Section Thématique du RC20 de l'IPSA

Political Finance and Political Corruption

Responsables

Jonathan MENDILOW (Rider University, IPSA) jmendilow@rider.edu
Eric PHELIPPEAU (Université Paris Ouest – Nanterre la Défense, Institut des sciences sociales du politique, IPSA) eric.phelippeau@u-paris10.fr

Présentation scientifiqueDates des sessions Programme Résumés Participants

Présentation scientifique

Depuis le début des années 1970, avec le développement des règlementations encadrant le financement de la vie politique (RFA et Suède, fin des années 60, USA, Canada, Québec et Italie, cours des années 70, Espagne et France, seconde moitié des années 80, pour ne citer que quelques exemples), et la divulgation de nouvelles données financières, l’analyse des relations entre argent et politique est devenue un secteur à part entière de la science politique.
 
Au sein de cet univers académique, la question la plus ancienne consista à s’interroger sur le caractère ploutocratique de tel ou tel système politique et à évaluer dans quelle mesure dépenser plus que ses adversaires permettait d’emporter l’élection ? Ces recherches prenaient pour cœur de cible les ressources distribuées par de gros bailleurs de fonds. D’autres, plus récentes, ont commencé à s’intéresser à des sources de financement plus modestes. Aux dénonciations de l’argent en politique, se sont substituées des interrogations sur les contributions financières comme mode de participation politique, dans le cadre d’enquêtes soucieuses de scruter les petits donateurs et les micro-financements glanés par internet. La prééminence de ressources privées parfois décriées (corporations, PACs) a évidemment soulevé la question des intérêts de ces donateurs, dans une logique de dons appelant des contre-dons. Un vaste débat s’est ouvert autour de l’action des groupes d’intérêts et de la question de l’achat de la législation. Ce secteur de recherche académique fut même, aux Etats-Unis, consubstantiel de la naissance et du développement de la science politique.
 
D’autres travaux analysent la genèse de législations et tentent d’en évaluer la portée. Ils nous renvoient l’image d’une fabrique de « législations passoires ». Les recherches centrées sur la mise en œuvre de ces mesures montrent en tout cas combien toute nouvelle règle provoque des anticipations et des adaptations, et génère des contournements. Le pouvoir limité des agences chargées de la mise en œuvre de ces règlementations et de leur respect est aussi enjeu de réflexions, mais largement juridiques. La question des effets de ces règles sur la structuration et le fonctionnement du champ politique alimente enfin d’autres débats. Les enquêtes conduites autour du financement public des élections et des organisations partisanes en fournissent une bonne illustration : toute s’attachent à en évaluer et à en discuter les effets ; un certain nombre, à les déplorer. Leur introduction a été rendue responsable d’avoir entravé la compétition entre structures partisanes et entrainé l’affaiblissement de certaines d’entre elles. D’autres travaux ont aussi discuté l’éventualité d’une fragmentation des systèmes partisans en liaison avec la mise en œuvre de ces subsides. Mais les investigations les plus récentes n’ont pas permis de corroborer systématiquement l’une ou l’autre de ces hypothèses.
 
Ce champ largement comparatiste et internationalisé est naturellement ouvert aux chercheurs français qui seront les bienvenus. Certains spécialistes d’organisations partisanes hexagonales ont d’ailleurs commencé à intégrer à leurs réflexions des données financières, y compris pour opérer un retour réflexif sur leurs conditions de production et leurs limites. La corruption et le clientélisme sont déjà des objets qui alimentent de stimulantes recherche. D’autres n’attendent que d’être appréhendés, notamment par des spécialistes de la sociologie/sociogenèse des institutions : réglementations sur le financement de la vie politique, relatives à la lutte anti-corruption, encadrant le patrimoine des élites politico-administratives, la prévention des conflits d’intérêts, etc. La France a en tout cas vu fleurir ces vingt dernières années de nombreuses structures qui pourraient facilement s’ajuster à une mise en perspective sociogénétique et comparative : Commission nationale des comptes de campagnes et des financements politiques, Commission pour la transparence financière de la vie politique muée dernièrement en Haute autorité pour la transparence de la vie publique, Service central de prévention de la corruption, organisme en charge du Traitement du renseignement et de l’action contre les circuits financiers clandestins, Brigade centrale de lutte anti-corruption, déontologues des assemblées etc.


Research into political finance and political corruption is likely to be contingent on evidence that is not publicly disclosed. The tendency is therefore to engage in case specific studies that discourages generalizations. A typical result is that there is no clear agreement as to what precisely is included in the category of political finance, or the actual definition of what constitutes corruption. If generalizations are always required in the social sciences, the need is ever more urgent in the era of transition that we are undergoing nowadays.
Established democracies like the US are grappling with greater costs of political competition coupled with reduced readiness of the general public to shoulder them, especially in periods of austerity such as we witness in Europe. At the same time, ever more intricate networks of political and economic national and cross national contacts create new opportunities for political funding from beyond the confines of specific systems and for political corruption, both of which that are liable to challenge democracy in its present forms.  Efforts to address such problems raise additional questions. Thus public funding arrangements adopted by almost all the stable democracies and growing number of new and emerging democracies met with good deal of criticism. Beyond questions of principle, such as whether government intervention in campaign finance violates the principle of free speech, it was argued that public funding cannot meet its declared goals, and that it leads instead to unintended shifts in the nature and conduct of electoral competition. To take an example relating to corruption, the question is how does outsourcing of governmental functions impact our understandings of the limits of office and the aim to make public service a source of economic advantage for those engaged in it.
The aim of the RC 20 meeting is to provide a forum for the consideration of what could be learned from developments in specific settings, as well as theoretical questions pertaining to the nature of political finance and political corruption, the linkage between them, and the method of studying them. The panels may be divided into three broad categories. The first focus on corruption and political finance in specific regions: developed democracies, the post-communist world, and emerging democracies such as those in the Middle East. The aim is to examine the impact of shifting realities on political finance and corruption, and to inquire how an analysis of what took place in each may serve as seedbed of hypotheses for the examination of other settings. Thus, for instance, to what degree is the period of transition referred to above impact political accountability in countries such as Austria or Canada? What part did the issue of corruption play in the elections held recently in the Ukraine, or the impact of social change on political ethics in the countries of the Middle East? The second category of panels examines experience gained by reform efforts. We expect, for instance, papers on what can be learned from the effects of campaign finance regulation on the development of Cartel parties, or the removal of political financial regulations by the American Supreme Court and its impact on the elections of 2012 and the upcoming contest of 2014. The third category of panel consists of research into the concepts and methods utilized in the field. Such studies address the fact that we do not have an accepted understanding of what precisely is meant by corruption, attempt to better identify the types of corruption we may encounter, and inquire how to study the phenomenon in developing and developed countries. In an effort to enrich our thinking we have added papers that seek to examine explanations offered by past generations of theorists to the role of money in politics, the sources of corruption, and the effects of regulation of political finance.

Sessions

Les travaux de la Section Thématique se dérouleront sur les sessions suivantes :
Session 1 : lundi 22 juin 9h00 – 12h00
Session 2 : lundi 22 juin 14h45 – 17h45
Session 3 : mardi 23 juin 9h00 – 12h00
Session 4 : mercredi 24 juin 14h00 – 17h00

Lieu : informations bientôt disponibles

Programme

1. Marcus André Melo (Universidade Federal de Pernambuco), Lúcio Rennó (Universidade de Brasília - UnB) and Ivan Jucá (University of Minnesota - PhD candidate)
Campaign finance, corruption and reelection in the Brazilian Chamber of Deputies 1998-2010

2. Robert Boatright (Clark University), Molly B. Flynn (Assumption College)
Corruption and its Objects: On Resolving the McConnell Paradox

3. Rebecca Fisk (Bard College, Simon’s Rock)
The Semiotics of Corruption         

4. Paulina Goldman (Rider University)
Corruption, the State, and Nonprofits: Where Does State's Authority Begin and End?

5. Rodney Smith (University of Sydney)
Corruption Risks and Party Structures in Advanced Democracies: The Australian Case

6. Fernado Jimenez (Universidad de Murcia) and Manuel Villoria (Universidad Rey Juan Carlos I)
Lifting the Lid on Lobbying in Spain
 
7. Vicente Reyes (University of New England)
When corruption and scandals 'improve' democracy: The Singapore paradox
 
8. Luc Juillet (Université d’Ottawa) and Eric Phélippeau (University Paris Ouest, ISP)
Sociogenesis and political uses of ethics policies: comparing France and Canada
 
9. Michael Brogan (Rider University) and Jonathan Mendilow (Rider University)
What Do We Mean by “corruption”? a Bottom Up Approach
 
10. Barbara Lehmbruch (Uppsala Centre for Russian and Eurasian Studies)
Plausible Deniability: Quasi-Autonomous Agencies and Post-Soviet Governments
 
11. Heung Soo Sim (Rider University), Maury Randall (Rider University), and David Suk (Rider University)
Corruption and Economic Growth: An International Study
 
12. Michal Klima (Metropolitan University Prague)
Evaluating the Concept of Anti-System Parties vis-à-vis Systemic Clientelism and Corruption
 
13. Romain Rambaud (University Pierre-Mendès-France, Grenoble)
Money in open primary elections and the French electoral law
 
14. Anne Deysine (University Paris Ouest)
Campaign finance in the US: a case study of deregulation by litigation
 
15. Michael Shafir (Babes-Bolyai University)
Corruption at the Top in Post-Communist Countries
 
16. Jens Ivo Engels (University of Darmstadt)
Political Corruption as a Phenomenon of Modernity (panel "Corruption as a historical problem: comparative perspectives")
 
17. Silvia Marton (University of Bucarest)
Electoral ‘corruption’ and ‘modernization’ of politics in Romania: democracy’s reluctant beginnings (1881-1914) (panel "Corruption as a historical problem: comparative perspectives")
 
17 bis. Frédéric Monier (University of Avignon)
The “shames of the cities”, in Europe: Changing perceptions of urban corruption (1880’s-1940’s) (panel "Corruption as a historical problem: comparative perspectives")
 
18. Ronald Kroeze (University of Amsterdam)
The rediscovery of corruption in Western Europe in the 1970s and 1980s (panel "Corruption as a historical problem: comparative perspectives")
 
19. Lou Brenez (Université Libre de Bruxelles)
Transparency as a political issue in contemporary Russia
 
20. Ezequiel Martins Paz (Universidade Federal do Paraná), and Paulo Roberto Neves Costa (Universidade Federal do Paraná)
Corruption in Brazil: How do CEOs and Entrepreneurs perceive it?
 
21. Daniela R. Piccio (Università Degli Studi di Torino), and Ingrid van Biezen (Leiden University)
Political finance legislation and political competition: Leveling the playing field?
 
22. Barbara Franz (Rider University)
Corruption Biographies - or how can corruption grow best?
 
23. Francisco Roa Bastos (University Paris 1)
The “Europarties” and Their Public Funding: Sociogenesis of a Chaotic Decision
 
24. Michael Pinto Duchinski
Why myths about political finance are created and defended?
 
25. Graham Orr (University of Wales, Trinity Saint David)
Full Public Funding of Election Campaigning: Cleaning Up Politics or Parties Cleaning Up?
 
26. Celine Cael (Science Po Lille)
Political finance and political corruption. 2013 legislatives measures
 
27. Maxime Pelletier (University of Montréal)
Enforcing Political Finance Regulation: Lessons from Québec
 
28. Olga Guzhva (V. Karazin Kharkiv National University)
Accountability and anti-corruption civic engagement
 
29. Romain Ferrali (Princeton University)
The organizational determinants of bureaucratic corruption: the US federal civil service, 1988-2011
 
30. Ilan Peleg (Lafayette College)
Sustained Corruption in the Greater Middle East : Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and Syria
 
31. Shunzhu Wang (Rider University)
Anti-corruption, Power Struggle and Rule of Law in China --Random Thoughts on Xi Jinping’s “Tiger-killing” Anti-corruption Campaign
 
32. Gabriela Borz (University of Strathclyde) and Natalia Matukhno (University of Strathclyde)
Policy Responses to Corruption within the EU Framework: the Case of Conditionality and Post conditionality
 
33. Frank Rusciano (Rider University)
The Dynamics of Changes in Corruption Measures over Time
 
34. Manuela S. Blumenberg (Leibniz Institut für Sozialwissenschaften)
A comparative analysis of the spending structure of political parties
 
35. Roberta Fiske-Rusciano (Rider University) and Ruth Fee (University of Ulster)
Corruption in Conflict and Post-Conflict Societies: Case Studies and Informant-based Research

36. Adrien Roux (Laboratoire de Droit Privé et de Sciences Criminelles (EA 4690) / Université Aix-Marseille)
The source of corruption: examining the link between centrality of money in contemporary european societies and new developments of the political corruption issue"

Résumés des contributions

1. Marcus André Melo (Universidade Federal de Pernambuco), Lúcio Rennó (Universidade de Brasília - UnB) and Ivan Jucá (University of Minnesota - PhD candidate), Campaign finance, corruption and reelection in the Brazilian Chamber of Deputies 1998-2010
The paper explores the paradox of corruption: While corruption is widely unpopular, corrupt politicians continue to win reelection.  We tackle this paradox by testing the trade-off and information availability hypotheses in Brazil. We also provide case studies to illuminate the causal mechanisms at play. We test the effect of information with an original dataset about corruption charges and campaign finance for all lower house members of Congress in Brazil from 1998 to 2010. We also investigate the moderating effect of campaign spending and pork barrel policies that we expect will mitigate the negative effect of corruption scandals. While controlling for a host of potential confounders and bias your findings offer strong support for the impact of information on reelection. However, we argue that this effect is more likely to take place only following an information shock that alters the prevailing equilibrium of tolerance to corruption (Golden, Chang and Hill 2011). Moreover, campaign spending does seem to moderate the negative effect of corruption scandals while our pork barrel indicator does not. These last findings offer important insights for the puzzling paradox of corruption while also contributing to the long standing controversy about the effects of pork barrel policies for incumbent legislators in Brazil.
 
2. Robert Boatright (Clark University), Molly B. Flynn (Assumption College), Corruption and its Objects: On Resolving the McConnell Paradox
During the debate over what was then known as the McCain-Feingold campaign finance reform bill, Senator Mitch McConnell took issue with the claim that the bill would combat corruption. “How can there be corruption if no one is corrupt”? McConnell asked, “That's like saying the gang is corrupt but none of the gangsters are.”  While this rhetorical trope is not original to Senator McConnell, it does pose a dilemma for those who would define corruption. One response would be to dispute the implicit definition of corruption. Students of political theory and empirical political science have proposed numerous definitions of corruption, yet there is little consensus on definitions. This poses a problem for measurement, but it also poses a problem for political discourse. It is easy for those who have competing objectives or ideologies to talk past each other or to compete over whose definition is “correct.” In our opinion, however, the problem is not one of definition; classical and modern philosophers have shown more agreement than disagreement in their conceptualization of the term, and debates over definition often descend into semantics. Rather, the problem is that the object of corruption is often unspecified in contemporary political discussions. Who, or what, can be corrupted, and what are the implications of specifying (or failing to specify) the object to which one is referring? In this paper we explore common themes in philosophers’ definitions of corruption. We note the different objects of corruption in these treatments, including individuals, institutions, states, peoples, and the various tools used by these various. We note potential errors when one misinterprets the object proposed or changes the standards used when moving from one object to another. We then explore the ramifications of referring to different objects of corruption in debates concerning contemporary political process issues.

3. Rebecca Fisk (Bard College, Simon’s Rock), The Semiotics of Corruption         
This paper will offer a semiotic analysis of corruption as it is commonly understood in the West. It will consider the ways in which language signifies corruption and how those signs and codes might relate to social structure. Finally, if, as some theorists suggest, corruption is the cultural sign for abjection, how are corruption and abjection related? How might corruption arise out of the space of abjection? What ideological purpose might such an appearance serve?
 
4. Paulina Goldman (Rider University), Corruption, the State, and Nonprofits: Where Does State's Authority Begin and End?
There has been an increased reliance by government on third party contractors from the nonprofit field who provide essential public services. However, little research has been done on government efforts involving the prevention of corruption with subcontracting agencies in the nonprofit field. This paper examines: 1) the varying approaches used by the federal government, states, and local governments to mitigate and manage corruption with nonprofits; and 2) identifies areas where more research is needed.
 
5. Rodney Smith (University of Sydney), Corruption Risks and Party Structures in Advanced Democracies: The Australian Case
The highly disciplined nature of Australia's major political parties has often been seen as one factor that inhibits political corruption. The logic has been that there is little point attempting to corrupt an individual parliamentarian or government minister, since their decisions and influence will be constrained by the collective discipline of parties involving a large number of (equally constrained) actors.  Recent revelations from public investigations conducted by the New South Wales Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC) have cast serious doubt on that assumption.  The paper will use the evidence provided to the ICAC by parliamentarians, government ministers, ministerial advisers, civil servants and businesspeople to explore how and why political corruption of various kinds has emerged within disciplined political parties in New South Wales. It will argue that there is nothing exceptional about the New South Wales case, in the sense that similar corruption risks identified for the major parties in New South Wales are likely to be present in political parties operating in other mature democracies.
 
6. Fernado Jimenez (Universidad de Murcia) and Manuel Villoria (Universidad Rey Juan Carlos I), Lifting the Lid on Lobbying in Spain
According to the 2013 Eurobarometer, 77% of Spaniards believe that corruption is a part of the country’s business culture (the European average is 67%) and 67% believe that the only way to succeed in business is through political connections (the European average is 59%). Moreover, according to the Flash Eurobarometer which targeted European companies in 2014, ninety-one per cent of our companies see excessive links between money and politics (EU average is 80%) and 93% think that corruption and favouritism hurt business (EU average is 73%). All of this reflects a common awareness that some large corporations and interest groups unjustly influence political decision-making (although not necessarily by ilegal means). Examples include party funding or using the “revolving doors” and even threatening divestment to stop necessary regulatory changes. But there are also examples of illegal financing of political parties; of regulatory and technical capture; of rules and regulations that voluntarily create gaps or loopholes to avoid the true controls (diluting regulation); of rules and regulations that weaken the restrictions to the point of converting certain laws into a true example of window dressing (debilitating restrictions); of weakening of the controls and application of law during the regulatory phase (weakened enforcement) and during the application of sanctions (weakened penalties). All this produces a diffuse perception of corruption, the feeling that the playing field is not even and that the decision-making process is biased in several policy areas, in favour of the most economically powerful. In our paper we will present a summary of several case studies that show how this is happening. We will try to answer the research question of why this is the situation using an institutionalist approach which shows that the regulatory shortcomings of the government side are probably more important than the lack of lobbying regulation.
 
7. Vicente Reyes (University of New England), When corruption and scandals 'improve' democracy: The Singapore paradox
General Elections 2011, which saw the unprecedented loss of a People’s Action Party (PAP) bailiwick to the opposition and the narrow victory of the PAP in installing the nation’s second President, highlights the undeniable increase in political competition in the Republic. It may now seem evident that the days when the PAP dominated all forms of political contests will no longer be sustainable. In the context of the Singaporean government priding itself in being an efficient and incorruptible government, the increase of damaging political scandals weakens the PAP’s competitive advantage against opposition parties. As Castells implies, political scandals “take center stage in political competition”, as such political contests become far removed from issues of policy and performance but instead degenerate into “tragi- comedy”. With the increasing number of PAP-associated scandals, the marginalized and fragmented opposition groups in Singapore do not need to exert efforts in trying to match the quality, caliber and resources of the PAP during electoral contests — they only need to wait for the next political scandal to erupt. This paper proposes that increasing incidences of corruption cases and high-profile scandals has paradoxically promoted greater competition and democratic space in Singapore, known as a soft authoritarian regime priding itself in being an incorruptible city-state.
 
8. Luc Juillet (Université d’Ottawa) and Eric Phélippeau (University Paris Ouest, ISP), Sociogenesis and political uses of ethics policies: comparing France and Canada
The paper examines the trajectories of institutional reforms aimed at regulating political ethics in France and Canada. It will show how patterns of institutional development (e.g. institutional layering and sequencing) differed in both countries with regards to the choice of regulatory instruments (mandatory disclosure of assets, codes of conduct, external enforcement) and with respect to the actors being regulated (bureaucrats, ministers, legislators). The paper explores how similar processes of institutional development have led to different patterns of institutional change as a result of particular historical contingencies, such as notable scandals, being used by political actors for partisan advantage.
 
9. Michael Brogan (Rider University) and Jonathan Mendilow (Rider University), What Do We Mean by “corruption”? a Bottom Up Approach
This paper focuses on the meaning of the term corruption in the vernacular of specific places and times. The point of departure is a two level meaning of the term. The disciplinary communication among students of corruption necessitates   generally accepted notions that carry relevancy beyond a specific context of what constitutes the proper exercise of authority, and how we recognize improprieties that trigger the use of the term “corruption”. But such “top bottom” concepts do not capture the popular meaning of corruption in specific contexts examined by students of the phenomenon: what  do the subjects of  such studies  actually understand  by “corruption” and what is the two way traffic between it and the legitimacy of authority. These “bottom top” conceptions are the subject of our effort to generalize, and yet they themselves lack relevancy beyond a specific contexts and are usually not fully explicit.  To capture them we propose an “ordinary language” approach, that is, an examination of what people associate with concrete instances of corruption that hint at the meanings, associations and connotations of people who discuss corruption.  One way of doing so are in-depth interviews seeking to reveal the “linear” chain of thought about the subject as connected to the specific context. The penetration of the Internet allows however an alternative. Searches in the Internet lead to “horizontal thinking”, that is, the straying to paths and associations offered by the text or the search for such while reading the text.  An ability to trace these may lead us to a “map” of what the users were thinking of and, moreover,  may serve as a seedbed of hypotheses to be tested by wider comparative studies.  
 
10. Barbara Lehmbruch (International Institute of Social Studies, Erasmus University Rotterdam), Plausible Deniability: Quasi-Autonomous Agencies and Post-Soviet Governments
Public law agencies are customarily analyzed as an aspect of top-down reform. Similar to other tools from the managerialist toolbox they were to push traditional public sector actors bureaucracies (in this narrative seen as passive and often unwilling recipients of innovation foisted on them from above) into increased efficiency and greater customer orientation.
This paper argues that post-Soviet agencification, while outwardly similar, followed a very different logic. In parallel with process of nomenklatura privatization, mid-level bureaucracies began striking out into a hybrid zone between public and commercial activities and forms of organizations. Bureaucratic corruption of this process was denounced early on, yet it was only one side of the story. Sheer organizational survival and missing state capacities provided equally compelling motivations. Given the low administrative capacity as well as massive fiscal problems prevalent throughout much of the region, public organizations often had little choice but to diversify their funding by engaging in supplemental commercial activities.
Agencification thus has been decidedly ambiguous. While threatening to corrupt and subvert the only-just-emerging market economy, it also served the pragmatic interests of post-Soviet states. Perhaps for this very reason, hybrids were and are not a purely bottom-up phenomenon. Although often based on the political entrepreneurship of state officials, their formation would not have been possible without at least tacit government support. Post-soviet rulers, hard-pressed for cash and anxious to comply with international demands for (even if nominal) reductions in public sector employment ratios, recognized the potentials inherent in such organizational forms. While maintaining plausible deniability and selectively cracking down on the worst abuses, they often encouraged organizational spin-offs, various forms of self-financing and incentivization of former or current budgetary organizations, and helped to provide suitable legal frameworks.
 
11. Heung Soo Sim (Rider University), Maury Randall (Rider University), and David Suk (Rider University), Corruption and Economic Growth: An International Study
The impact of corruption on economic performance may be examined in the context of two related theoretical perspectives. Since corruption might take a number of different forms, the model might vary depending on the case. One possible approach considers corruption as a form of property crime, and a second approach would be based on regulation theory and in particular the impact of bad or unnecessary regulations. Under both approaches there is an emphasis on the increases in the costs of doing business, due to corruption, at the firm level. Such costs would tend to reduce the number of companies that are willing and capable of paying those costs. With less competition, there would be higher prices, and a reduction in the number providers of goods and services in those locations. In short it would tend to cause reduced levels of productivity and production. The financial drain of crime or regulation (in the case of excessive regulation, wasted time and money devoted to compliance) would divert the allocation of resources away from more productive pursuits.  It would discourage investment in those locations, and a smaller quantity of goods and services would be produced that would actually benefit the people in the nation. In addition to Freedom from Corruption, we use other variables such as Property Rights, Fiscal Freedom, Government Spending, Business Freedom, Labor Freedom, Monetary Freedom, Trade Freedom, Investment Freedom and Financial Freedom. We employ these variables to explore how economic growth can be related to such data.
 
12. Michal Klima (Metropolitan University Prague), Evaluating the Concept of Anti-System Parties vis-à-vis Systemic Clientelism and Corruption
The early 21st-century world is vastly different from the past. It faces such new threats such as terrorism, energy dependence, environmental risks, and cyber-attacks. Individual states are impacted by these global threats, but also by state-specific threats. The Czech Security Information Centre (BIS) documents national threats in its annual reports and in 2011 it for the first time ranked organized crime as a bigger national security threat than terrorism or extremism. The dominant ideological threats of the past are now joined by non-ideological threats sparked by the dynamics of post-industrial, post-communist, and post-transition society and regional circumstances. Because social processes are necessarily flexible and fluid they spawn new constellations of threats, which may be short-lived and are harder to identify and analyze.
A key political problem in the post-communist environment is the colonization of political parties by non-transparent business interests. The extent to which parties are thus clientelized in the service of non-transparent business they forfeit their role of representing the interests of society. These formations are parasitic, exercising their influence through established parties, and expanding it to the point where it paralyses the institutional pillars of democracy and the rule of law. The clientelization of parties itself paves the way for systemic corruption, decreased accountability, and irrational governance. Therefore this paper seeks to address these questions: Is the traditional left-right extremism definition of political anti-systemness still viable in the post-industrial and post-ideological era? Should this concept be widened to embrace non-ideological and non-violent structures and developments? In societies where economic security is undermined by state debt and where political clientelism and corruption are themselves national security threats, what constitutes anti-systemness in a political system?
 
13. Romain Rambaud (University Pierre-Mendès-France, Grenoble), Money in open primary elections and the French electoral law
The organisation of open primary elections by the political parties is a recent phenomenon in France. This system was adopted by the Parti Socialiste (PS) for the first time for the presidential election in 2012 with success. It was used as well for some local elections by both the PS and the Union pour un Mouvement Populaire (UMP) in 2014. It is likely be chosen by these two parties for the presidential election in 2017. This paper deals with new legal problems as there is an important issue today as regards the articulation between these new political tools, the political finance and the electoral law. The French law is very strict as regards to political campaign expenses. Besides, the problem to know if (and how) the costs of primary elections have to be included, or not, into the campaign accounts is not so clear. The interpretation of the judges and of the administrative authorities are different. A special difficulty is pending at the moment concerning the city of Marseille, because some campaign accounts could be rejected by the administrative authority (the CNCCFP). This paper deals with two crucial points. The first one is an explanation of the rules in political finance in France concerning open primary elections. The second one is a description of the potential effects of these rules on the political competition in France before the next presidential election. It is very likely there will be an important factor of limitation of open primary elections because of French law and this will influence the future political choices.
 
14. Anne Deysine (University Paris Ouest), Campaign finance in the US: a case study of deregulation by litigation
Campaign finance is the accepted term to refer to regulating the field of elections, which means taking into account cultural traits in the country and deciding what to finance and how. In the US, the answer is private money; Americans have always been in favour of a system financed by private contributions and are not keen on public financing, advocated at times et implemented in 1974 only for presidential elections and since then fallen into disuse.
Only a few laws have been adopted and they were the product of voter outrage at some type of scandal (Tea Pot Dome, Watergate), forcing incumbents to enact some kind of reform of the system. The first laws were circumvented or ignored (before 1971) and the more recent ones (FECA, BCRA and state laws) were immediately challenged for unconstitutionality and violation of the Fist Amendment. The laws were adopted to pursue certain aims and purposes of legislations and chose who to finance (candidates, political parties, committees). In the FECA of 1974, one aim was to “fight corruption and the appearance of corruption”. There was also the desire to restore some degree of equality between the participants, a purpose present in the Hearings but not recognized by the Court in its Buckley v. Valeo decision of 1976.
Recent Supreme Court decisions, relying on two specific interpretations, have continued the dismantlement of the legislative framework which started in 1976. The first one is the extensive interpretation given to the First amendment, indispensable for a free market place of ideas to exist. But should not there be some limits to freedom of expression when it is applied to legal entities such as corporations? The second is an interpretation of what corruption is. If the aim of campaign finance legislation is to fight corruption, what definition of corruption should the Court consider? Will it look at “legislative intent”, that is what Congress wanted as it appears in during the deliberation and in the committee hearings? This is important because in the United States, a common law country governed by the rule of precedent or stare decisis, it is the Supreme Court that as a last resort will interpret the law and decide what it means; and the lower courts will have to abide by the interpretation chosen. Looking at two recent decisions, we can see that the court has moved away from a fairly wide definition of corruption as given in the Buckley v. Valeo decision of 1976, which includes access and the appearance of corruption considered as dangerous if leading voters to cynicism. The interpretation given in Mc Cutcheon (2014) in particular is extremely narrow and limited to “quid pro quo”, an exchange of something in return for something else. In other words, the undeniable access a big donor will get to a candidate who has benefited from his generosity is no longer taken into account. Justice Kennedy seems to consider that some degree of disclosure and transparency is enough.
In some of those decisions and in the Citizens United of 2010, we can also see that corporations are granted the same individual rights listed in the Bill of Rights as private citizens. As a result, groups can spend millions in negative ads to influence elections, much more so than political parties and the voters in a given constituency. Even if we were to agree that this flood of private money does not constitute corruption, and that money does not buy elections, it is definitely a corruption of the political process and of democracy. This is exactly what Justice Breyer said in his dissenting opinion to Mc Cutcheon that he read from the Bench in an effort to promote what has been called “demosprudence”.
 
15. Michael Shafir (Babes-Bolyai University), Corruption at the Top in Post-Communist Countries
The paper examines three cases of Balkan countries (Croatia, Romania and Slovenia) where former premiers Ivo Sanders, Adrian Nastase and Janes Janza landed in jail on corruption charges after the end of their term, and the case of the Czech Republic, where Premier Petr Necas was forced to resign due to corruption charges of his close (and intimate) entourage. Although academic literature on post-communist East Central Europe became aware of the existence of corruption quite rapidly after system-change, it has not been capable of demonstrating that malfunctioning is either area-specific, culture-specific or due to transition travails. Rather, it seems that the existence of corruption at the very top is part and parcel of, and facilitated by, neo-liberalism, as well as ageless human greed or (in the Czech case) weakness. Viewed from this perspective, East European corruption, alas, is an indication of "normalcy."
 
16. Jens Ivo Engels (University of Darmstadt), Political Corruption as a Phenomenon of Modernity (panel "Corruption as a historical problem: comparative perspectives")
Usually, corruption and clientelism are conceived as pre-modern or as relics of archaic political practices. In my (historical) contribution I intend to show that:
1. the very concept of political corruption as we know it today is a child of the modern era, and,
2. that the political practices generally linked to corruption, such as patronage and favoritism, are not simply remnants of former times, but rather evolving, influenced by modernizing forces (like bureaucratization) since a 200 years ago.
These assumptions will be demonstrated at examples from (West-)European history since the late 18th centur Electoral ‘corruption’ and ‘modernization’ of politics in Romania: democracy’s reluctant beginnings (1881-1914)
 
17. Silvia Marton (University of Bucarest), Electoral ‘corruption’ and ‘modernization’ of politics in Romania: democracy’s reluctant beginnings (1881-1914) (panel "Corruption as a historical problem: comparative perspectives")
 Since the introduction of constitutional liberal monarchy in Romania (in 1866), all political actors accuse the electoral practices that pervert and corrupt, as they say it emphatically, the political representation of the nation. But the blatant contradiction of the regime holds that all make use of this type of practice to secure a majority in the parliament as soon as they are in a position to organize elections. From 1881 to 1914, no government designated by the king to organize elections lost them. It is this mechanism that explains the change in power of political parties. The paradox of the regime lies in the continuity across parties and electoral cycles of electoral deviance and the panoply of procedures for fraud and interference. The feeling of degradation of electoral practices and their denunciation accompany the introduction of modern electoral procedures.
By focusing on electoral ‘corruption’ in cities (notably Bucharest and Ploiesti) and rural areas, this paper will try to explain the discrepancy between the frequency of denunciations and lamentations on deviance and fraud, and the reduced level of their variations from 1881 to 1914. The paper will inquire the variations of local political patronage and impact on elections, the meaning of voting and of ‘corrupt’ practices, the relationship between voters and candidates, the typology of electoral frauds and ‘corruption’ and their impact on the national-local nexus. It will show that ‘modernization’ and professionalization of politics do not favor democratization. By the turn of the century, new political currents (namely, the socialist and agrarian-conservative currents) denounce electoral ‘corruption’ and the parliamentary ‘oligarchy’, and demand an ‘uncorrupted’ political representation of the people. The paper will thus examine the sources of the incipient anti-parliamentary movements as well.
The analysis builds on archival investigations of reports of prefects and mayors, on minutes of prosecutors and local investigations, on petitions of voters and citizens sent to the Interior Ministry, on Parliament archives and debates for the verification of MPs’ mandates, and on the press.
 
17 bis. Frédéric Monier (University of Avignon), The “shames of the cities”, in Europe: Changing perceptions of urban corruption (1880’s-1940’s) (panel "Corruption as a historical problem: comparative perspectives")
Recent historical research has paid little attention to corruption at local level, with a few exceptions. This is quite surprising, because public debates often focus on urban corruption: in some cases, such as Marseilles in France, Naples and Palermo in Italy, or even Montreal in Canada, the systemic corruption is allegedly due to local archaisms and to a specific culture. My contribution disregards these widespread perceptions and assumes that the depiction of these “corrupted cities” is a recent phenomenon, quite similar, in spite of all differences, with the campaigns denouncing the “shame of the cities” (L. Steffens) in the US during the 1900’s. As I shall try to demonstrate with a close look on Marseilles, it appeared between the 1880’s and the 1940’s as the result of three evolving factors: 1. The transformation of political patronage: this includes local structures of partisanship and financing of political activities. 2. The conflicting norms between national (or federal) governments and local governance. 3. The strategic use of modern media scandals and moralization campaigns by the actors.
 
18. Ronald Kroeze (University of Amsterdam), The rediscovery of corruption in Western Europe in the 1970s and 1980s (panel "Corruption as a historical problem: comparative perspectives")
In the last four decades corruption in Western Europe has received new attention, especially from social scientists and more recently also from historians. Of course, corruption as a real phenomenon and theoretical concept has been present in European society since Antiquity, but the rising amount of books and articles on corruption and the extensive academic, political and public debate on corruption cannot be denied. How should we understand this ‘rediscovery’ of corruption? I will argue that the rediscovery of corruption is related to at least three developments. First, the decline of trust in the ‘modern project’ and in modernization theory which turned corruption into a perceived fiercer problem of contemporary society. Second, the emergence of new corruption scandals which caused much political debate in the 1970s and 1980s, such as the Lockheed scandal (1977) in the Netherlands and the Flick Affair (1983-1986) in Germany. Third, the rise of a new anticorruption culture, starting with the implementation of the US Foreign Corrupt Practices Act in 1977, which slowly proved to be very influential on the European debate about corruption.
 
19. Lou Brenez (Université Libre de Bruxelles), Transparency as a political issue in contemporary Russia
The fight against corruption is common in the political discourse for decades in Russia. The “Glasnost” politics initiated by Gorbatchev made public the involvment of high civil servants of the regime and was supposed to prove Soviet citizens that the political system was able to clean itself from inside. On the contrary, this policy contributed to the collapse of the USSR (Barsukova, 2013: 49).
In 1997 the Russian government took a whole legislation program against corruption which was not really enforced. In 2001, a law “On Political Parties” was passed with the aim to render party funding transparent (Wilson, 2007). A new campaign against corruption arose in 2008 when Dmitri Medveded, elected president of the Russian Federation in March, decided to make a new bill. The federal law "On the fight against corruption" of December 25, 2008 was signed into force.
Between 2008 and 2013, different measures were then passed to increase transparency: according to such measures, in April 2012, the Russian president, his cabinet, the Prime Minister, the Deputy Prime Ministers, regional representatives and senators made their declarations of income public. Then a list of civil servants obliged to declare their incomes and expenditures was published. The last measure obliges officials of 29 state companies to declare their incomes and expenditures. These politics of transparency met strong resistances from some members of the political and business elites (Ria Novosti, April 19, 2013).
How did transparency become an issue in contemporary Russia? This is the research questions I will explore in this paper. To answer it I will examine how transparency is linked to the fight against corruption in the political discourse. In this respect I will first study the context of the policy initiated in 2008 by Medvedev thanks to various sources from scholars, experts and the press. Then I will study debates wich arosed in the Federal Duma during the legislation building process.
 
20. Ezequiel Martins Paz (Universidade Federal do Paraná), and Paulo Roberto Neves Costa (Universidade Federal do Paraná), Corruption in Brazil: How do CEOs and Entrepreneurs perceive it?
In these days, the Brazilian Federal Police is revealing a new corruption scandal that probably will be considered as one of the biggest in the Brazilian History. It involves the Petrobras, a Brazilian Oil company regarded, until a few years ago, as one of the biggest in the world but since 2010, the company has lost more than 40% of its market value. According to investigations concluded so far, three important Brazilian Parties (PT, PP, PMDB) appointed Managers and CEOs in key positions at the Petrobras to use the company as his own income source. That means, in each public bidding, these Managers and CEOs demanded from private contractors about 3% baksheesh for the above-mentioned parties. Compared to this scandal, the other one called “mensalão” (monthly cash payment to buy parliamentary votes toward the Government) practiced between 2005 and 2006 under the government of President Lula, can be regarded as trifle. In the actual scandal, the suspected amount of embezzled money is estimate in circa 8 billion Dollars. Last year we have made some interviews with Brazilian Entrepreneurs and CEOs about corruption perception. We have found that this group has an ambivalent opinion about corruption, that is, morally they condemn any corruption practice, but based on a business pragmatically rationality the majority of them tacitly admitted the possibility to apply corrupt actions, if necessary, to overcome the rigid Brazilian bureaucracy and maintain the competitiveness and wellbeing of theirs company. Why is it so? How did they developed this readiness to transgress the laws even against his innermost moral convictions? In this paper, we will present the answers to these questions acquired applying the Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA) method developed by Charles Ragin (1987) to analyze the data collected in our interviews last year. As a result, we expect to offer a more accurate evaluation of the ambivalent opinions expressed by the Entrepreneurs and CEOs about corruption.
 
21. Daniela R. Piccio (Università Degli Studi di Torino), and Ingrid van Biezen (Leiden University), Political finance legislation and political competition: Leveling the playing field?
To promote fair competition and provide the opportunity to different political actors to access the political arena on equal grounds is the fundamental justification for the introduction of political finance rules. Yet, according to one of the most influential critiques to public funding regimes, political finance legislation is one of the means by which the established political elites keep new or potential party actors out from power resources. In this light, rather than enhancing democratic processes, political finance legislation constitutes a tool for disadvantaging challengers, with obvious repercussions on patterns of democratic competition and political pluralism (Katz & Mair 1995; 2009). In a previous study we disproved the criticisms towards the possibly cartelizing rationale of public funding regimes. Focusing on the legal parameters of public funding in Europe, we observed that the criteria for the disbursement of state subsidies have become more inclusive over time, as a result of which the opportunities for smaller political actors to compete have been enhanced (Piccio & van Biezen, 2015). In this paper we take a step further. Drawing on up-to-date longitudinal data gathered on both Western and Eastern European countries we focus on two additional political finance areas with the potential to create an uneven playing field between parties: the regulation of campaign spending (presence of caps and height) and media broadcasting rules (free access to media, distribution criteria, and extra campaign advertisement). Our comparative focus on a multiple set of legal rules provides the opportunity to test for consistency in the legislators’ rationale, and verify whether political finance legislation serves its primary purpose of leveling the field of inter-party competition. Finally, we will discuss the relationship existing between political finance rules, political competition and corruption.
 
22. Barbara Franz (Rider University), Corruption Biographies - or how can corruption grow best?
In Austria there exists no real separation of powers between politicians — prosecutors — and the judges because all important institutions are dominated by the two large parties, the Social-democratic Party of Austria (SPÖ) and the Peoples Party of Austria (ÖVP). Effective anticorruption legislation is absent while interconnections between parties, clubs, companies that are close to the state, and wives and husbands of MPs are often opaque. There are no public end of year reports of the parties, a number of supervisory agencies that don’t fulfill their jobs; prosecutors who “forget” important documents; long-term cases where much is forgotten and courts that tend to judge corruption cases with compassion which leads to the convicts having to wear electronic bracelets rather than their imprisonment. The economic harm of public corruption was estimated to be 27 Billion Euro, that’s 3,400 Euro per Austrian citizen. This paper will focus on individual biographies of politicians and seeks to answer the question whether the individuals saw opportunities and used them to enhance their own personal economic standing or whether a structural shift augmented this corruption phenomenon.
 
23. Francisco Roa Bastos (University Paris 1), The “Europarties” and Their Public Funding: Sociogenesis of a Chaotic Decision
There is an ongoing debate among scholars about the exact nature and significance of the “political parties at the European level”, which have been legally and politically recognized by the Maastricht Treaty in 1992. These so-called “Europarties”, acting as “umbrella organizations” for the coordination of national political parties at the European level, have nevertheless been precisely regulated and funded since 2004, thanks to the European regulation n°2004/2003 which has set up an official status and an official funding for these organizations. As of today, 13 “political parties at the European level” are subsidized on that basis, and the global amount of these subventions accounts every year for over 27 millions Euros of the European Parliament budget.
This contribution aims at explaining how the decision to publicly fund these “Europarties” was made possible in 2004, after more than 25 years of controversy and different mobilizations of actors in favor (or against) the very idea of public funding for the “political parties at the European level”. Indeed, several attempts to legislate on this matter (carried by different configurations of actors from the European Parliament, the “Europarties” and the European Commission) have failed during the 1990s, being harshly and widely criticized as “self-interested” proposals made by political actors who would directly benefit from it. Besides, different corruption scandals at the national and European level  jeopardized for a long time the chances of these proposals to be politically endorsed. This contribution will show how (and why) the “chaotic path” of this decision to fund the “Europarties” was at the end cleared by a crucial report of the European Court of Auditors in 2000  (in the wake of the scandal involving the Santer Commission), which urged the political groups in the EP to stop all indirect and illegal funding they had been providing to the “Europarties” since 1979.
This contribution is based on an extensive socio-historical material (archives of the main “Europarties”, interviews with staff members of these organizations as well as with European officials from the European Commission, the European Parliament and the European Court of Auditors) and it is part of a broader empirical investigation I conducted for my PhD in political science on the institutionalization of these organizations.
 
24. Michael Pinto Duchinski, Why myths about political finance are created and defended?
Knowledge about political finance may be divided into two levels. One is the knowledge produced by students of the discipline. The other consists of ‘rumors’ that citizens receive, whether through the public media or by word of mouth. A good number of these are rumors which could be compared to conspiracy theories, in that they which acquire in the mind of citizens the status of fact and direct behavior. The present paper will ask why are such myths created, why are defended as facts, and the two way traffic between the two.   
 
25. Graham Orr (University of Wales, Trinity Saint David), Full Public Funding of Election Campaigning: Cleaning Up Politics or Parties Cleaning Up?
State aid to political parties evolved with various aims. The primary aim is to inject ‘clean money’ to minimise reliance on potentially corrupting private money. Other aims are to provide a level of political equality and resource-stability for otherwise unequal or financially strained parties. This paper reviews moves in several Australian jurisdictions to approximate full public funding of party campaign costs.  These include guaranteeing parties 75-80% of the expenditure cap, or paying up to $8 for each vote received. The paper will explain the rationales, pitfalls and comparative law context of fully funding party electioneering.
 
26. Celine Cael (Science Po Lille), Political finance and political corruption. 2013 legislatives measures
Last February, the European Commission has published a report stating that corruption costs 120   billion euros per year to the 28 member States of the European Union. Moreover, half of the people interviewed in Germany, Netherlands, Belgium, Estonia and France consider that corruption is a spread phenomenon. France is no exception. Since the 80’s, corruption affairs have flourished and come from the both main French parties. They all raise a problem of political finance, financial transparency and democracy efficiency. This paper is focused on the Frency system and the new legislative measures concerning financial transparency taken in 2013 by the new Hollande administration, and the conclusions to which they lead.
 
27. Maxime Pelletier (University of Montréal), Enforcing Political Finance Regulation: Lessons from Québec
Students of the regulation of political finance have often focused their attention on the content of formal regulations as well as on the characteristics of the organizations responsible for their implementation. In this paper, recent events in the province of Québec, Canada, are used to illustrate how adopting the formal institutions which academic literature considers “best practices” in terms of political finance regulation does not guarantee that political finance regulation will be properly enforced.
Québec’s National Assembly adopted strict political finance regulation, including a ban on corporate donations in 1978, and delegated the responsibility of enforcement to an independent public organization, and was thus held as a model to be followed by other legislatures. Yet, since 2009, a number of corruption scandals revealed that corporations were systematically using fronts to contribute millions of dollars to municipal and provincial parties despite the formal ban against such contributions, and without threat of prosecution.
Three conclusions can be drawn from the study of this case. First, it serves as a reminder that the study of corruption is plagued by the dangers of wrongly identifying an administration as relatively corruption-free, which should prompt researchers to be extremely careful when using comparative methods to study this topic. Second, it shows that social context plays a role that is at least as important as formal institutional design in determining the success or failure of political finance regulation. Third, it points to the limits of the legal approach to regulating political finance due to the inherent difficulties associated with tracking the sources of incomes and expenses of thousands of candidates simultaneously. This suggests that alternative means of controlling political finance based on citizen participation and transparency could prove to be more effective than the current approaches.
 
28. Olga Guzhva (V. Karazin Kharkiv National University), Accountability and anti-corruption civic engagement
The paper assess the role of civic engagement in making public officials accountable. The paper has the following objectives:
• Locate and analyze the position and role of civic engagement in the discourse on public accountability. Case analysis, comparative study.
• Provide cross-cultural evidence of civic engagement and its role in the public accountability regime.
• Evaluate the claims of the advocates of the civic engagement discourse in view of cross-cultural evidence and socio-economic and political dynamics.
The findings indicate that irrespective of the potential contribution of civic engagement to the enforcement of public accountability and piecemeal efforts across nations, it still largely remains an untapped potential. The effects of civic engagement as means of public accountability in the developing world are still to be seen.
 
29. Romain Ferrali (Princeton University), The organizational determinants of bureaucratic corruption: the US federal civil service, 1988-2011
How does the organizational structure of a bureaucracy impact the extent of corruption? Using American federal personnel records on approximately 900,000 employees annually for 24 years, we reconstitute the structure of each local branch of the US federal administration. We use objective corruption measures, including corruption risk in public procurement contracts, and data on the prosecution of federal corruption cases by US federal attorneys. We investigate four hypotheses related to network analysis: (1) are branches that are characterized by denser social networks less prone to corruption? (2) Are branches that are characterized by more strong ties more prone to corruption? (3) Are branches that are characterized by flatter hierarchies les prone to corruption? (4) Do increases in the probability of detection result into larger corruption rings?
 
30. Ilan Peleg (Lafayette College), Sustained Corruption in the Greater Middle East : Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and Syria
This paper will examine the hypothesis that corruption in the Middle East is “sustained” rather than transitory: it cannot be erased or even substantially reduced through demonstrations or even the replacement of the head of state and it esquires a much deeper socio-political and attitudinal transformation. Four cases will be examined, all of them within the historical context of the Arab Spring - Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and Syria. The paper will demonstrate the variety of factors responsible for the sustainability of corruption and will develop a framework for analyzing possible changes such as democratization, the infusion of new values, constitutional and legal changes, and so forth.
 
31. Shunzhu Wang (Rider University), Anti-corruption, Power Struggle and Rule of Law in China --Random Thoughts on Xi Jinping’s “Tiger-killing” Anti-corruption Campaign
Xi Jinping has launched an anti-corruption campaign that has changed both the understanding of the use of anti-corruption as a tool in the inter-conflicts among elites and the regime legitimacy in the wider public. Chinese people are not unfamiliar with anti-corruption campaigns; they have learned, however, to regard such kind of campaigns as a means of power struggle among the top leaders in the central government. They have come to see, for example, that the “Three-anti and Five-anti Campaigns”（三反五反运动） launched by Mao during the early 1950s are more political and ideological than economic, that these campaigns are but a tool for Mao to get rid of his political opponents, to consolidate his power base and to confirm the legitimacy of his authority. Why then is Xi’s current anti-corruption campaign viewed differently and enjoys the genuine grass root support? Why Chinese people who have learned to care less about such campaigns suddenly become enthusiastic and believe that Xi “Dada” (local dialect which can mean ‘dad’, ‘big uncle’, or ‘grandpa’, an endearing term commonly used by Chinese netizens to refer to Xi) is for real this time?
In this paper, I will attempt to answer these questions and shed some light on the unprecedented impacts of Xi’s current campaign on the understanding of anti-corruption along three lines. First, I will explore the thorny issue of defining “corruption” in the Chinese context. Taking Mendilow and Peleg’s discussion on this issue as a point of departure, I will examine the profound Chinese ambivalence about corruption, which is a result of their understanding of “guanxi” (connection), a notion inseparable from that of “yiqi” (loyalty and righteousness). “Yiqi” often involves heroic Robinhood action of taking justice in one’s own hand and is considered a discourse of marginalized group, one ironically aligns well with communist discourse of revolution. Second, I will discuss how Xi’s campaign, while certainly a means of power struggle, is a genuine all-out war against corruption, which does not only swap the “flyers,” but also kills the “tigers.” The cases of “Bi Xilai,” “Zhou Yongkang,” and “Xu Caihou” in particular illustrate this point well. Third, I will discuss the relationship between corruption and the (lack of) rule of law in China. The above mentioned cases, on one hand, seems to show that the ruling party is not above the law and no person can be beyond its reach; on the other hand, the fact that Xi relies on “campaigns” to curb corruption speaks to the lack of institutional mechanisms of checks and balances of power. The recent (October) Party Plenum that focused on the theme of “rule of law” gives hope that China might soon be ruled by the universal principles of governance; whether or not, or when, that hope can be realized remains to be seen.
 
32. Gabriela Borz (University of Strathclyde) and Natalia Matukhno (University of Strathclyde), Policy Responses to Corruption within the EU Framework: the Case of Conditionality and Post conditionality
The paper analyses the efficiency of policy responses against corruption in the context of EU enlargement. The aim is to disentangle the efficiency of national and EU actions against corruption. It applies a stimulus response model which considers internal (national institutions, NGOs) and external actors (EU and other international organizations) and their instrumental foundations against corruption.  The analysis pays particular attention to the 2004, 2007 and 2013 EU entrants and relies on an original data set gathered by the authors in order to evaluate various anti-corruption measures from the legislation to the implementation stages. The analysis makes use of the innovative synthetic controls comparative method which allows us to compare the efficiency of EU conditionality and post conditionality in combating corruption across countries with different degrees of combative measures such as the adoption of positive and negative incentives or increased awareness through information effects.  
 
33. Frank Rusciano (Rider University), The Dynamics of Changes in Corruption Measures over Time
Previous papers have analyzed the relationships between standardized measures of corruption and mean perceptions of corruption in various nations (Rusciano, 2012, 2013, 2014).  It was discovered that relationships exist between two indices of global corruption that Transparency International creates annually: the Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI) and the Global Corruption Barometer (GCB).  The former bases its ratings of corruption in various nations upon surveys primarily of elites, and includes a score and an international ranking.  The latter is an international survey of citizens’ perceptions of corruption in their own countries.  This paper explores the relationships between these two indices over time, asking the following questions: (1) are there factors that explain the changes in a nation’s ranking on the CPI over time? (2) are there factors that explain the changes in mean citizen perceptions in the GCB over time? (3) are there relationships between the changes in the CPI and the GCV over time? (4) if a relationship does exist between changes in the two measures over time, are their factors which explain why the two indices covary?  This paper will address these questions methodologically, and then attempt to use Global Opinion Theory to explain any covariance that exists in the investigations.
 
34. Manuela S. Blumenberg (Leibniz Institut für Sozialwissenschaften), A comparative analysis of the spending structure of political parties
Political parties need money in order to fulfill their tasks. This money is used for staff, working costs, campaigning, and so on. But the literature suggests that parties spend their income in differentiating ways. This was – for example – shown by Landfried (1990) on the level of countries. She concluded that German parties, in contrast to the Canadian parties spend one third of their money for staff. There are indeed differences on the level of countries, but the question arises whether there are there also differences on party level as well. This paper pursues this question. To do so in a first step the spending structures of different parties of different countries will be reported. The following analysis will afterwards reveal differences and similarities and try to explain those by various general conditions in the countries, ideology families of parties and electoral success. The analyses will use data on party spending of a period of 30 years and four countries.
 
35. Roberta Fiske-Rusciano (Rider University) and Ruth Fee (University of Ulster), Corruption in Conflict and Post-Conflict Societies: Case Studies and Informant-based Research
This paper is an anthropological examination of the lived experience of corruption within conflict and post-conflict societies. It focuses upon informants’ responses to an extended interview designed especially for this purpose. Recognizing that corruption as conceptualized by anthropologists does not always rest upon what is outside written law, we shall turn to individual and community experiences of betrayal by the surrounding society, both local and federal, and include notions of global corruption when appropriate. Interest in studies on corruption sometimes comes from a desire to curb it. However, in this research it is being used as a way to understand peoples’ reactions to rapid social change, both swift and long-lasting, with a special focus on dealing with harm and conflict that arise from corrupt patterns of behavior within and outside of political structures, and the relationships between the two.

36. Adrien Roux (Laboratoire de Droit Privé et de Sciences Criminelles (EA 4690) / Université Aix-Marseille), The source of corruption: examining the link between centrality of money in contemporary western societies and new developments of the political corruption issue

Ancients thought strikingly advocates for the need of a solid boundary between the public and private spheres. Ancient Greece have invented thereby burgeoning democracy. Aristotle himself identified the economy as a strictly private activity. The Moderns have entirely reversed this perspective (Arendt). They introduced the economic rationale into the heart of public governance and social behaviors. At the individual level, modernity seems to be related to an unprecedented attraction for money, gradually legitimizing individual enrichment.
The consequences of this new paradigm on crime drew the attention of criminologists, above all Robert Merton, through the Durkheimian concept of anomie. Nowadays, unethical behaviors related to money are documented in a growing number of empirical studies. In this case, the intuitions of theory merge with the results of contemporary approaches.
In particular, the current spread of political scandals, within Europe and beyond, leads us to wonder if the modern centrality of money could not be considered as the most prominent source of contemporary bribery. Corruption could be indeed defined as the abuse of an entrusted power for private gain. From this perspective, the new social representations of money could be interpreted as an incentive for corruption, by weakening the public-private distinction.  A corresponding defiance phenomenon is becoming the central figure of current exercise of power. Hence, evidence from literature leads us to uphold the concept of anomie in a corruption analysis framework. Democratic individualism (Tocqueville) and the spirit of Capitalism (Weber/Simmel) actually seem to combine their effects to turn money, from a means, into the ultimate end. The consecutive rise of corruption, at least in the eyes of citizens, highlights a pervasive doubt over public officials’ ethical behaviors. The reason why one should respect his legal duties in the first place if the top social value becomes individual wealth, whatever its origin, remains to be raised.

Participants

Blumenberg Manuela S. Manuela.bloomberg@gensis.org
Boatright Robert rboatright@clarku.edu
Borz Gabriela gabriela.borz@strath.ac.uk
Brenez Lou lbrenez@ulb.ac.be
Brogan Michael mbrogan@rider.edu
Cael Celine celine.cael@live.fr
Deysine Anne anne.deysine@gmail.com
Engels Jens Ivo engels@pg.tu-darmstadt.de
Fee Ruth r.fee@ulster.ac.uk
Ferrali Romain rferrali@gmail.com
Fisk Rebecca rfiske@simons-rock.edu
Fiske-Rusciano Roberta ruscianor@rider.edu
Flynn Molly B. mflynn@assumption.edu
Franz Barbara bfranz@rider.edu
Goldman Paulina pgoldman@rider.edu
Guzhva Olga guzhava.olga@gmail.com
Jimenez Fernado fjimesan@um.es
Jucá Ivan cmelo@gmail.com
Juillet Luc luc.juillet@uottawa.ca 
Klima Michal klima@mup.cz
Kroeze Ronald d.b.r.kroeze@vu.nl
Lehmbruch Barbara lehmbruch@ucrs.uu.se
Martins Paz Ezequiel ezequielmpaz@gmail.com
Marton Silvia silvia.marton@fspub.unibuc.ro
Matukhno Natalia natalia.matukhno@strath.ac.uk
Melo Marcus André
Mendilow Jonathan jmendilow@rider.edu
Monier Frédéric Frederic.monier@univ-avignon.fr
Neves Costa Paulo Roberto
Orr Graham g.orr@law.uq.edu.au
Peleg Ilan pelegi@lafayette.edu
Pelletier Maxime maxime.pelletier.2@umontreal.ca
Phélippeau Eric e-phelippeau@wanadoo.fr
Piccio Daniela R.
Pinto Duchinski Michael pintoduschinsky@btopenworld.com
Rambaud Romain romain_rambau@upmf-grenoble.fr
Randall Maury randall@rider.edu
Rennó Lúcio
Reyes Vicente Vicente.reyes@gmail.com
Roa Bastos Francisco froabastos@gmail.com
Roux Adrien adrien.roux@univ-amu.fr
Rusciano Frank rusciano@rider.edu
Shafir Michael sjfirmch@yahoo.com
Smith Rodney Rodney.Smith@sydney.edu.au
Soo Sim Heung heungsim@gmail.com
Suk David suk@rider.edu
van Biezen Ingrid i.c.van.biezen@fsw.leidenuniv.nl
Villoria Manuel manuel.villoria@urjc.es
Wang Shunzhu shwang@rider.edu
 

13ème Congrès de l’AFSP à Aix-en-Provence du 22 au 24 juin 2015 à Sciences Po Aix

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