Effective but Opaque COVID-19 Recovery? Balancing anticorruption and crisis management in Italy

Federica Cacciatore, Policy Advisor, Italian Presidency of the Council of Ministers Fabrizio Di Mascio, Professor of Political Science, University of Torino Alessandro Natalini, Professor of Political Science, LUMSA University of Rome As scholars and practitioners have highlighted, one of the most insidious side effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on public administration is the increased risk of widespread corruption and fraud (Rose-Ackerman 2021). Our main research question is related to the impact that the adoption of relief and recovery measures has exerted on corruption in those contexts where administrative capacity is low. In order to do so, we focus on the Italian case, with a view to assessing whether relief and recovery measures have increased corruption risks or they have been endowed with mitigating tools that help counter corruption. Under crisis conditions of radical urgency and uncertainty, the Italian regulatory response to COVID-19 has been based on temporary, fast-track procedures. The latter have been regularly applied when Italian governments confront with natural disasters and prompt action is ensured by a repertoire of extra-ordinary measures running in parallel to burdensome ordinary procedures (Di Mascio et al. 2020). Our empirical analysis focuses on the fast-track relief and recovery measures laid down through the thirteen law decrees adopted from March 2020 to May 2021 under the Conti II and Draghi Governments, and unpack them according to the two main categories of recipients (businesses and citizens). For each measure, we analyse transparency and enforcement provisions as proxies for the propensity to trigger/curb corruption. The desk analysis of relief and recovery measures is complemented by semi-structured interviews with key experts knowledgeable about the dynamics of the COVID-19 crisis in the domain of regulatory policy in Italy. Our findings highlight that relief and recovery measures increased corruption risks. However, vulnerability to corruption risks varies over time and across categories of recipients.