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Post new topic| Topic: Why is Mallorca so corrupt? |
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| admin 09.07 25-10-2009  Profile Edit Send private message Report this post! |
With hardly a day going by without a corruption scandal hitting the headlines in Mallorca, the islanders have been doing some soul searching. Is corruption and making off with public funds in their DNA? That's the question Diario de Mallorca http://www.diariodemallorca.es/mallorca/2009/10/25/corrupcion-adn/515689.html asks (Sunday, October 25). The answer, obviously is no. But what then accounts for the mind-boggling number of public officials and politicians being dragged in tumbrels before judges to answer for their crimes? Víctor Lapuente Giné, a Spanish political scientist at the University of Gothenburg's Quality of Government Institute, attempts to isolate some of the factors distinguishing Spain and other Mediterranean countries from the more honest north. Cultural difference has nothing to do with it, cautions the professor, writing that that it is no more acceptable to say corruption is just "in our culture" than it was acceptable when people used to say that Catholic or Mediterranean countries were unfit for democracy. Lapuente opts for a structural explanation, above all turning on the number of party political appointees who work in local government. In a typical mid-sized European city of 100,000 to 500,000 people, he writes, perhaps two or three people, including the mayor, depend on the victory of a certain party for their jobs. In a mid-sized Spanish city, the party that wins local elections can give senior posts to hundreds of people. The Consell de Mallorca (Mallorca's island authority) has appointed around 100 party faithful to top posts, the Govern (the Balearic island's authority), more than 300. This means that people need to get rich quick, in case they lose their jobs at the next election, he suggests. It also means that corrupt elected politicians need not fear being denounced by impartial, independent civil servants. Among recent corruption cases in the Balearics are the following cases: Andratx, Plan Territorial, Son Oms, Can Domenge, Ayudas, Bitel II, Palma Arena, Ibiza Centro, Peaje, Scala, Turisme Jove, De Santos, Ibatur, Funeraria de Palma, Rabasco Lapuente recalls the once "stratospheric" levels of corruption witnessed in American city halls in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, now a thing of the past thanks to the managerial, non-partisan way that today's American cities are run. A comment piece in The Economist, however, says that this thesis seems to "ignore such shining examples of machine politics as Chicago". Lapuente concludes that "empirical evidence shows us that you do not need administrations full of employees with permanent contracts to reduce corruption. For example, the two least corrupt countries in 2008, Sweden and New Zealand, scrapped jobs for life for most public sector posts years ago, instead applying the same labour laws as apply to any private sector job". |
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