Theorising political corruption in transition Eastern Europe

The thesis has three aims. First, it engages in a theoretical discussion about how to define corruption and how to explain its occurrence. Second, it seeks to trace how privatisation policy was shaped and implemented in the first decade of privatisation in Croatia and Hungary, with reference to qualitative data gathered during interviews with elite informants and a review of literature about the period and the policy. This evidence is interpreted in light of the preceding theoretical discussion. Third, it suggests a new way of understanding behaviour that is commonly identified as corrupt, by modelling the choices that individuals face as exchange decisions and arguing that social networks provide incentives and constraints which help to explain some of the patterns of conduct observed in the case studies.