Corrupt, Abusive, and Legal: Italian Breaches of the Democratic Contract

Abstract

What corruption? In this article, I focus on corruption that does not break the law. I develop an ethnographically based analysis of the impact, on associated life, of governance that is both legal and received at the grassroots level as illegitimate and morally corrupt. Empirical evidence from Naples sheds light on the corrupting impact of ideologically biased governance that today, as in the past, responds to the selective interests and demands of small groups at the expense of the urban population. Critically, these processes take place in a national context marred by the progressive corruption of the basic democratic principle of unequivocal separation between the powers of the state and by repeated breaches in the democratic contract that engender erosion both of trust between citizenship and governance and of representative responsibility. Combined, these processes mark power without authority. They occur in a Group of Seven country that, for several years, has been ruled by a succession of unelected governments. In this scenario, I suggest, an anthropological analysis of local dynamics helps in grasping the sociological impact of processes that have broader significance and in addressing the question of what can be done to control and possibly prevent corruption that does not break the law.