Executive Leaders' Corruption in Contemporary Democracies

Corruption cases involving top politicians seem to affect the most of contemporary democracies and could no longer be limited to non-democracies. In Brazil, three former Presidents – Fernando Collor de Mello, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, Dilma Rousseff – were accused of corruption in the Petrobras affair. Lula’s imprisonment had big implications on the 2018 national election. In Portugal, the socialist leader, and former Prime Minister José Sòcrates has been arrested in 2014 after an investigation for corruption, fraud and money laundering. He would give commercial benefits to a construction group during and after his office (2005-2011). Besides, the former Slovenian Prime Minister Janez Jansa has been sentenced to two years in prison for bribery in a 2006 arms deal, because of the purchase of 135 armored vehicles from the Finnish defense group Patria while he was Prime Minister. Additionally, the Panama Papers affair has involved top politicians from all over the world, triggering serious political consequences. For instance, public protests against the former Icelandic President David Gunnlaugsonn – accused of hiding huge sums of money in an offshore account – compelled him to step down from office. Executive Leaders’ Corruption in Contemporary Democracies Luigi Rullo However, while a growing body of researchers analyzes the causes and consequences of political corruption, less has been written about executive leaders’ corruption. By recognizing that «the bulk of studies of public leadership are essentially the studies of the lives and particular characteristics and behaviors of individuals occupying high public offices»5 , we cannot overlook how relevant comparative analysis of political leaders is and the issue of high-level political corruption which represents one of the major shortcomings challenging contemporary democracies. Currently, there are no comprehensive studies on this subject and little information is available on the dimension of this phenomenon. Therefore, this paper aims to understand and explore this phenomenon by focusing on 82 Presidents and Prime Ministers from 14 full or flawed democracies over a period dating from 2000 to 2018. Particularly, it refers to Presidents in semi-presidential or presidential regimes and to Prime Ministers in parliamentary regimes. The object of the study is executive leaders’ corruption. In a broad sense, we consider corruption the abuse of entrusted power for private gain. This paper presents a first insight based on field work notes about executive leaders’ corruption and it is structured in three parts. Firstly, it explores how political corruption represents a nexus between personalization of politics, magistracy, media, and lobbies in the era of personal politics. Secondly, it shows relevant empirical evidence of leaders’ corruption and its consequences. It argues that in a phase of personalized politics and less structured parties, executive leaders are increasingly involved in corruption cases. Therefore, it aims to achieve a better understanding of the transformations that are taking place within contemporary democracies and it stimulates further research on these topics.