Political Corruption in Transitional Croatia: The Pecularities of a Model

Abstract

The article addresses the specific characteristics of political corruption in Croatia, from the time on when the country gained its independence in 1991 after the collapse of the Yugoslav Federation and the “Yugoslav self-managing socialist model”. Political corruption in Croatia shares common traits with the phenomenon as it appears in other transitional countries, but it also shows unique characteristics that derive from a privatization model that was implemented during unsettled political and social conditions, i.e., the war in former Yugoslavia and the appearance of a new political class legitimized by the war and the struggle for independence. The authoritarian political regime established during and immediately after the war relied, mostly, on the new political elite that gained enormous wealth owing to a privatization process that favored the political nomenclature and nationalist elite and distributed the formerly socially owned capital into targeted private hands. In the years following the demise of the Croatian Democratic Union, the nationalist party led by President Tuđman, political corruption has not been eradicated and it still remains a serious problem that affects the performance of Croatian democracy and its readiness for EU accession. The author tries to identify the causes, the forms and the consequences of political corruption in Croatia, as well as the instruments of combating this phenomenon. He also aims to specify ways to accommodate to EU conditionality, and methods of raising awareness to the dangers of political corruption in the political discourse of the country.