Ronald Kroeze

Tegenwoordig staat Nederland bekend als een van de minst corrupte landen ter wereld. De vestiging van vrije verkiezingen, een moderne markteconomie, een professionele bureaucratie en een democratische rechtsstaat ging echter gepaard met corruptieschandalen, zo blijkt uit deze geschiedenis van corruptie en goed bestuur tussen 1848 en 1940. Dat de liberale minister van Financiën zijn voorstel voor een belastingverhoging voor Limburg introk om Limburgse kiezers te paaien, leidde tot de Limburgse brievenaffaire (1865). Bij het Billitonschandaal (1882-1892) floot het parlement de gouverneur van Indië terug omdat hij een onrechtmatige en schadelijke concessie aan een onderneming had verleend. Het ingrijpen van de katholieke minister van Justitie in een strafrechtelijk onderzoek naar misstanden in het katholieke Oss leidde tot de zaak-Oss (1938/39). Wat opvalt is, dat in Nederland corruptieschandalen als morele in plaats van strafrechtelijke kwesties werden behandeld. Daarmee ontstond een bestuurlijke traditie die tot op heden merkbaar is.

Politieke corruptieschandalen en goed bestuur in Nederland, 1848-1940

Een kwestie van politieke moraliteit

André Vitória

Guy Geltner

"Anticorruption in History is the first major collection of individual and comparative case studies on how societies and polities in and beyond European history defined legitimate power in terms of fighting corruption and designed specific mechanisms to pursue that agenda"--Editeur.

From Antiquity to the Modern Era

Anticorruption in History

Anticorruption in History is a timely and urgent book: corruption is widely seen today as a major problem we face as a global society, undermining trust in government and financial institutions, economic efficiency, the principle of equality before the law and human wellbeing in general. Corruption, in short, is a major hurdle on the "path to Denmark" a feted blueprint for stable and successful statebuilding. The resonance of this view explains why efforts to promote anticorruption policies have proliferated in recent years. But while the subject of corruption and anticorruption has captured the attention of politicians, scholars, NGOs and the global media, scant attention has been paid to the link between corruption and the change of anticorruption policies over time and place, with the attendant diversity in how to define, identify and address corruption. Economists, political scientists and policy-makers in particular have been generally content with tracing the differences between low-corruption and high-corruption countries in the present and enshrining them in all manner of rankings and indices. The long-term trends—social, political, economic, cultural—potentially undergirding the position of various countries plays a very small role. Such a historical approach could help explain major moments of change in the past as well as reasons for the success and failure of specific anticorruption policies and their relation to a country's image (of itself or as construed from outside) as being more or less corrupt. It is precisely this scholarly lacuna that the present volume intends to begin to fill. The book addresses a wide range of historical contexts: Ancient Greece and Rome, Medieval Eurasia, Italy, France, Great Britain and Portugal as well as studies on anticorruption in the Early Modern and Modern era in Romania, the Ottoman Empire, the Netherlands, Germany, Denmark, Sweden and the former German Democratic Republic.

Pieter Wagenaar

Toon Kerkhoff

Michel Hoenderboom

This book represents the first extensive discussion of 300 years of change, continuity and diversity in Dutch corruption and public morality between 1648 and 1940. A collection of rich historical case studies on public and political debates surrounding supposedly corrupt acts of administrators and politicians is set against the backdrop of the major political and socio-economic developments of the time. As the book moves from early modern beginnings of the Dutch Republic to the age of Enlightenment and into “modern” politics, it tells the story of how, when and why Dutch political-administrative thought and practice concerning “good” and “bad” government actually evolved. It provides the reader with an understanding of past and present ideas on Dutch corruption and public morality, and places these within a wider European historical context. The book will primarily appeal to those interested in European and Dutch political-administrative history, the history of corruption, anti-corruption, public values, and ethics and integrity.

Ronald Kroeze

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