Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-rcrh6 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-30T20:52:36.230Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Corruption-mitigating Policies: The Case of Italy

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 January 2016

James L. Newell
James L. Newell*
Affiliation:
School of English, Sociology, Politics and Contemporary History, University of Salford, Salford M5 4WT, UK. E-mail: [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Summary

One of the circumstances likely to be associated with the intensity of both investigative and legislative efforts designed to curb political and bureaucratic corruption is institutional reform. Since the characteristics of electoral and party systems seem to be associated with variations in the intensity of anti-corruption efforts cross-nationally, it was reasonable to think that changes in the characteristics of these systems in Italy in the 1990s would be reflected in a corresponding change in the efforts of legislators and members of the judiciary to tackle corruption. Prior to the 1990s Italy's tripolar party system and its numerous concomitants placed considerable obstacles in the way of the willingness and the ability of judicial investigators and parliamentarians to deal with the corruption emergency. The 1993 electoral law reform, the eventual emergence of a largely bipolar party system and the circumstances surrounding these processes considerably diminished the significance of the aforementioned obstacles, yet there has been little noticeable increase in anti-corruption efforts. This is probably explicable in terms of the electoral effects of such efforts and suggests that institutional change is at most only one of a number of conditions that must be fulfilled in order for more strenuous efforts to be observed.

Type
Articles
Information
Modern Italy , Volume 10 , Issue 2 , November 2005 , pp. 163 - 186
Copyright
Copyright © Association for the study of Modern Italy 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Notes

1. Williams, Robert, ‘Introduction’, in Williams, Robert and Doig, Alan (eds), Controlling Corruption , Edward Elgar, Cheltenham, UK, 2000, p. xii.Google Scholar

2. Newell, James L. and Bull, Martin J., ‘Introduction’, in Bull, Martin J. and Newell, James L. (eds), Corruption in Contemporary Politics , Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstoke, 2003, pp. 1–6.Google Scholar

3. Eigen, Peter, ‘Combating corruption around the world’, Journal of Democracy , 7, 1, 1996, pp. 158–68.Google Scholar

4. Some of the most authoritative contributions to date have been gathered together in the volume edited by Williams, and Doig, , Controlling Corruption. Google Scholar

5. For example, the correlation between countries' scores on Transparency International's Corruption Perceptions Index for 1996 (http://www.transparency.org/cpi/1996/cpi1996.pdf) and their GDP per capita [Alan Heston, Robert Summers and Bettina Aten, Penn World Table Version 6.1, Center for International Comparisons at the University of Pennsylvania (CICUP), October 2002, http://pwt.econ.upenn.edu/] works out at 0.82.Google Scholar

6. For example, between 1980–85 and 1999, in terms of Transparency International's Corruption Perceptions Index [whose values range from 10 (= totally ‘clean’) to 0 (= totally corrupt)] the scores for France and Belgium declined from 8.41 and 8.28 to 5.2 and 6.8 respectively, while those for Spain and Italy went down from 6.82 and 4.86 to 5.3 and 3.7 respectively (http://www.transparency.org/surveys/index.html).Google Scholar

7. To these one might add associational initiatives, both by professional interest groups and by universal pressure groups, such as Transparency International. The focus here is on politico-legislative and judicial-investigative efforts, since it is these efforts that would appear most likely to be affected by institutional change and because, ultimately, it is by means of their impact on such efforts that associational initiatives by and large have their effect, if any. Such initiatives belong to the category of public pressure.Google Scholar

8. Newell, James L., Parties and Democracy in Italy , Ashgate, Aldershot, 2000, p. 60. See also Pasquino, Gianfranco, Il sistema politico italiano, Bononia University Press, Bologna, 2002.Google Scholar

9. Doig, Alan, ‘Political corruption in the United Kingdom’, in Bull, Martin J. and Newell, James L. (eds), Corruption in Contemporary Politics , p. 188.Google Scholar

10. Delare, Thomes L., ‘A sea change in anti-corruption efforts’, in No Longer Business as Usual: Fighting Bribery and Corruption , OECD, Paris, 2000, pp. 93–100.Google Scholar

11. Pieth, Mark, ‘From ideal to reality: making the new global standard stick’, in No Longer Business as Usual , pp. 51–65.Google Scholar

12. Millet-Einbinder, Martine, ‘No more tax breaks for bribes’, in No Longer Business as Usual , pp. 67–76.Google Scholar

13. On the other hand, it is sometimes suggested that privatization programmes are conducive to corruption since they tend to undermine the strength of norms emphasizing the importance of universalism and due process in the delivery of public services.Google Scholar

14. Although, as Rose-Ackerman pointed out, the contrast between closed- and open-list systems is about necessary, not sufficient, conditions. ‘If the party leadership is corrupt, it will want a closed-list system as a means of controlling members through control of positions on the list’. Rose-Ackerman, Susan, Corruption and Government: Causes, Consequences and Reform , Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1999, p. 202.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

15. Geddes, Barbara, ‘A game-theoretic model of reform in Latin American democracies’, American Political Science Review , 85, 2, 1991, pp. 371–92; Geddes, Barbara, Politician's Dilemma: Building State Capacity in Latin America, University of California Press, Berkeley, 1994.Google Scholar

16. Kunicova, Jana and Rose-Ackerman, Susan, ‘Electoral rules and constitutional structures as constraints on corruption’, mimeo, Yale University Department of Political Science, New Haven, CT, June 2003.Google Scholar

17. The field of research into the impact of electoral rules on corruption and corruption-related issues is a growing one. See, for example, Rose-Ackerman, Susan, ‘Political corruption and democratic structures’, in Jain, Arvind K. (ed.), The Political Economy of Corruption , Routledge, London, pp. 35–62; Persson, Torsten, Tabellini, Guido and Trebbi, Francesco, ‘Electoral rules and corruption’, mimeo, ftp://ftp.igier.uni-bocconi.it/homepages/tabellini/tp001213.pd, June 2001.Google Scholar

18. Rose-Ackerman, , Corruption and Government , p. 201.Google Scholar

19. Rose-Ackerman, , Corruption and Government , p. 206.Google Scholar

20. For details see Newell, James L. and Bull, Martin J., ‘Political corruption in Italy’, in Bull, Martin J. and Newell, James L. (eds), Corruption in Contemporary Politics , pp. 37–49.Google Scholar

21. Sharrock, W. W., ‘The problem of order’, in Worsley, Peter (ed.), Introducing Sociology , second edition, Penguin, Harmondsworth, 1977, p. 507.Google Scholar

22. della Porta, Donatella and Vannucci, Alberto, ‘The resources of corruption: some reflections from the Italian case’, Crime, Law and Social Change , 27, 3/4, 1997, pp. 231–54; quoted by Ackerman, Rose, Corruption and Government, p. 209.Google Scholar

23. Colazingari, Silvia and Rose-Ackerman, Susan (1998), ‘Corruption in a paternalistic democracy: lessons from Italy for Latin America’, Political Science Quarterly , 113, 3, 1998, pp. 447–70.Google Scholar

24. It is essentially this article which, on the one hand, has allowed politicians in recent years to condemn members of the judiciary for supposedly abusing their powers to carry out a political witch-hunt against them, but, on the other hand, has allowed members of the judiciary to argue that for politicians to dispute their motives in this way is subversive of the Constitution.Google Scholar

25. Guarnieri, Carlo, La giustizia in Italia , Il Mulino, Bologna, 2001, p. 64.Google Scholar

26. Leroy Certoma, G., The Italian Legal System , Butterworths, London, 1985, pp. 225–6.Google Scholar

27. Certoma, , The Italian Legal System , p. 243.Google Scholar

28. di Federico, G., ‘The crisis of the justice system and the referendum on the judiciary’, in Leonardi, Robert and Corbetta, Piergiorgio (eds), Italian Politics: A Review , Vol. 3, Pinter, London, 1989, p. 31.Google Scholar

29. Guarnieri, Carlo, ‘The judiciary in the Italian political crisis’, in Bull, Martin J. and Rhodes, Martin (eds), Crisis and Transition in Italian Politics , Frank Cass, Portland, OR, 1997, p. 167.Google Scholar

30. Alberti, Adriana, ‘Political corruption and the role of public prosecutors in Italy’, Crime, Law and Social Change , 24, 4, 1996, pp. 273–92.Google Scholar

31. Article 45 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, quoted by Pizzorusso, Alessandro, L'organizzazione della giustizia in Italia: La magistratura nel sistema politico e istituzionale , Einaudi, Torino, 1990, p. 144 (my translation).Google Scholar

32. della Porta, Donatella, ‘A judges’ revolution? Political corruption and the judiciary in Italy’, paper presented to the workshop on ‘Italy: Changes, Constraints and Choices’ of the Joint Sessions of Workshops of the European Consortium for Political Research, University of Warwick, 23–28 March 1998, p. 10.Google Scholar

33. Alberti, , ‘Political corruption and the role of public prosecutors in Italy’, p. 285.Google Scholar

34. Guarnieri, , ‘The judiciary in the Italian political crisis’, p. 158.Google Scholar

35. di Federico, , ‘The crisis of the justice system and the referendum on the judiciary’, p. 33.Google Scholar

36. These factions, operating within the professional association for members of the judiciary, the Associazione Nazionale Magistrati, were: the left-leaning Magistratura Democratica; the conservatively oriented Magistratura Indipendente, in the centre of the political spectrum, Terzo Potere and Unità per la Costituzione.Google Scholar

37. di Federico, , ‘The crisis of the justice system and the referendum on the judiciary’, p. 35; quoted by Alberti, , ‘Political corruption and the role of public prosecutors in Italy’, p. 287.Google Scholar

38. Alberti, , ‘Political corruption and the role of public prosecutors in Italy’, p. 287.Google Scholar

39. Quoted by Pizzorusso, , L'organizzazione della giustizia , pp. 51–2 (my translation).Google Scholar

40. Three-quarters of the seats in both chambers of Parliament are distributed according to the single member, simple plurality system, one-quarter proportionally. In the case of the Senate, the country is divided into 237 single seat colleges within which the voter chooses his or her preferred candidate. The candidate winning the most votes is elected. The remaining 78 seats are distributed among the country's 20 regions according to size and are allocated proportionally according to the d'Hondt highest average formula. Within each region the parties‘ vote totals are calculated and then discounted by the votes received by candidates that have been elected outright in the single member colleges. This is the so-called scorporo (or ‘deduction of votes’). Seats are then given to the (not already elected) candidates of parties entitled to receive seats in accordance with the size of such candidates’ vote shares. In the case of the Chamber 27 constituencies are sub-divided into 475 single member colleges within which the voter makes a choice of candidate and the candidate winning the most votes is elected. Candidates in the single member colleges must be supported by at least one of the party (or party coalition) lists presented at constituency level for distribution of the remaining 155 seats. The voter has a second ballot with which to make his or her choice among these lists. The proportionally distributed seats are allocated only to those lists that receive at least 4 per cent of the national total of valid list votes cast. Seats are then allocated to lists in three steps. First, in each constituency each qualifying list's ‘electoral total’ is calculated. This is its vote total minus, for each of the party's candidates elected in single member colleges in the constituency, a sum of votes equal to the total obtained by the second placed candidate. Again, this is known as the scorporo. Second, the sum of all qualifying lists’ electoral totals are divided by the number of proportional seats allocated to the constituency to obtain the constituency electoral quotient. Third, each party's electoral total is then divided by the quotient to determine the number of seats to which it is entitled.Google Scholar

41. della Porta, Donatella and Vannucci, Alberto, Un paese anormale: come la classe politica ha perso l'occasione di Mani Pulite , Laterza, Rome, 1999, p. 40.Google Scholar

42. della Porta, and Vannucci, , Un paese anormale , p. 45.Google Scholar

43. Briefly, what the law did was to remove the anomaly whereby public officials, despite having been convicted of gross acts of corruption, were nevertheless able to remain in their posts. The point is that in Italy everything governing the public employee's relationship with his or her employer has the status of law, meaning that nothing can be done on either side unless there is a specific law sanctioning it. Therefore, it was not possible to take into account in disciplinary proceedings against a corrupt employee evidence arising in criminal proceedings for the offence of which they stood accused. Nor was it possible to transfer or dismiss employees on the basis of the outcome of criminal proceedings. The new law rectifies this.Google Scholar

44. The proposal provided for: • the appointment of an independent ‘Authority for the legality and transparency of the activities of the public administration’, with powers to inspect the activities of public bodies and to investigate the financial circumstances of a range of public officials in the event of suspicions arising concerning the violation of principles of legality and transparency; • the setting up of a register of the financial interests of a range of elected and non-elected public officials from university professors to prime ministers; • the setting up of a register of the lobbying activities of individuals, companies and associations; • the publication of an official Bulletin making public the details of all sales, acquisitions and tendering activities carried out by public bodies.Google Scholar

45. The first of them, law 59/97, sought to give effect to a range of administrative reforms, including delegation to the regions and local authorities of a number of administrative functions via a process of legislative decree. It empowered the government, within nine months, to pass legislative decrees conferring upon the regions and local authorities administrative responsibilities in all areas ‘related to the protection of the interests and the promotion of the development of their respective communities’ except those areas listed in the law itself [Newell, James L., ‘At the start of a journey: steps on the road to decentralization’, in Bardi, Luciano and Rhodes, Martin (eds), Italian Politics: Mapping the Future , Westview Press, Boulder, CO, pp. 149–67]. In doing this, it sought to initiate a process of bureaucratic rationalization that would eliminate all duplication of functions between different levels of government and administration. For details see Gilbert, Mark, ‘Le leggi Bassanini: una tappa intermedia nella riforma del governo locale’, in Hine, David and Vassallo, Salvatore (eds), Politica in Italia: I fatti dell'anno e le interpretazioni, Il Mulino, Bologna, 1999, pp. 161–80. The second, law no. 127/97, sought to continue the attempt to simplify administration in a number of areas of public life initiated by law no. 59/97, by improving the efficiency of decision-making and reducing the extent of bureaucratic control procedures.Google Scholar

46. della Porta, and Vannucci, , Un paese anormale , p. 39.Google Scholar

47. The typical criminal trial takes over 4 years to complete and there are currently nearly six million cases pending. McNess, Anne, ‘The Italian judicial system and its reform’, mimeo, British Embassy, Rome, March 2003, p. 3.Google Scholar

48. Once a trial has been concluded and judgement passed, any party can ask for the case to be reviewed by the next grade of court, i.e. the corte d'appello for cases heard in the first instance by a tribunal or the corte d'assise d'appello for cases heard in the first instance by the Assize Court. On conclusion of the second grade of justice, the losing party may appeal to the Corte di Cassazione or Supreme Court on the grounds of wrong interpretation or application of the law by the judge. McNess, , ‘The Italian judicial system and its reform’, p. 2.Google Scholar

49. Davigo, Piercamillo, ‘I limiti del controllo penale sulla corruzione e i necessari rimedi preventivi’, in D'Alberti, Marco and Finocchi, Renato (eds), Corruzione e sistema istituzionale , Il Mulino, Bologna, 1994, p. 44 (my translation).Google Scholar

50. This is the so-called ‘Frattini Bill’. For details see: Hine, David, ‘Silvio Berlusconi, i media e il conflitto di interesse, in Bellucci, Paolo and Bull, Martin (eds), Politica in Italia: i fatti dell'anno e le interpretazioni , Il Mulino, Bologna, 2002, pp. 291–307; Sartori, Giovanni, ‘Conflitto d'interessi’, in Tuccari, Francesco (ed.), Il governo Berlusconi: le parole, i fatti, i rischi, Laterza, Rome, 2002, pp. 21–33. Essentially, it was proposed to set up an anti-trust authority, nominated by the presidents of the two chambers of Parliament, with the task of investigating alleged conflict of interest cases and proposing solutions for them. As an answer to the Prime Minister's conflict of interests, the proposals were widely seen as bogus, for they specifically excluded ‘the mere ownership of an individual enterprise or parts of companies or shares’ from the list of activities deemed incompatible with government office. In other words, a ‘conflict of interest’ was to be held to exist not in virtue of ‘structural’ factors arising from the ownership of given assets while occupying given public offices, but only when certain actions were undertaken. Second, an act of government directly affecting the property of ministers would be insufficient to establish the existence of a conflict of interests: it would also be necessary to show that the act was against ‘the public interest’. Third, the anti-trust authority was not to be able to apply any legal sanctions at the end of its deliberations but merely to report to Parliament.Google Scholar

51. dalla Chiesa, Nando, ‘Mafia, le due tolleranze’, Omnicron/38 Osservatorio Milanese sulla Criminalità Organizzata al Nord , 6, 3, www.omnicronweb.it.Google Scholar

52. These initiatives have been linked to hostility towards the judiciary on the part of numbers of politicians, discussed in the following paragraph. They include the attempt, in 1994, to restrict by government decree the preventive custody powers of prosecutors, the attempt, in 1998, to establish a parliamentary commission of enquiry into the activities of the Mani pulite investigators, periodic ministerial inspections of the important Milan public prosecutor's office and, most recently, proposals to replace the constitutional obligation on prosecutors to pursue all cases of suspected wrongdoing of which they are aware with a degree of political influence over the cases to be pursued.Google Scholar

53. What seems to have happened is that suspects, held incommunicado, would be offered the choice of remaining in prison or else release if they confessed. Accomplices, knowing that they too would be picked up in the event of a confession but not knowing exactly how much had been revealed thus had an incentive to tell ‘their side of the story’ as soon as possible, before the confessions of those in prison had gone ‘too far’.Google Scholar

54. Testa, Vittorio, ‘”Ecco le mie condizioni”. Il ritorno di Berlusconi. Intervista al leader di FI: Indagine su Tangentopoli o sono risibili le proposte della maggioranza sulla giustizia’, la Repubblica , 5 September 1998, p. 13, quoted by della Porta, and Vannucci, , Un paese anormale, p. 56 (my translation).Google Scholar

55. della Porta and Vannucci cite Ministry of Justice figures showing that on 31 May 1998 203 magistrates were under investigation for crimes ranging from extortion and corruption to abuse of office, slander, ideological falsity and collusion with the Mafia (della Porta, and Vannucci, , Un paese anormale , p. 54). Unfortunately, we do not, for the time being, have figures for earlier years.Google Scholar

56. For further details concerning Transparency International and the Corruption Perceptions Index see Lancaster, Thomas D. and Montinola, Gabriella R., ‘Toward a methodology for the comparative study of political corruption’, Crime, Law and Social Change , 27, 3/4, 1997, pp. 185–206; Transparency International's Web site, http://www.transparency.org.Google Scholar

57. Electoral details can be found in Newell, James L., The Italian General Election of 2001: Berlusconi's Victory , Manchester University Press, Manchester, 2002.Google Scholar

58. For example, Italian National Election Study data show that between 1994 and 1996 only 5.5 per cent of those voting at both elections switched allegiance between the two main coalitions, and between 1996 and 2001 only 7.6 per cent did so. ITANES (Italian National Election Study), Perché ha vinto il centro-destra , Il Mulino, Bologna, 2001, p. 93.Google Scholar

59. della Porta, and Vannucci, , Un paese anormale , p. 57.Google Scholar

60. Ricolfi, Luca, ‘Demonizzazione e aritmetica dell'autoinganno’, Micromeaga , 3, 2001, pp. 63–70.Google Scholar

61. ITANES, Perché ha vinto il centro-destra , p. 72.Google Scholar