Original scientific paper
Anti-corruption Policy in Croatia: Benchmark for EU Accession
Damir Grubiša
; Faculty of Political Science, University of Zagreb, Zagreb, Croatia
Abstract
In this article the author analyses the anti-corruption policy in Croatia as part
of a wider awareness-rising process in transition countries. After the collapse
of Communism, corruption spread quickly in post-Communist countries as a
result of exogenous factors such as the export of corruption by the most developed
countries seeking to find new markets, and endogenous factors such
as hasty privatization and the creation of new political elites caught in the
web of various conflicts of interest. In Croatia the situation was exacerbated
by the war itself and war speculations and profiteering, followed by a corruptive
privatization and lack of anti-corruption standards in the political culture
of the country. Croatia had to adopt, on its way to European Union membership,
a set of concrete measures countering the spreading of political corruption
throughout the society. An important role was, thus, played by European
Union conditionality requesting an integral approach to the pathological phenomenon
of corruption. The author argues that such an integral approach has
not yet been achieved due to the reduction of political corruption mostly to
bribe and graft, while more sophisticated forms of political corruption have
not been tackled yet, such as party clientelism, cronyism, electoral fraud and
trading in influence. Therefore the author invokes the results of a comprehensive
approach to political corruption as done by contemporary political
science in the world, and advocates the formulation of a comprehensive anti-
-corruption code that would eliminate the dispersion of anti-corruptive legislation
in numerous acts and redundancy that obfuscate the action of political
actors in combating corruption. Here the role of the European Union is tantamount
because it sets very tough standards based on a wide investigation of
political corruption in Croatia at all levels, especially in the highest echalons
of political life. An anti-corruption strategy as well as concrete action plans
in combating corruption became part of the benchmarks, a third generation
conditionality standards elaborated by the EU, and Croatia had to comply
to them and build the society’s capacity to deal with political corruption in a
more efficient way, thus eliminating ambiguity and hesitancy that could harm
the political actors in power.
Keywords
political corruption; anti-corruption measures; anti-corruption strategy; integral approach to corruption; forms of political pathology; anti-corruption laws; European Union conditionality; EU benchmarks
Hrčak ID:
68761
URI
Publication date:
10.5.2011.
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