The unwanted legacy. In search of historical roots of corruption in Poland

Abstract

The paper deals with different interpretations of roots of contemporary Polish corruption. The authors discuss two competing theories developed by Polish scholars. The first one links the sources of corruption with both the culture of corruption developed in the peasant society and the inefficiency of the political institutions of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. The second one connects them mostly with institutional changes that happened during the Communist period. Recent data and the path of evolution of corruptive behavior after Communism suggest that the latter interpretation is more plausible.

Keywords

• Poland
• corruption
• post-Communism
• cronyism
• amoralfamilism
• backward society