Cases Of Political Corruption Research Articles

Perceptions of Indonesian Politics in the Run-up to the 2009 General Election

Indonesia has had ten years of constitutional democracy since the end of the Suharto era. In 2009 the country heads again to a national election. In the lead-up period the major parties have been pressing not only to reduce the number of parties eligible to stand, but to create conditions in which a future president can only come from a major party, which is not the situation at present. At the same time, there are almost weekly reports in the Indonesian media of corruption allegations and charges against both local and national politicians. This paper considers survey and interview data on the opinions of members of the general public in Central Java about the performance of political parties and the political elite in the run-up to the 2009 election. Selected newspaper coverage of political corruption cases is also considered.

The 1948 Belcher Affair and Lynskey Tribunal

Although the Belcher affair was one of the biggest cases of political corruption in twentieth‐century Britain, the scandal and resultant judicial inquiry have received little attention in political histories of the 1940s due to their lack of electoral impact. This outcome was not apparent to contemporary political commentators. The allegations were serious and elements of the Conservative Party were willing to use them to smear the Labour government. The government successfully defused the scandal by appointing a judicial inquiry to investigate the allegations. They hoped this would dispel rumours of widespread corruption. However, it had the unintended effect of scotching public debate. The allegations became sub judice, hindering the activities of the scandalmongers. Tedious press coverage of the tribunal hearings bored many voters, who interpreted the scandal in line with their existing beliefs.

Political parties, political corruption, and the economic theory of democracy

Many prominent cases of political corruption in Western European democracies have involved political parties, yet the link between theories of political parties and theories of political corruption has not been explored. This article seeks to examine this link from the perspective of economic theories of democracy. It is argued that the economic model of party organisation is liable to encourage corrupt behaviour on the part of politicians, and that modern party organisations are coming to resemble this model, making political corruption more likely to emerge. It is suggested that this hypothesis finds some empirical support in the evidence of systematic corruption amongst Southern European socialist parties.

The Business Politicians: Reflections from a Study of Political Corruption

Political corruption has not disappeared with modernization, as some scholars believed would happen. On the contrary, corruption in Western democracies is often described as 'systemic', 'institutionalized' or 'diffuse'. At the same time, the political class is said to have undergone considerable change: catch-all parties and 'media power' have changed the structure of political careers and created new types of professional politician. Little thought, however, has been given to the specific consequences of corruption for the political class. How do the careers of corrupt politicians evolve? What are the capabilities required of a politician who participates systematically in corrupt exchange? What are the motivations which push individuals, in situations of widespread corruption, in the direction of politics? These are the questions with which the present article proposes to deal. In the first section some hypotheses will be presented on the alterations caused in representative democratic regimes by corruption. In particular, the idealtype of the 'business politician' will be defined as one possessing the abilities necessary for the functioning of the system of corruption. Thereafter, an application of these hypotheses to empirical research will be proposed. The results of an investigation of a number cases of political corruption in local government in Italy will be used to illustrate some of the attributes of the 'business politician': in particular the skills in illegality enabling the organization of corrupt exchange (part II), the networking abilities corrupt politicians utilize to create support and complicity (part III) and, lastly, the fact that politics is their only available route to upward mobility (part IV). In part V, a contribution to the theory of political corruption will be offered, starting from the concept of 'moral cost'. Proceeding deductively, we will discuss the conditions which reduce the moral cost of participation in illegal activities and therefore increase willingness to participate in corrupt dealings.