POWRE: Political Corruption in Postwar Italy

University Of California-Los Angeles, Los Angeles CA

Investigators

Abstract

The purpose of this project is to assemble and analyze an annual database covering Italy's 32 electoral districts examining possible correlates of political corruption, covering the period from 1948 to 1994. Political corruption is operationalized as requests by magistrates to parliament to lift the parliamentary immunity of a member of the Chamber of Deputies in order to proceed with legal prosecution on charges of malfeasance. The data collected will include sociological, demographic, economic and political characteristics of electoral districts in order to study the characteristics of districts prone to more or less corruption. Italy is an especially good case to investigate since the country had the highest levels of political corruption of any wealthy democratic nation in the postwar era. The persistent and extreme nature of political corruption there generates unique data available and potentially permits systematic causal analysis. A cross-sectional (subnational) time-series analysis of political corruption in postwar Italy can ascertain whether the determinants of political corruption in democratic settings are largely economic (occurring in pockets of persistent underdevelopment in an otherwise largely developed economy, for instance), cultural (occurring initially in those parts of the country marked by weak political cultures and low levels of social capital), or institutional (occurring because of specific features of the electoral system acting in combination with competitive dynamics of the party system), as well as how such factors may interact. The investigator's productivity has recently suffered temporary interruption due a combination of family responsibilities and medical problems. The research proposed involves a major shift in intellectual direction, one that will propel the investigator into a more central and visible area of her discipline. Such a shift requires unusual research resources, and especially an interval of reduced teaching in order to devote adequate time to research.