Systemic Corruption and Autocracy: The Relationship of Regime Type and Dominant Forms of Corruption

Building on the findings of several projects conducted in the post-communist region, the presentation offers a typology with four ideal types of corruption: 1) free market corruption, where private actors bribe lower-level public administrators for preferential treatment; 2) bottom-up state capture, where private actors bribe or blackmail higher-level political actors for larger gains; 3) top-down state capture, where it is a local political actor who forms a patronal network and captures the part of the state belonging to him; and 4) the criminal state, where corruption is monopolized by the head of state, creating a single-pyramid patronal network and operating the state as a criminal organization. Different types of post-communist regimes (liberal democracy, patronal democracy, and patronal autocracy) exhibit different patterns of corruption with either of the four types becoming the dominant form of corruption. The further a democracy goes on the way of autocratization, the more corruption ceases to be a deviance or “failure” of the government and becomes a system-constituting feature. Hungary exemplifies such change, while other countries in Central Europe have avoided this fate and still feature the dominance of lower evolutionary types of corruption.