Corruption, anti-corruption and human rights: the case of Poland’s integrity system

Abstract

Serious tensions can arise in a country's integrity system when anticorruption policy also poses a threat to fundamental values and standards under which a democratic state operates, in particular human and civil rights. This article examines these tensions using the case of Poland, where the risk arises, in particular, in situations of 'moral panic', where intense public and political discourse around a specific issue with a strong sense of threat to society also generates expectations that policy and decision makers will quickly solve the problem. With the Polish National Integrity System (NIS) assessment as a background, we examine the need and the scope for developing research and evaluation instruments which help reduce the risk that anticorruption initiatives will undermine the basis of a democratic state, with recommendations in this regard.

Corruption research: A need for an integrated approach

“…Effective anti-corruption agencies are especially vital for substantive anti-corruption efforts as they can independently focus efforts to combat corruption (Gregory, 2015; Meagher, 2004; Transparency International, 2015; United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, 2012). The anti-corruption agencies are especially effective in democracies where they are supported in their anti-corruption efforts by free media and robust democratic processes (Krajewska and Makowski, 2017; Kuris, 2015; Quah, 2017). Effective e-governments can lower overall corruption levels in the country (Agarwal and Maiti, 2020; Funk and Owen, 2020; Sanmukhiya, 2019), although some scholars find that e-governance is effective at reducing corruption only if the country has a strong rule of law (Park and Kim, 2019).…”