The Quality of Democracy - Patronage and Corruption in Europe : A Comparative Assessment

Patronage and corruption are far from having disappeared in modern democratic systems. Rather, they increasingly fill newspapers' and scholarly works' pages. Do we just become more attentive to these phenomena because western democracies have become more self-critical after the fall of communism left them without fundamental contender? Or are these improper practices of politics really spreading? The amazing geographical breadth of these phenomena is challenging conventional assumptions as to which parts of the world and which cultures should be particularly affected by them. And their firm hold in some of the most mature democracies and most developed industrial nations speaks against the view which associates patronage and corruption with lack of development and with backwardness. In fact, patronage and corruption may be conceived as being very modern, flexible strategies, providing solutions for problems of political mobilization and of party organization. The new mean and lean party organizations increasingly depend on the cash nexus to finance campaigns and mobilize support, and patronage promises help securing the loyalty of party activists and are part of a quid-pro-quo arrangement in which investments for the party now are rewarded with well paid jobs later. Focusing on the European context (but allowing for comparisons with other parts of the world, where meaningful), we would like to explore as systematically as possible the causal links between patronage and corruption, on the one hand, and some of the broader political, social and economic developments currently at work in modern democracies, on the other hand. To this end we are seeking a series of panels, each ideally aimed at exploring one such interaction with, e.g., party organizational change, the personal vote, urban machines, party finances, and so on.