Crime as a Cultural Problem. The Relevance of Perceptions of Corruption to Crime Prevention. A Comparative Cultural Study in the EU-Candidate States and the EU-States Germany and Greece

The research project presented here aims to develop means to optimise corruption prevention in the EU. The urgency of such a project is reflected in the fact that corruption holds the potential to retard seriously the process of the Community’s enlargement and integration, even to the extent of threatening the very core of its concept of social order. The prevention policies that have been developed by the EU and implemented so far within individual member countries have in general been characterised by legislative, administrative and police force measures. These are based on a definition of corruption prevention developed in political and administrative institutions that, for its implementation, rely on a “top-down“ procedure. The project purports to conduct not an inquiry into the nature of corruption “as such“, but rather into the perceptions of corruption held by political and administrative decision-makers in specific regions and cultures, those held by actors representing various institutions and authorities, and above all by the citizens and the media in European societies. The project proceeds from the assumption that the considerably varying perceptions of corruption, determined as they are by “cultural dispositions”, have significant influence on a country’s respective awareness of the problem and thereby on the success of any preventative measures. For this reason, the project investigates the “fit” between “institutionalised“ prevention policies and how these are perceived in “daily practice“, as well as how EU candidate countries and EU member countries as a result handle the issue of corruption. In a final step, the research project intends to make specific recommendations for readjusting this “fit” and to investigate which role the media play within this process in each individual country. 1. Detailed Objectives of the Research Project The goal of this sociological research project is to deepen the knowledge of the phenomenon of corruption in the countries designated above. In doing so, it will follow a twofold line of inquiry: Dr. Angelos Giannakopoulos, University of Konstanz, Faculty of History and Sociology, Department of Sociology, Germany initiated the research project presented here and participates in the project management. The research proposal has been successfully evaluated within the 6 Framework Programme of the European Commission and the project management at the University of Konstanz negotiates at the moment with the European Commission in order to finalise the research contract for the period January 2006 – December 2008. The members of the research consortium are: 1. University of Konstanz, Germany: Prof. Dr. Hans-Georg Soeffner (person in charge of the overall project), Dr. habil. Dirk Tänzler, Dr. Angelos Giannakopoulos (case study Germany and project management), 2. University of Tübingen: Dr. Dr. Konstadinos Maras (case study Germany and methods management), 3. Center for Liberal Strategies, Bulgaria: Dr. Daniel Smilov, Rashko Dorosiev, M. A. (case study Bulgaria), 4. Research Institute for Quality of Life (Romanian Academy), Romania: Prof. Dr. Ioan Marginean, Iuliana Precupetu, M. A. (case study Romania), 5. University of Galatasaray, Turkey: Prof. Dr. Ahmet İnsel, Zeynep Sarlak, M. A., Esat Bozyiğit, M. A., Serdar Semen, M. A. (case study Turkey), 6. National School of Public Administration and Panteion University, Greece: Prof. Dr. Panagiotis Karkatsoulis and Prof. Dr. Effi Lambropoulou. A further participation regards the South East European Studies Programme at St Antony ́s College of the University of Oxford in order to additionally include in the planned research the United Kingdom.