The Global Anti-Corruption Industry and its Effects in Romania

Absztrakt (kivonat)

There has been extensive discussion in the last decades over rampant corruption in Romania at the international level. Indeed, the country exhibits a high level of corruption compared to other nations in the European Union, which impelled internal actors to take up the fight against corruption. The European Union and other NGOs, however, also played a significant role in this battle, empowering the agents on the side of anti-corruption. The result of this fusion of external and internal factors is the formation of an anti-corruption identity discourse in Romania, that separated those against corruption and those – willingly or unknowingly – fueling corruption. For this reason, social scientists speak of an anti-corruption cleavage that emerged in Romania. Among other things, because of the strong correlation between perceptions of corruption and public trust, in the international literature on corruption, many analysts claim that high social trust is of key importance in combatting the phenomenon. The literature, however, does not sufficiently mention the role of economic variables, and does not address the issue of external interference in respect to trust. In Romania, however, the anti-corruption discourse effectively impaired trust levels. The results of this paper show that the often-invoked cleavage is non-existent, as there are no noticeable disparities among people in terms of perceptions of corruption. In addition, it shows that the discourse and radical neoliberalism contributed to low levels of generalized trust, while the belligerent rhetoric against corruption undermined the trust in democratically elected institutions, while increased it in de-democratized institutions, creating an environment conducive to populism.