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Accounting for the bad apples: the EU's impact on national corruption before and after accession

2014; Routledge; Volume: 21; Issue: 6 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/13501763.2014.910820

1466-4429

Mert Kartal,

Local Government Finance and Decentralization

ABSTRACTWhen states with limited evidence in their history to suggest that they are committed to good governance join a democratic international organization (IO), to what extent do they respect IO requirements? Focusing on the European Union (EU) and its Central and Eastern European members, this contribution presents the first systematic analysis based on longitudinal data in the existing literature suggesting that control of corruption in these countries has significantly weakened after accession. The findings suggest that the EU's political leverage (i.e., its ability to offer electoral incentives to opposition parties in national legislatures and, hence, mobilize them to pressure governments to deliver reforms) is a key determinant of the change in state performance. As political leverage weakens substantially following accession, governments favoring economic policies prone to corruption help account for the negative change in control of corruption.KEY WORDS: BackslidingCentral and Eastern EuropeconditionalitycorruptionEuropean Uniongood governance. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTSThe author thanks David Bearce, James Caporaso, Jessica Clayton, Mark Copelovitch, Ellen Gutterman, Eric Jones, Joseph Jupille, Michael Kaeding, Mareike Kleine, Andrew Kydd, Lisa Martin, Jon Pevehouse, Robert Pahre, Margaret Peters, Nils Ringe, Inken von Borzyskowski, David Weimer, three anonymous referees and the editors of JEPP, Jeremy Richardson and Berthold Rittberger, for their valuable comments.Notes1 See, for example, the 2007 special issue of the Journal of Democracy (Plattner and Diamond 2007).2 I define 'backsliding' as a statistically significant negative change in a country's governance performance over time. Substantively, 'backsliding' refers to a regression of EU-member CEE countries to earlier levels of governance from prior to accession.3 I also find that political parties favoring anti-corruption in their manifestos do not have any meaningful impact on control of corruption. See the electronic appendix available at https://mywebspace.wisc.edu/kartal/web.4 Karklins (Citation2005) and Pridham (Citation2006), for example, both argue that the EU was able to significantly pressure CEE governments to successfully adopt anti-corruption strategies during candidacy by using membership conditionality. Gugiu (Citation2012) investigates the role played by the EU in promoting anti-corruption reforms in Romania prior to accession, and argues that EU pressure influenced domestic political will and led to important progress in fighting corruption. See Grigorescu (Citation2006) for a discussion of how the EU has been able to project anti-corruption as a key issue on the national agenda of CEE countries prior to accession.5 See note 1, above.6 Two exceptions are Sedelmeier (Citation2008) and Levitz and Pop-Eleches (Citation2010a).7 While the number of post-accession years included is still limited, adding five extra years to the existing dataset should offer more reliable findings.8 See Chapter 23 of the Acquis Communautaire, available at http://ec.europa.eu/enlargement/policy/policy-highlights/rule-of-law/index_en.htm (accessed 7 May 2014).9 The existing 'corruption' datasets are based on public/expert perception of corruption. Nevertheless, Grigorescu (Citation2006) and Krastev (Citation2002) argue that perception of corruption is a realistic measurement.10 I re-estimated the regressions also by using the 'control of corruption' measure from the Worldwide Governance Indicators dataset, available at http://www.govindicators.org (accessed 7 May 2014). There was no significant change in the results, which were excluded from the final analysis owing to space restrictions. For a discussion, see the electronic appendix available at https://mywebspace.wisc.edu/kartal/web.11 I have reversed the NIT scores for a more intuitive interpretation.12 See http://www.freedomhouse.org/report/nations-transit-2010/methodology (accessed 7 May 2014).13 Higher levels indicate lower levels of corruption. Baltic countries: Estonia; Latvia; and Lithuania; Visegrád countries: the Czech Republic; Hungary; Poland; and Slovakia; others: Bulgaria; Romania; and Slovenia.14 While this suggests that there is variation across countries, this contribution focuses on the variation over time. The 'cross-national' variation will be the focus of future research.15 To keep the figure reader-friendly, individual country performance is not shown. The dataset suggests that Hungary, Lithuania, Poland, Slovakia and Slovenia have experienced negative changes in corruption control in the post-accession period. The specific country data on anti-corruption performance are available in the electronic appendix available at https://mywebspace.wisc.edu/kartal/web.16 See the electronic appendix available at https://mywebspace.wisc.edu/kartal/web both for a discussion of the explanatory and control variables and their expected relationship with the dependent variable as well as descriptive statistics.17 This, of course, does not mean that EU-member CEE countries have become more corrupt than their non-applicant counterparts. Instead, this finding merely reveals that the increase in the former group's corruption levels has been significantly higher than that of the latter group, roughly since 2004. Likewise, this result does not imply that every EU-member CEE country has suffered from backsliding after accession.18 The magnitude of the 'post-candidacy' variable under all models suggests that most EU-member CEE countries are likely to backslide to the point from which they started in the mid-1990s. The limited number of post-accession observations, however, does not allow for a more certain conclusion.19 See also Grigorescu (Citation2006) for a discussion of the EU's efforts to make 'awareness raising' a priority in fighting corruption in CEE countries.20 Government parties in Estonia and Latvia are some of the few exceptions.21 This is not a deterministic but rather a probabilistic argument. Moreover, I do not argue that parties with anti-corruption preferences do not take part in the government. On the contrary, governments tend to consist of such political parties particularly prior accession and, hence, implement corruption reforms during this period. The marginal impact of this variable shrinks in the post-accession period (see the electronic appendix available at https://mywebspace.wisc.edu/kartal/web), which suggests that most governments are not genuinely dedicated to fighting corruption. Even when they have favorable mentions of anti-corruption in their programs, such preferences do not generally transform into better control of corruption in the post-accession period. Therefore, I argue that governments with anti-corruption preferences are not the only means to promote corruption control in CEE.22 Risse-Kappen (Citation1991) argues that members of the legislative branch are motivated to assert themselves against unpopular decisions of the executive in an effort to foster chance of election.23 Governments may run such risk because they are the first ones to be punished for unfavorable political outcomes (Fiorina Citation1981; Kiewiet Citation1983; Lewis-Beck Citation1988; Mansfield et al. Citation2002).24 Grzymala-Busse (2007) argues that parties will be refrained from engaging in corrupt practices when they are faced with strong political competition.25 While the EU promotes such economic policy in the hope that it will help reduce corruption, the existing literature offers two contradictory findings. Several studies find that economic liberalization has a positive impact on control of corruption (Ades and DiTella 1999; Gerring and Thacker Citation2005; Levitz and Pop-Eleches Citation2010a; Sandholtz and Gray Citation2003); several others challenge such finding (Della Porta and Vanucci Citation1999; Manion Citation2004; Mungiu-Pippidi Citation2006, Citation2007, Citation2008; Sun Citation2004; Treisman Citation2000; Warner Citation2007).26 See Glynn et al. (Citation1997), Klitgaard (Citation1988), Mungiu-Pippidi and Dusu (Citation2011) and Treisman (Citation2003) for a discussion of this expectation.27 Former SU and Muslim are not included since they do not vary across applicant CEE countries.28 When calculating such preferences, seat shares of opposition parties in the legislature are also taken into account because the extent to which these parties are effective depends on not only their policy preferences but also their power in the legislature.29 See the electronic appendix available at https://mywebspace.wisc.edu/kartal/web for a discussion of the variables included in the regressions.30 Complete regression tables are available in the electronic appendix (https://mywebspace.wisc.edu/kartal/web).31 All marginal effects are calculated while holding all other continuous variables at their mean value and discrete variables at their modal values. The marginal effects table is included in the appendix (https://mywebspace.wisc.edu/kartal/web).32 'Reform fatigue' in CEE countries can be considered another factor contributing to such unpopularity.Additional informationBiographical noteMert Kartal is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point.