EU Legitimacy and Corruption: Possible Linkages?!

Corruption can significantly affect the efficiency, fairness and legitimacy of state activities argued Susan Rose-Ackerman. As result, corruption not only undermines the smooth functioning of the EU single market, creating unfair competition and discriminating against legitimate business, but also destroys faith and trust in institutions at all levels in Europe. Susan Rose-Ackerman also argued that “democratic governance must establish explicit policies to limit corrupt incentives, and in key mean of public oversight is to keep governments accountable”. Hence, the quality of governance is crucial in limiting corruption, and when considering the development of governance, Alina Mungiu-Pippidi acknowledges that the state autonomy towards private interest is a result of a long time evolution and not the default state of nature. Hence, the capacity of the states and the institutional capacities to provide autonomy towards private interest is also a historical process, shaped by different exogenous and endogenous factors. Yet, the literature remains limited in understating the casual links between the factors and anti-corruption effectiveness. The EU has contributed to these efforts, but is yet to develop a comprehensive anti-corruption policy. Current EC mechanisms for fighting against corruption largely operates pro EU supra-national economic interests, leaving to countries to develop and implement own anti-corruption policies. The problem has also been addressed in the context of EU enlargement, with membership being made conditional on candidates' commitment to anti-corruption reforms. Yet, Alena Ledeneva argues that “one of the problems associated with the policy corruption reforms is that policies are devised or at least strongly influenced at the supranational level, without giving specific attention to the background and culture of the societies that implement these policies. This is another grey zone that needs further observation of the possible linkages.

Hence, measuring the quality of the decision-making process or the throughput legitimacy as argued by Vivien A. Schmidt can provides insights of “the quality of the interaction among actors engaged in the quality of the governance processes as established by their efficacy, accountability, transparency, inclusiveness and openness to consultation with the people and to interest intermediation”. The aim here is to examine ever further: which factors impact the quality of decision-making process and how this affect the involvement of institutions and actors in implementing the anti-corruption policy linked to the policy effectiveness.

Emilija Tudjarovska Gjorgjievska is Doctoral research fellow at the Institute of Sociology, Czech Academy of Sciences and Marie Sklodowska-Curie Fellow under the PLATO Innovative Training Network (ITN). Her research interests include political sociology, democratization processes/anti-corruption and good governance and innovative (political) economies.