Original scientific paper
Sources of political corruption in a democratic system: On party corruption
Slaven Ravlić
; Faculty of law, University of Zagreb, Zagreb, Croatia
Abstract
The paper considers the link between professional electoral parties as the predominant type of modern political parties and the growth of political corruption in European countries. This type of party originally emerged as a result of the transformation of mass parties in European democracies in the 1970's and 1980's. Examples show that its predominance has led to an increase in the level of corruption in a number of countries, and in some it has led to the setting up of a system of corruption whose institutional centre is the parties themselves. In the second part of the paper the author analyzes the relationship between parties and corruption in countries in transition, focusing mostly on South-East Europe, in particular on Croatia. In these countries there was no tradition of mass parties, and the newly established parties developed as professional electoral parties, with great potential for clientelism and corruption. In South-East Europe corruption is systemic, and the parties are its main institutional source, and this is in fact is the main characteristic of corruption in Croatia.
Keywords
mass party; professional electoral party; political corruption; party corruption
Hrčak ID:
62991
URI
Publication date:
21.12.2010.
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