Open AccessSystemic corruption and disorganized anticorruption in Italy
Author(s) -
Alberto Vannucci
Publication year - 2020
Publication title -
civitas - revista de ciências sociais
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
eISSN - 1984-7289
pISSN - 1519-6089
DOI - 10.15448/1984-7289.2020.3.37877
Subject(s) - salience (neuroscience) , politics , language change , accountability , political science , relevance (law) , political corruption , political economy , great rift , public administration , economics , law , psychology , art , physics , literature , astronomy , cognitive psychology
TThis paper provides, trough different indicators, empirical evidence on the presumably high relevance of corruption in Italian politics and administration, providing an explanation of how this “obscure” side of Italian politics – a pervasive market for corrupt exchanges – has found its way to regulate its hidden activities within an informal institutional framework, i.e. systemic corruption. A general theoretical framework for the analysis of limits and “windows of opportunity” in Italian anticorruption policies will then be provided, crossing the degree of salience and politicization of corruption issue to explain how in different periods such variables shaped such policy arena. Finally, it will be shown how occasionally this dark side of Italian politics clashed with the clean side of politics, focusing on the reasons of the weak political accountability of Italian politicians involved in corruption scandals in the last decades.