How do we know if the political and economic elites are in collusion?
By: Laura Arnold
Last updated: Friday, 19 January 2018
Eastern European countries have gone through a momentous period of transformation over the course of the past two and a half decades. Political and economic structures pertaining to communist and socialist regimes were substituted by a series of new institutions, largely moulded on models offered by international organisations and by rules set out by the European Union – which most of the countries aspired (or still aspire) to enter. The extent to which these transformations were carried out and the extent to which the protagonists at their centre have changed is still bitterly disputed (termed ‘shallow Europeanisation’ by Goetz, 2005). Especially in former Yugoslav states, which were affected by a bitter conflict throughout the 1990s, the economic transformations went off the radar and a number of speculations have arisen as per the economic and political power wielded by old and new, domestic and international, actors. Specifically, recent works (Pezdir, 2015) speculate that the involvement of old communist cadres, especially from politics and the secret services, allowed the syphoning off of resources from public enterprises starting from the 1980s, which were later brought back through various methods and constituted the starting capital for those businessmen and politicians making it in the ‘new world’. Is this then a leopardèsque case of “for everything to remain the same, everything has to change” (Di Lampedusa, 1958), or have new players and new game rules emerged?
My doctoral research is concerned with identifying the loopholes that are created during a period of transition to a new economic model, and the opportunities for actors to exploit such loopholes. The geographical area of interest is the territory of former Yugoslavia, which is underexplored in the literature. To these ends, the project sets out to describe the informal practices (as done by Ledeneva in Russia, 2006 and 2013) encountered in the execution of high-worth business deals, in conjunction with elucidating the networks of actors that form them (by employing Social Network Analysis). Throughout the analysis, particular attention will be paid to the various types of capital (Bourdieu, 1986, 1992) that the actors held initially, and the use they made of it. To illustrate this, I will use the prism of high-level business deals – chiefly privatisation processes and FDI – in a particularly lucrative sector for the region, i.e. energy. Data collection from previously existing documentation (archival and investigative) will be complemented by primary research (elite interviews and ethnography).
In terms of wider implications, the ultimate aim of my research is, to put it bluntly, to help provide scientific answers to ‘How do we know if the political and economic elites are in collusion?’ and ‘How does their dishonesty work in practice?’. These are very current questions: anti-establishment sentiment is taking the world by storm, but there is no consensus on how to measure if elite actors are in collusion with each other or not. A challenge in doing so is that, in most cases, we cannot speak of outright corruption. Clearly, considering informality – as my research does – is key in addressing this issue from the core. My work-in-progress methodology can be a starting point to develop a systematic process by which it could become possible to establish the level of collusion of, say, a political candidate vis-à-vis another. While my research addresses specifically countries undergoing economic transition, the ambition is that – if developed appropriately – it could be expanded and used in different contexts.