Local Government Corruption in Hungary

Abstract

This chapter reports on the key findings of an ongoing empirical research programme organized by the Corruption Research Centre of the Institute for Sociology and Social Policy at Corvinus University of Budapest.1 The general goal of the research is to make a contribution to the in-depth exploration, better understanding and explanation of different corruption transactions in Hungary. To achieve this aim, we focused on studying actual corruption situations and mechanisms rather than investigating perceptions about corruption or surveying opinions about corruption. We believe that both the interviews and media content analysis on corruption cases that were undertaken give us the potential to identify typical corruption situations, typical players in corruption games and their typical types of motivation.2 During the research, our attention turned to the local government as a pivotal level to be investigated. In this chapter we offer a detailed analysis in order to establish a general picture of the sophisticated structure and actual penetration of different local government corruption mechanisms. We do believe that a profound knowledge of actual corruption situation and mechanism types is an essential prerequisite for creating solid anticorruption measures (for example, changing regulations or the institutional environment) both at the national and at the local level.