Explaining Backsliding in Anti-Corruption Performance in the new EU Member States: A Comparative Perspective

How can specificities in anti-corruption institutional designs explain anti-corruption performance in the new EU member states after accession? Are there regional cluster patterns that help explain differences in corruption patterns? These questions represent the focus of this research paper, and address the scarcity of detailed comparative qualitative analyses that trace anti-corruption reforms in CEE countries since the early 1990s (Kartal, 2014; Mungiu-Pippidi, 2014). It is also a first step in explaining how differences in institutional designs lead to different paths in anti-corruption performance after accession. To compare institutional configurations and identify decisive cross-case patterns among the frontrunners and backsliders in anti-corruption performance, this study employs the fs/QCA method, and complements it with expert and elite interviews conducted in Estonia, Poland, and Slovakia in the fall of 2016. The more recent developments in Central and Eastern Europe pose serious questions about the process of democratic consolidation more generally. A region that had very propitious geopolitical and economic circumstances to join the club of consolidated Western democracies only twenty-five years ago, today is rolling back on previous democratic achievements. Moreover, democratic backsliding seems to be taking new EU member states to different stazioni termini at different speeds. Understanding therefore the conditions of backsliding as well as whether they represent regional trends will help understand the intricacies of the process of democratization more generally as well as provide theory-based research to EU policy-makers interested in containing backsliding. Moreover, despite significant effort allotted to understand why democracies backslide, systematic and explicit comparative research on how democratic rollback occurs has been less frequent (Bermeo, 2016). This research paper comes to fill in this gap by dissecting and explaining the process of democratic backsliding via the lens of anti-corruption performance in the new EU member states. The paper argues hence that differences in anti-corruption institutional designs help explain why some states backslide on their previous achievements while others register stable or even improving control of corruption. To understand the necessity and sufficiency of various configurations of anti-corruption institutions, this paper employs the fs/QCA analysis, and complements its findings with expert and elite interviews conducted in Estonia (frontrunners group), Poland (middle group), and Slovakia (the backsliders) in the fall of 2016. This paper expects to find that states that display overall fewer institutional vulnerabilities are more effective at controlling corruption while states that experience more institutional weaknesses are backsliding on previous anti-corruption achievements after accession. The paper also expects to find that the laggards in anti-corruption performance have passed reforms mostly in areas less controversial and less sensitive to the incumbents. These untailored reforms hence left institutional loopholes in the legislation that allow officials to abuse more often power and office.