Tag Archives: anticorruption parties

Anticorruption Parties in Central and Eastern Europe: Why Do They Fail, and How Can They Succeed?

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Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) has seen both highly unstable party systems and high rates of corruption. As a result, lots of new parties keep popping up, and an anticorruption focus has proven to be a great way for them to get noticed. In fact, studies have found that new parties are more successful when they center their message on fighting political misconduct.

Among those that actually win, some of these anticorruption parties have been modestly successful in passing reforms. But many other anticorruption parties have floundered when in office. Part of the problem is that these parties often make lofty promises but fail to put forward actual, workable plans. Enough voters will still vote for the “anticorruption” party as a way of expressing disapproval for the incumbent government, without necessarily paying close attention to whether the anticorruption party and its leaders are willing or able to follow through on their promises. As a result, numerous CEE countries have had bad experiences with anticorruption parties that, when in office, appear to have little idea how to govern differently from their predecessors—and sometimes little apparent interest in doing so. Consider a few examples:

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Can Slovakia’s New Anticorruption Movement Avoid Common Pitfalls?

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In late February 2018, news that Slovakian anticorruption journalist Jan Kuciak was shot to death at home—the first murder of a journalist in Slovakia’s modern history—shocked the country and world. Slovakians demanded that the government, controlled by the corruption-plagued Direction-Social Democracy (SMER-SD) party, investigate the brazen attack and hold the perpetrators accountable. Tensions escalated in the days following Kuciak’s murder after his last unpublished story surfaced, exposing connections between advisors to SMER-SD Prime Minister Robert Fico and a prominent Italian organized crime syndicate. Fico resigned shortly thereafter, a development which proved to be the beginning of the end of SMER-SD’s twelve-year reign. By the February 2020 general election, voters decisively ousted SMER-SD in favor of the emerging anticorruption-focused Ordinary People and Independent Personalities Party (OLaNO).

Much of OLaNO’s appeal stems from party leader and current prime minister Igor Matovic, a self-made media mogul. His signature communication method was posting videos exposing graft to social media (similar to Russian anticorruption hero Alexei Navalny, whom this blog recently discussed here). In one of Matovic’s most widely viewed videos, he filmed himself in Cannes outside the luxury home of a former SMER-SD politician holding signs saying “Property of the Slovak Republic” and alleging that the home was illegally bought with taxpayer money. Matovic also traveled to Cyprus and posted a video of mailboxes belonging to shell corporations connected to Penta, a multi-million-euro investment group; the video claimed that Penta had used the companies to evade 400 million euros in taxes. Each of Matovic’s videos garnered several hundred thousand views in a country of less than 5.5 million, which helps explain why the February 2020 election boasted Slovakia’s highest voter turnout in 20 years.

Now, just one year into its mandate, OLaNO and its coalition are hard at work rooting out corruption. The government arrested and prosecuted dozens of current and former public officials involved in graft. Those targeted include high-level figures, such as the former Finance Minister, the head of the State Material Reserves Administration, the Director of the Agricultural Paying Agency, and more than a dozen judges, including a member of the Supreme Court and the former Deputy Minister of Justice. OLaNO is also pursuing a number of legislative efforts, including aggressive judicial reform.

Can Matovic and OLaNO finally cleanse Slovakia’s reputation as the corruption “black hole of Europe”? Maybe. But while the story of an outsider stepping forward in the wake of a national scandal and securing electoral victory with an anticorruption political agenda may be a first in Slovakia’s modern history, it is not an unknown tale on the world stage—and (spoiler alert!) the story often doesn’t have a happy ending. To be sure, difficult political dynamics and entrenched domestic corruption can hamper even the most earnest anticorruption efforts. Nevertheless, examples from other countries provide some cautionary tales of how populist leaders elected on anticorruption platforms can sometimes lose their way, and offer some lessons that Matovic, OLaNO, and their supporters should take to heart going forward. Three lessons in particular stand out:

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Are Anticorruption Parties Doomed to Fail?: Purity, Pragmatism, and Reflections on India’s AAP

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In February, I wrote a post about India’s first official anticorruption party, the AAP (Aam Aadmi Party or Common Man Party) and its landslide victory in the Delhi elections that put its leader, Arvind Kejriwal at the helm of the capital’s government. In my earlier post, I was cautiously optimistic about the potential for the AAP’s electoral success to lead to a major breakthrough in the fight against corruption in India. My optimism was based on the palpable excitement among voters, the outpouring of support for Kejriwal, and the AAP’s zealous promises to deliver on its anticorruption platform.

It’s now been a hundred days since the election results were announced. I was hoping, at this point, to do a post reviewing the AAP’s progress in instituting meaningful anticorruption reform and pushing for more fundamental changes in Indian politics. Alas, although the AAP has been getting a lot of attention in its first few months in office, it’s not for the reasons that I (or most of the AAP’s supporters) had hoped: the party has been consumed by infighting, allegations of dirty politics, and a general perception of dysfunction. And while the AAP’s struggles have been particularly dispiriting, it turns out that the general pattern is not that unusual: many anticorruption parties (ACPs), or parties with primary anticorruption platforms, have emerged all around the world in the last decade or two; these parties often gain power through strong rhetoric and popular support, but very quickly stumble, splinter, and often fail to make any real headway. So was my early optimism (and that of millions of Delhi voters) misplaced? Are ACPs, the AAP included, ultimately destined to fail as governing parties? Continue reading →

Why Rational Anticorruption Voters Might Not Support the Anticorruption Candidate

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As some readers of this blog are likely aware, Fordham law professor Zephyr Teachout is challenging the Andrew Cuomo, New York’s incumbent governor, in the state’s Democratic primary, to be held tomorrow. One of her main campaign themes is corruption: Her campaign emphasizes corruption in the Cuomo administration both in the narrow sense of raising concerns about unethical and possibly unlawful conduct in New York state government (as well as Governor Cuomo’s controversial decision to disband the Moreland Commission, which had been looking into these issues), and also “corruption” in the broader sense of excessive influence of wealthy interests and the distorting effect this has on politics. Teachout herself concedes that if she wins it would be the “upset of the century,” and indeed most political prognosticators give her virtually no chance of winning. Why not?

It’s true, of course, that Teachout has no prior experience in electoral politics and is up against a savvy and well-funded incumbent. But there’s a bigger problem for her — and for any insurgent anticorruption candidate or party — that derives from the nature of the U.S. electoral system that Nobel Laureate Roger Myerson identified over two decades ago in a technical game theory paper on how electoral institutions affect the success or failure of insurgent anticorruption candidates. Although Myerson’s analysis does not correspond perfectly to the New York primary (for reasons I will explain in a moment), it is nonetheless enlightening–not only for the challenges faced by Teachout, but for anticorruption parties more generally. Continue reading →

Lessons from Europe for India’s Anticorruption Party

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Last December, a year-old political party formed by anticorruption activists came to power in India’s capital, after a startling debut performance in Delhi’s local assembly elections. Within days, the new government, led by a former tax man named Arvind Kejriwal, announced a series of anti-graft investigations. Only 49 days into its term, however, Kejriwal and his colleagues resigned, ostensibly because their minority government could not push through an anticorruption bill. The party now has its eyes set on India’s parliamentary elections, set to occur this May.

Much has been written about India’s mercurial Aam Aadmi (“Common Man”) Party (AAP): its origins, its dedicated volunteers, its transparent campaign finance procedures, its vague policies regarding anything but corruption, and its missteps (some of which Russel Stamets discusses in a useful recent post on the FCPA Blog). Despite this, there has been little discussion regarding AAP’s place as a single-issue party in India’s deeply fractured political landscape, and little attempt to draw lessons from the successes and failures of anticorruption parties in other parts of the world.  Yet the experience of anticorruption parties in Central and Eastern Europe–as documented and analyzed by Andreas Bågenholm –offers both hope and important lessons to AAP and its supporters. Continue reading →