Southern and Eastern European countries have been facing a persistent dissatisfaction with the operation of their national democracies. However, what has been driving such discontentment? Apart from economic performance and political engagement, academic research presents corruption as a valid answer to this question. Albeit underexplored, different types of corruption can affect how citizens evaluate their respective democratic regimes.
Seeing the corrupt action from another perspective, this paper aims to evidence that corruption has been considered relevant to the democratic process not because of its illegal characteristics, but because of its capacity to become licit and socially accepted as inevitable for politics to run properly. Disaffected European democracies have been experiencing difficulties in making norms ultimately represent what citizens really consider corrupt. Laws have been used to make corrupt behaviors sound licit instead of combating them. Indeed, a ‘beyond the law’ corruption is able to affect citizens’ perceptions of regime functioning and needs to be further investigated.
Considering the information on public opinion provided by the European Commission for the twenty-eight member states of the European Union (EU) in 2013, a multidimensional model to explain legality in corruption was built and then used to verify how citizens’ satisfaction with the way in which democracies work in their respective countries is influenced by a perceived acceptance for the commitment of socially approved corrupt acts. An Illegal corruption is also defined and tested in order to establish a comparison with its lawful counterpart.
A culture in which corruption becomes licit represents a real harm for a European democratic equilibrium. Northern Europe and Benelux countries present residual levels of dissatisfaction, whereas both Eastern Europe and the Mediterranean area appear to be mostly dissatisfied with the way their democracies work. Thus, the relationship between democratic support and legality in corruption must be unveiled in order to find solutions for a more prosperous Europe.
This paper first describes that licit corruption is able to shape citizens’ evaluations of how the democratic regime is exercised in a European context. Then it observes that, contrary to expectations, illegal corruption does not play the same role. Finally, it states the necessity to reconfigure anti-corruption strategies in order to make citizens perceive that narrowing the concept of corruption to illegalities makes room for a more nebulous, pervasive and resilient corruption: legal corruption. In sum, fighting against the institutionalization of corruption as something necessary for the political operation becomes relevant not only to hinder illicit misappropriations, but also to develop better democracies, especially in Europe.
