Centre 1/2015 – Call for Papers

Issue Theme:
Corruption, Clientelism and Informality in Economics, Politics and Society

Deadline for submissions: 31. 12. 2014
Contact: stred@mua.cas.cz
Publication languages: Czech, English, German
Journal website: http://www.mua.cas.cz/index.php/en/journals/centre
Full text of the journal: www.ceeol.com
Abstracts: http://cejsh.icm.edu.pl

Everyday, we are flooded by news of corruption scandals and informal clientelist structures to such an extent that it would seem that corruption and clientelism are modern phenomena, which stem from our current system of government. In fact, these problems have been connected with the wielding of power since Antiquity.
Nevertheless, the 20th century changed the patterns of corruption and clientelism. The factors that set this in motion were the expansion of the state bureaucracy, the broadened redistribution, changes in the political party system, the transformation of political parties or the wave of institutional changes after the First World War. Similarly, the significance of corruption, clientelism and informal relationships followed the same trajectory. Since the beginning of the 20th century, the focus has been on bureaucracy (Max Weber), which then swung toward totalitarian regimes, the process of decolonization, power structures and the role of elites. The return to liberalism in the 1980s opened up the question of the size of the state, the concept of a welfare state and finally in the 1990s attention turned to the question of the transformation of former communist regimes into free market states. In the last few decades, political parties have replaced bureaucracy as the main suspects of corrupt and clientelist behavior. Across the disciplines, there is a trend to identify the main sources of corruption and clientelism in the relationships between political parties, economic elites and governments.

The Střed/Centre journal is announcing that the theme of its first issue of 2015 is corruption, clientelism and informality in politics, economics and society. It welcomes interdisciplinary approaches to these phenomena and analysis of their discourses, consequences and contexts. The editors especially welcome studies that will focus on one of the following thematic fields:

- the transformation of the perception and definition of corruption and related concepts (clientelism, bribery, conflict of interest and lobbying)
- corruption and clientelism in the process of institutional changes
- corruption, clientelism and financing of political parties
- corruption, clientelism and distributive state functions
- the role of informality in the various political regimes in the 19th and 20th centuries