The aim of the conference organised by the SNF funded chair „Politische Korruption in Bern und Venedig, 1400-1700“ was to fathom the field of electoral corruption. Therefore, the conference brought together historians, mainly PhD students and postdoctoral researchers, who either study (political) corruption or electoral systems. While focussing on the early modern period, the conference included one contribution to the ancient Roman Republic and several papers to the transition period to modernity. Accordingly the conference asked for cases of electoral fraud and its societal processing in specific settings, but also continuities from the Early Modern Period to the 19th and 20th century.
The contributions were divided into four panels, which allowed comparing different settings – the ecclesiastical sphere, monarchies and republics (Panels 1, 2 and 4) – as well as different time periods (Panel 3).
The first panel was opened by BERTRAND MARCEAU (Paris) who presented a case study on the election of the new abbot of the Cistercian monastery Cîteaux in 1625. Since the election had to be repeated three times, it is especially well known and documented. The three candidates were supported by different interest groups such as important families, the French king or Roman cardinals. Even though the complex electoral process cannot be reconstructed in detail, the election of the third candidate – the former abbot of Saint-Sulpice-en-Bugey – may be traced back to corrupt practices, since he was able to mobilize the most powerful family network. However, in a long term perspective, Marceau argued, the winning party lost the “battle of communication”, as in the following years corruption was raised as an argument to question the legitimacy of the election.
By focussing on papal elections in the Late Medieval and the Early Modern Period, OLIVIER CHRISTIN (Neuenburg) connected the history of corruption and the history of betting and lottery. Papal elections were the object of speculations and bets, even though those practices were criminalized by the Catholic Church. During the conclave, “bookmakers” in Rome reacted sensibly on rumours and speculations about the election outcome circulating in Rome, and they were said to have enough power and information to influence the elections themselves. Using the example of the election of pope Clement VII (1523) Christin argued that cardinals as well used bets as a possibility to win votes for their candidate without being suspected of simony.
Both papers of the second panel focussed on monarchies in Central Europe. KATEŘINA PRAŽÁKOVÁ (České Budějovice) compared the strategies of Habsburg and French diplomats in the struggle for the Polish Crown in 1572/73. The Habsburg diplomats, foremost William of Rosenberg, tried to persuade Polish noblemen by offering them generous briberies. However, he avoided to make binding long term promises. In contrast, the French diplomat Jean de Monluc convinced Polish nobility with those very promises, such as positions at the future royal court, annual payments in the Polish treasure, trade privileges for Polish merchants and scholarships for students at French universities. As the outcome of the election showed, French long-term patronage apparently was more convincing than Habsburg short-term bribery. Whether those strategies may be qualified as corruption or were on the contrary part of regular election campaigning and therefore have to be seen within a culture of material transfer was part of the following discussion.
The contribution of KATEŘINA DUFKOVÁ (Prague) did not deal with voting procedures as commonly known, but with the appointments of Provincial Officials as administrators of Moravia by the Emperor in late 16th and early 17th century. Those elections were characterised by only little formal requirements: Moravian nobility participated in the nominations by sending ballot papers with their suggestions to the Emperor. Those ballot papers, Dufková argued, originally manifested the participation and involvement of Moravian Estates and nobility in the administration of their country, but became in the course of time a mean of royal policy, as the monarch had considerable freedom to choose the Provincial Officials he preferred.
The presentations of the third panel dealt with electoral fraud in France and Britain in the 19th and 20th century, and asked for continuities from the Early Modern Period to “Modernity”. MALCOM CROOK (Keele) and TOM CROOK (Oxford) compared definitions, practices as well as the contesting of corruption in Britain and France from around 1830 to 1914, a period characterized in both countries by the development of more inclusive franchises, the formation of political parties and the change of the social standing of candidates. In the light of social and political change, corruption was newly defined in the law of both countries. According to normative sources, three kinds of practices were characterized as corrupt: Influence through “festive largesse” for instance, inducement by bribery and payment of money and intimidation through violence or threats of withdrawal of property. Nevertheless, corruption was often regarded as an accepted customary practice which was only partly illegalized and challenged by new concepts such as “electoral purity”. In this sense, the referents concluded, corruption in its new meaning and definition was a product of democratization.
NATHALIE DOMPNIER (Lyon) presented on electoral corruption in France in a similar period of time (1848-1958), but focussed on the punishment of corrupt behaviour. While distinguishing electoral judges (juge de l’élection) and penal judges (juge pénal), Dompnier argued that corruption or – more general – fraud was considered a political rather than a juridical problem. Only few cases were judged by penal courts, whereas a significant number of cases was put to electoral courts. These judges, in France synonymous with the Parliament (chambre des députés), did not condemn or punish individuals, but declared the (in)validation of the electoral results.
CRISTINA ROSILLO LOPEZ (Sevilla) opened the session on electoral corruption in republics. She explained how and why Ancient Roman discourse on electoral corruption survived beyond the Roman Republic. Although a set of laws against electoral misconduct (Ambitus) such as the secret ballot election (lex Gabinia) or the prohibition of games, banquets and hiring escorts in times of elections had developed since the second century B.C., a certain degree of corruption was tolerated. Authors such as Cicero, Sallust or Lucan saw this systemic corruption as a threat for the civic harmony. Based on this discourse, Machiavelli and other early modern political theorists interpreted electoral corruption as the main reason for the failure of the Roman Republic and used the Roman example as a warning for contemporaneous republics.
MAUD HARIVEL (Bern) explained the complex election procedures of the Republic of Venice, which, in theory, aimed to ensure that only the most deserving patricians were elected as public officials. Nevertheless, in practice several ways to influence the election results existed. Most common were solicitations for votes, often accompanied by gifts, and electoral arrangements among the candidates. Furthermore, in the 18th century it was a widespread practice to distribute the offices within clientele networks before the official elections. As DORIT RAINES (Venice) argued, such networks allowed the patrician families of Venice to undermine the restriction of the electoral system without being involved in illicit actions. Raines detected two main long-term strategies to establish social pressure groups: patronage and marriage. Held together by strong social ties, this “advocacy groups” were highly able to take influence on political decisions. While laws and electoral procedures successfully contained individual corruption, these social-structural forms of electoral corruption could hardly be avoided by legislation.
In his case study on the election of Benedetto Luxoro as a consul in Marseilles, DANILO PEDEMONTE (Genoa) pointed out that also in the electoral process of the Republic of Genoa power groups and social networks played an important role. 10 May 1759 Luxoro was elected by the Senate, but due to some formal failures, a second ballot was necessary, in which one of his concurrents was appointed as consul. However, Luxoro finally managed to be elected in August 1759 by mobilizing his connections to several chancellors and officers. In the Republic of Genoa, as in many other early modern republics, offices such as the consulate in Marseilles could be a source of social and economic capital. Therefore, elections were highly competitive and influenced by campaigns of self-promotion.
As RAPHAËL BARAT (Lyon) explained, in the Republic of Geneva a wide range of practices to court votes or rather to displace competitors existed. For example, at the elections of 1671 several pamphlets circulated in order to denunciate candidates. Furthermore, recommendations and buying of votes were common even though they were forbidden by law. According to Barat, this discloses the limits of a macrohistorical approach to explain early modern elections.
Similar to Ancient Rome, debates on the failure of the electoral system in the City and Republic of Berne were connected with a more general discourse on the principle of governance and distribution of power. Referring to Robert Michels’ “Iron law of oligarchy”, FLORIAN SCHMITZ (Bern) analysed how elections furthered the monopolisation of knowledge, economic power and political influence by a decreasing number of patrician families. As a formal procedure, elections, on the one hand, legitimized the occupation of offices. On the other hand, due to the insufficiency of these formal procedures social networks and economic power had become crucial to get such offices. Thus, only the most influential families had a chance to consolidate their (political) power through offices.
In his conclusive note, JEAN-CLAUDE WAQUET (Paris) stressed the difficulty to generalize the phenomena of electoral corruption. Practices of corruption such as bribery or buying votes might have been similar in different contexts. Nevertheless, the presented case studies on different countries, time periods and political systems showed that electoral corruption was always connected to specific normative discourses. Therefore, a comparative perspective as chosen for this conference is a fruitful approach to understand the characteristics of elections and electoral corruption in a specific (political) setting.
As a round-table organised as part of the conference has shown, electoral corruption is still a prominent issue in current political debates. Nowadays, “corruption” is widely used to explain the lack of democracy as well as to deplore failures within democratic institutions. However, the contributors of the conference have detected practices, which from this contemporary point of view could be qualified as corrupt, in such different institutional settings as monarchies, the ecclesiastical sphere, aristocratic republics and representative democracies. Whether these practices actually were considered as illegal and therefore as “corrupt” depended on specific moral and legal discourses. Thus, the conference stressed the importance to bring together praxeological and discursive approaches to understand electoral corruption as a historical phenomenon.
Conference Overview:
Opening
Simona Slanička (Bern) / Maud Harivel (Bern) / Florian Schmitz (Bern)
Panel 1: Corruption in the Ecclesiastical Sphere
Chair: Simona Slanička (Bern)
Bertrand Marceau (Paris), Élection et Corruption au Monastère. Le triple Scrutin de Cîteaux (1625)
Olivier Christin (Neuchâtel), La Simonie comme Catégorie de Description des Élections par Corruption
Panel 2 : Elections and the Monarchy
Chair: Hillard von Thiessen (Rostock)
Kateřina Pražákova (České Budějovice), The Habsburg Empire and the French Kingdom in the Struggle for the Polish Crown
Kateřina Dufková (Prague), Between the King and the Estates. Elections of the Officials of the Land in Early Modern Moravia
Panel 3: On the road to “Modernity”?
Chair: Niels Grüne (Innsbruck)
Malcolm Crook (Keele) / Tom Crook (Oxford), Contesting “corruption”. Electoral Morality and Practice in Britain and France, c. 1830-1914
Nathalie Dompnier (Lyon), La corruption électorale face à ses juges. Justice repressive et justive restitutive en France, 1848-1958
Panel 4: Republics, Elections, Corruption
Chair: Christian Windler (Bern)
Cristina Rosillo Lopez (Sevilla), The Ancient Roman Way to win Election. Practices and Discourse of Electoral Corruption during the Late Roman Republic (2nd-1st century BCE)
Maud Harivel (Bern), Désintéresser les élections. Les mesures anti-fraudes dans la république de Venise
Chair: Simona Slanička (Bern)
Dorit Raines (Venice), The Formation of Advocacy Groups in the Venetian Republic, or how to avoid illicit Exchange of Favors during Elections
Danilo Pedemonte (Genoa), Seven Ballots for a Consul. The Election of Benedetto Luxoro as Genoese Consul in Marseilles (1758-1759)
Chair: Niels Grüne (Innsbruck)
Raphaël Barat (Lyon), Les Brigues Électorales dans la République de Genève à la fin du XVIIe siècle
Florian Schmitz (Bern), Obstacle or Catalyse? Elections in the Oligarchic Process (Berne, 1500-1700)
Conference Synopsis
Jean-Claude Waquet (Paris)