"Inside Corruption: An Empirical Investigation of Bribery in Albania’s Judiciary"

Around the world, judiciaries are facing a significant decline in public confidence due to inefficiencies and corruption within their ranks. These issues have created a host of additional challenges for affected societies. While prior research has expanded our understanding of corruption broadly, specific insights into its nature, scope, and variations within the judiciary remain limited. This article aims to fill that gap by developing a framework to examine judicial corruption, using an inductive case study approach. Focusing on Albania's judiciary, which recently implemented strict reforms to combat corruption, this study uses evidence from these reform efforts to analyze corrupt practices within the system. Findings reveal that common corrupt behaviors include bribery, influence peddling, and granting leniency to individuals involved in serious crimes. Many judges, prosecutors, and court staff were found to have violated their oath of office, not as isolated incidents but as part of an extralegal system of governance involving nearly all judicial actors in Albania. These practices undermine the rule of law by exposing litigants to bribery, extortion, and corruption. The analysis shows that while the Albanian judiciary has undergone major reforms, the incentive to bribe remains strong due to untested accountability and oversight mechanisms. The study concludes that without fully enforced accountability measures and the separation of the judiciary from political and criminal influences, current international and national anti-corruption initiatives are unlikely to succeed.