally accepted or tolerated behaviour in more or less standardized rule-governed social situations, and from the perspective of actors who perceive corrupt behaviour as problem solving in everyday life. The volume proves the usefulness of a social construction perspective for empirical research. It contains case studies of social definitions of corruption in eleven European countries that contribute in different ways to establishing a grounded theory of the phenomenon of corruption.

This book offers new ways of thinking about corruption by examining the two distinct ways in which policy approaches and discourse on corruption developed in the UN and the OECD. One of these approaches extrapolated transnational bribery as the main form of corrupt practices and advocated a limited scope offense, while the other approach tackled the broader structure of the global economic system and advocated curbing the increasing power of multinational corporations. Developing nations, in particular Chile, initiated and contributed much to these early debates, but the US-sponsored issue of transnational bribery came to dominate the international agenda. In the process, the ‘corrupt corporation’ was supplanted by the ‘corrupt politician’, the ‘corrupt public official’ and their international counterpart: the ‘corrupt country’. This book sheds light on these processes and the way in which they reconfigured our understanding of the state as an economic actor and the multinational corporation as a political actor.

This book analyses the development of anti-corruption as a policy field in the European Union with a particular focus on the EU Anti-Corruption Report. It reconstructs the origins of anti-corruption policy in the 1990s when the EU started to recognise corruption as a serious crime with a cross-border dimension. It also analyses the processes surrounding the downfall of the Santer Commission on charges of corruption in 1999 and the enlargement of the EU. This incorporation of transitional new Member States was accompanied by a number of specific measures, instruments and monitoring mechanisms to combat corruption at the supranational level, finally leading to the introduction of the EU-wide Anti-Corruption Report in 2014. The book presents an in-depth analysis of its implementation, abandonment and the way forward under the European Semester as the new instrument for achieving EU anti-corruption reforms. It offers a new interpretation of the Report as a form of reflexive governance that operates at multiple levels and involves not only the European institutions and national governments, but also the role of civil society actors in the process of developing anti-corruption policy. It applies the theory of reflexive governance in analysing the impact of the Report in the UK, Romania and Albania, including the involvement of non-state actors in anti-corruption policy making in these countries. The book concludes with a discussion on how future EU Anti-Corruption policy can make use of reflexive governance and offers recommendations to enhance anti-corruption policies of the EU, the Member States and Candidate States.

This monograph explores the nature of corruption around the world from a geographic perspective. It focuses on historical context and cultural factors. Readers will learn that though corruption is pervasive, geography greatly shapes its character. This book will offer a better understanding of the level of corrupt activity in any given country. The book analyzes an array of countries and regions. Coverage ranges from democratic societies, where corruption is low due to high rates of literacy and a free press, to the most corrupt places, where centralized power structures and lack of a free media allow corruption to unfold unimpeded. Anti-corruption campaigns and their effectiveness are also reflected upon. In addition to data from Transparency International, the text examines relevant political events. In each case, the analysis focuses on the major actors and institutions involved; the cultural norms that often regard corruption as a normal part of doing business; and the attempts by foreign and domestic actors to minimize corruption. This book will help readers better understand the causes and consequences of corruption, as well as its type and severity varies widely across the planet. It will appeal to students, researchers, policy makers, and interested general readers.

This book deals with large-scale, systemic corruption, a phenomenon that it identifies as part of the political landscape in most, if not all, societies of the contemporary world. While the analysis is grounded in the political thought of earlier thinkers, especially Edmund Burke, and integrates the insights of several modern analysts of corruption, the volume offers a new, updated theoretical perspective on the topic. This perspective reflects deep concerns with corruption in a world facing accelerated social transition, increased economic polarization, and growing distrust toward political elites in many countries. This book approaches corrupt practices both theoretically and empirically, offering the perspectives of scholars who come to the topic from different traditions and cultures. It contains the collective efforts of members of the Research Committee on Political Finance and Public Corruption of the International Political Science Association. In formulating a comprehensive approach on corruption, the volume offers insights in regard to new developments in the United States, in Middle Eastern countries (especially in the wake of the Arab Spring), in several European counties (Austria, Italy, Spain), as well as in the People’s Republic of China. The analysis goes beyond the traditional legal definitions of corruption or purely economic views of it and focuses more broadly on institutional, cultural, and normative dimensions of this globally important phenomenon.

Corruption is neither a private problem nor a peccadillo. Corruption can be deadly, for instance if poor quality parts are installed in planes, if development funds for the hungry are diverted for private use, or if the drinking water supply is overpriced due to corruption and as a result the poor can not afford it. Corruption affects everyone, or at least a great many, even if they do not usually immediately notice or know it. Everyone is affected, but the poorest of the poor worldwide are the most affected, for example when crucial funds are lacking for drinking water or medical care. The World Bank estimates that more than a trillion dollars flow into corrupt channels every year. Eradicating the most extreme poverty (people living on less than $1.25 a day) would cost an estimated $60 billion a year. In large-scale industrial projects, even within Germany, Austria and Switzerland, there is a rumour that 3 percent of the contract value is bribe money. International managers assume that corruption increases project costs by an average of 10 percent, but it might well be as high as 25 percent. This book gives a global overview on corruption, describes its different forms and effects and argues how and why corruption should be combatted by all means. It includes more than a hundred of brief examples of corruption from the German speaking countries as well as worldwide.

The Handbook on the Geographies of Corruption offers a comprehensive overview of how corruption varies across the globe. It explores the immense range of corruption among countries, and how this reflects levels of wealth, the centralization of power, colonial legacies, and different national cultures. Barney Warf presents an original and interdisciplinary collection of chapters from established researchers and leading academics that examine corruption from a spatial perspective.

Across the world, most people are well aware of ordinary criminal harms to person and property. Often committed by the powerless and poor, these individualized crimes are catalogued in the statistics collected annually by the FBI and by similar agencies in other developed nations. In contrast, the more harmful and systemic forms of injury to person and property committed by powerful and wealthy individuals, groups, and national states are neither calculated by governmental agencies nor annually reported by the mass media. As a result, most citizens of the world are unaware of the routinized "crimes of the powerful", even though they are more likely to experience harms and injuries from these types of organized offenses than they are from the atomized offenses of the powerless. Research on the crimes of the powerful brings together several areas of criminological focus, involving organizational and institutional networks of powerful people that commit crimes against workers, marketplaces, taxpayers and political systems, as well as acts of torture, terrorism, and genocide. This international handbook offers a comprehensive, authoritative and structural synthesis of these interrelated topics of criminological concern. It also explains why the crimes of the powerful are so difficult to control. Edited by internationally acclaimed criminologist Gregg Barak, this book reflects the state of the art of scholarly research, covering all the key areas including corporate, global, environmental, and state crimes. The handbook is a perfect resource for students and researchers engaged with explaining and controlling the crimes of the powerful, domestically and internationally.