Why did procurement corruption risks (not) increase during the pandemic? A fuzzy-set QCA of 23 EU member states

Research has shown that with the COVID-19 pandemic, many countries have witnessed an increase in procurement-related corruption. Simultaneously, these increased corruption risks often run counter to the "conventional wisdom" about the prevalence of corruption in different regions of Europe. The conventional assumption would be that corruption risks were to increase significantly more in populist-led countries in southern or eastern Europe during the pandemic or were to remain at a significantly higher level than the risks in democratic member states. However, available data shows that democratic states had significantly greater increases and showed levels of corruption risks comparable to populist-led member states or even exceeded them towards the end of the first year of the pandemic. Therefore, this paper attempts to explain why corruption risks in procurement have increased in the EU, albeit to different degrees and in different countries by answering the following research question: How can the different corruption risks in procurement in the EU during the COVID-19 pandemic be explained? Based on the „Corruption Hexagon“ model, corruption is expected to be the context specific result of the complex interplay of circumstances, personal characteristics, and rationalization processes. These dimensions differ greatly depending on whether they are examined in a populist governed or democratic governed state. This is particularly evident for populist-led states, where existing supervisory authorities and accountability processes, as well as freedom of the press, are constantly weakened or non-existent, which provides for deviating circumstances. We complement a comprehensive dataset of corruption risks in public procurement contracts in 23 EU member states with secondary data to operationalize the Hexagon framework and evaluate its assumption using fuzzy-set-Qualitative Comparative Analysis. The findings advance corruption research by highlighting the complex and context-dependent nature of corruption and its triggers in a crisis context.