CORRUPTION Syndromes of Corruption

100 Syndromes of Corruption
global economic trends, were drying up the pool of patronage that had
sustained corrupt networks (see also Guzzini, 1995). Party cashiers were
demanding ever larger sums from business people who found it harder to
pay, and all but the most prosperous began to drop out of the game. Most
business people who talked to the judges were second-rank figures or
lower (Golden, 2002: 49); the bribe-payer whose testimony started the
tangentopoli avalanche ran a local cleaning service in Milan. The young
judges’ new aggressiveness contributed to the collapse of a system that
had been hollowed out over two decades.
Holding the deals together
Parties had been critical to Elite Cartel corruption not only because of the
state benefits they could distribute, but also because they were the guarantors
of the deals that built and sustained elite networks. Those networks
were highly factionalized and contentious, but they shared an
interest in retaining the political power that was the source of all good
things. Collusion was sustained by corrupt deals. But given their illegality,
and the low levels of trust that often existed among factions and their
leaders, how could those deals be enforced?
While corruption was scarcely a secret, the illusion of electoral competition
was important, and the constitutional independence of the Italian
judiciary meant that specific deals and spoils-sharing agreements had to
be concealed. Pizzorno (1993) argues that the parties functioned much
like credit bureaux, providing information on the dependability of various
politicians and factions. They also enforced de facto codes of silence and
honor; those who revealed abuses or failed to carry out their end of a deal
could be dropped from the party list, cut out of the spoils, or handed over
to the judiciary – the latter, perhaps, even doing the party’s image some
good. Parties also negotiated the terms of lottizzazione and shares of
contracts, again reducing conflict and penalizing defectors. At times
political notables were recruited, and paid, to serve as enforcers and
monitors of corrupt agreements (Della Porta and Vannucci, 1999,
2002: 723). In the south, the role of enforcer was often taken over by
organized crime.
Such machinations helped DC elites and their partners share the spoils
and hold on to power, but they also diverted energy and resources from
the parties’ broader political functions. Memberships declined; those
who remained active did so for mercenary reasons, or out of loyalty to a
patron, rather than to fight for a cause. The parties became less rooted in
organic segments of society and on the left–right spectrum, and more like
overlapping bands of business-politicians. In effect they became ‘‘cartel