Corruzione e politica

The article focuses on the transformations of political corruption in the last thirty years in Italy. The purpose of the research is twofold. On the one side, it aims to analyze the type of exchanges and interactions involving political actors within wider relational configurations, characterized by different degrees of illegality. On the other side, it seeks to identify the main changes occurred over time on a territorial basis and in the different levels of government. The results of the analysis show that corruption increasingly diverges from the “Mani Pulite” model that was prevalent until the Nineties, in which political parties firmly controlled exchanges that often involved the national level of government. Despite this loss of control, however, the new model is only apparently less structured. Indeed, illegal exchanges are still organized into stable networks and are played by “teams” rather than by individuals. Such networks are predominantly local and have a mixed composition, with a still relevant presence – albeit variable and different from the past – of political players.