State capture has become an increasingly prominent concept for describing the systematic subordination of public authority and state institutions to particularistic interests. Yet it is frequently treated as an achieved condition: a nationally bounded pathology, a static institutional outcome, or a synonym for corruption, democratic backsliding or weak governance. This Workshop instead approaches state capture as a dynamic political process that emerges, becomes entrenched, travels across borders, encounters resistance and, under certain conditions, may be reversed or reconfigured. Its aim is to integrate elite, transnational, narrative and recovery perspectives within a common analytical frame.
Research on state capture is dispersed across bodies of scholarship that rarely engage with each other. Corruption research examines particularistic exchanges and institutional manipulation (Mungiu-Pippidi 2006; Kaufmann & Vicente, 2011; Dávid-Barrett 2023); scholarship on democratic erosion and regime transformation focuses on executive aggrandisement and institutional weakening (Bermeo 2016; Lührmann & Lindberg 2019); elite studies investigate elite formation, reproduction and conversion of resources into political power (Ledeneva 2013; Richter & Wunsch 2020); and international political economy and international relations examine foreign influence, transnational finance and cross-border infrastructures (Cooley et al 2018). Political communication illuminates the narratives through which power is legitimised and opposition delegitimised, and the impact of polarisation (Chelidonopoulos 2026; Solaz et al 2019; Svolik 2019). This fragmentation also encourages methodological nationalism: capture is typically diagnosed within individual states, although it may be co-produced through relationships operating locally, nationally and transnationally and sustained by foreign investment, offshore finance, professional intermediaries and international alliances (Innes 2014; Prelec 2020; Dávid-Barrett & Okamura 2025; Heathershaw, Prelec & Mayne 2025). A processual approach can clarify boundaries between capture and corruption, clientelism, oligarchy and democratic backsliding (Grzymala-Busse 2008). Political science has focused attention on the emergence and consolidation of capture rather than its contestation or reversal (Maerz et al 2024; Bianchi et al 2025; Riedl et al 2025). Elections or institutional reform may remove officeholders without dismantling embedded elite networks, administrative practices and legitimating narratives. Bringing these debates together strengthens comparative analysis of actors, mechanisms, trajectories and legacies, while accommodating diverse regional and methodological perspectives.
Bermeo, N. (2016). On democratic backsliding. Journal of Democracy, 27(1), 5-19.
Bianchi, M., Cheeseman, N., & Cyr, J. (2025). The myth of democratic resilience. Journal of Democracy, 36(3), 33-46.
Chelidonopoulos, L. 2016. Conditional loyalty: Partisanship and voter responses to corruption,
Electoral Studies, Volume 102.
Cooley, Alexander, Heathershaw, J. and Sharman, J.C. 2018. "The Rise of Kleptocracy: Laundering Cash, Whitewashing Reputations." Journal of Democracy, 29/1:. 39-53.
Dávid-Barrett, E. (2023). State capture and development: A conceptual framework. Journal of International Relations and Development, 26(2), 224-244.
Dávid-Barrett, E., & Okamura, K. (2025). Does state capture facilitate strategic corruption? Public Integrity, 1-21.
Grzymala-Busse, A. (2008). Beyond clientelism: Incumbent state capture and state formation. Comparative Political Studies, 41(4-5), 638-673.
Heathershaw, J., Prelec, T., & Mayne, T. (2025). Indulging Kleptocracy: British Service Providers, Postcommunist Elites, and the Enabling of Corruption. Oxford University Press.
Innes, A. (2014). The political economy of state capture in Central Europe. Journal of Common Market Studies, 52, 88-104.
Kaufmann, D. and Vicente, P.C. 2011. Legal Corruption. Economics and Politics 23: 195–219.
Lührmann, A., & Lindberg, S. I. (2019). A third wave of autocratization is here: What is new about it? Democratization, 26(7), 1095-1113.
Maerz, S. F., Edgell, A. B., Wilson, M. C., Hellmeier, S., & Lindberg, S. I. (2024). Episodes of regime transformation. Journal of Peace Research, 61(6), 967-984.
Mungiu-Pippidi, A. Corruption: Diagnosis and Treatment. Journal of Democracy 17: 86–99
Riedl, R. B., Friesen, P., McCoy, J., & Roberts, K. (2025). Democratic backsliding, resilience, and resistance. World Politics, 77(1), 151-177.
Prelec, T. (2020). The vicious circle of corrosive capital, authoritarian tendencies and state capture in the Western Balkans. Journal of Regional Security, 15(2), 167-198.
Richter, S., & Wunsch, N. (2020). Money, power, glory: the linkages between EU conditionality and state capture in the Western Balkans. Journal of European Public Policy, 27(1), 41-62.
Solaz, H., De Vries, C. E., & De Geus, R. A. (2019). In-group loyalty and the punishment of corruption. Comparative Political Studies, 52(6), 896-926
Svolik, M. W. (2019). Polarization versus democracy. Journal of Democracy, 30(3), 20-32.
Endorsement from Standing Group:
Dear Liz and Tena,
Thank you again for sending us your proposal. We think it is excellent, and we are very happy to endorse the workshop on behalf of the ECPR Standing Group on (Anti-)Corruption and Integrity.
The proposal is strong and timely, and the workshop fits very well with the Standing Group. We particularly like the dynamic, process-oriented approach to state capture and how you bring together corruption research with work on elites, transnational actors, narratives, democratic transformation, and contestation and recovery.
It is a very convincing proposal, and we are happy to support it.
Fingers crossed for the application!
Best wishes from us,
Ina
1: How can state capture be understood as a dynamic process and distinguished from related concepts?
2: Who captures institutions, using which resources, and how do elite coalitions change over time?
3: How do domestic elites, external actors and transnational enablers interact in state capture?
4: How do narratives legitimise capture, and affect state capacity and inequality?
5: When and how is capture contested or reversed, and what happens to capturing networks afterwards?
1: State capture as a relational, temporal and dynamic process, and its conceptual boundaries
2: Elite formation, coalition-building and reproduction across transitions and critical junctures
3: Institutional and sectoral capture and its effects on state capacity, policy and inequality
4: Co-production of capture by domestic elites, external actors and transnational enablers
5: Transnational finance, professional intermediaries, strategic corruption and corrosive capital
6: Narratives, polarisation, nationalism and the legitimation or contestation of capture
7: Contestation, electoral turnover, elite adaptation, institutional recovery and 'uncapturing'
8: Methodological innovation: networks, prosopography, ethnography, quantitative methods and OSINT
