FIGHTING CORRUPTION IN POLISH AND CZECH LEGAL CULTURES

Abstract

Corruption remains a serious problem in today’s world, despite the worldwide attention it gets for some time.1 It undermines democracy and the rule of law in many states. How to fight corruption is debated at the regional, national and international level. The problem of corruption not only exists in the so-called developing countries, but also in modern states. Especially in the Central and Eastern European countries (CEE) fighting corruption is on the agenda for quite some time. Establishing the rule of law and democracy took priority after 1989, and together with the establishment of free market mechanisms were among the main conditions for accession to the European Union. Part and parcel of that package was to take up seriously the combat of corruption.
In this article we will concentrate on the level of and the fight against corruption in two CEE countries, namely Poland and the Czech Republic. The comparison is interesting because there is a significant difference in the level of detected corruption between these two countries, despite the fact that both are situated in Central Europe, have a common communist history and are now members of the European Union. Our hypothesis is that we may understand the difference between the two countries in terms of legal culture. This means we will also address the question what ‘legal culture’ is and how the concept may be useful in legal analysis. For our concept of legal culture, we will make use of the indexes of national cultures as defined in the research of Hofstede, Hofstede and Minkow Cultures and Organizations.