{"title":"The imitation game: indirect European Union influence on municipal officials’ attitudes towards elite corruption and informal payments","authors":"Indraneel Sircar","doi":"10.1057/s41295-023-00362-4","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"Abstract The European Union has sought to democratise its post-communist neighbours for the past three decades, starting with Central and Eastern Europe after 1989. Since the end of the wars in Former Yugoslavia in 2000, the EU first pursued closer integration with the Western Balkans followed by the goal of enlargement. However, despite intensive EU involvement, the fight against corruption has stagnated or deteriorated in post-communist Europe, particularly in Former Yugoslavia. The central question in the article is whether indirect EU influence has led municipal officials—who are at the front line of vital distributive decision-making for citizens at the local level—to imitate (or emulate) attitudes related to corruption and to informality in line with EU norms. The article focuses on the case of Serbia, where anti-corruption progress has been particularly slow. Using a survey of Serbian municipal officials, the article examines whether indirect EU influence via involvement in policy implementation affected attitudes towards informal payments, and through a vignette-based survey experiment, whether those involved in EU-compliant policy implementation are less accepting of local political elite corruption.","PeriodicalId":51590,"journal":{"name":"Comparative European Politics","volume":"12 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":2.6000,"publicationDate":"2023-09-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Comparative European Politics","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1057/s41295-023-00362-4","RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q1","JCRName":"POLITICAL SCIENCE","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
Abstract The European Union has sought to democratise its post-communist neighbours for the past three decades, starting with Central and Eastern Europe after 1989. Since the end of the wars in Former Yugoslavia in 2000, the EU first pursued closer integration with the Western Balkans followed by the goal of enlargement. However, despite intensive EU involvement, the fight against corruption has stagnated or deteriorated in post-communist Europe, particularly in Former Yugoslavia. The central question in the article is whether indirect EU influence has led municipal officials—who are at the front line of vital distributive decision-making for citizens at the local level—to imitate (or emulate) attitudes related to corruption and to informality in line with EU norms. The article focuses on the case of Serbia, where anti-corruption progress has been particularly slow. Using a survey of Serbian municipal officials, the article examines whether indirect EU influence via involvement in policy implementation affected attitudes towards informal payments, and through a vignette-based survey experiment, whether those involved in EU-compliant policy implementation are less accepting of local political elite corruption.
期刊介绍：
Comparative European Politics (CEP) arises out of a unique editorial partnership linking political scientists in Europe and North America. CEP defines its scope broadly to include the comparative politics and political economy of the whole of contemporary Europe within and beyond the European Union, the processes of European integration and enlargement and the place of Europe and European states within international/global political and economic dynamics.
As the most regionally integrated political and economic space within the global system, Europe presents a particular opportunity to political scientists to explore the dynamic relationship between transnational, international and domestic processes and practices. The editors welcome original theoretical, empirical and theoretically-informed pieces which deal with these relationships.
Such issues pose awkward questions about the limitations of existing disciplinary perspectives and theoretical conventions, requiring theoretical and methodological innovation and an ability to develop genuinely interdisciplinary approaches. CEP aims to publish exceptional work prepared to rise to this challenge.
The journal is rigorously peer-reviewed. It neither reflects nor represents any particular school or approach, nor does it restrict itself to particular methodologies or theoretical perspectives. Rather, whilst promoting interdisciplinarity and a greater dialogue between the various sub-disciplines of European political analysis, Comparative European Politics publishes the best and most original work in the field. It publishes substantial articles marking either core empirical developments, theoretical innovation or, preferably, both. The journal particularly encourages pieces which seek to develop the link between substantive empirical investigations and theoretical elaboration and those which transcend the artificial separation of domestic, comparative and international analysis. The editors publish a limited number of debate pieces and review articles related to issues of contemporary theoretical and empirical controversy. Whether solicited or unsolicited these are exposed to the same exacting process of peer review.
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