POWRE: Political Corruption in Postwar Italy

这个项目的目的是收集和分析一个年度数据库，涵盖意大利的32个选区审查可能的相关政治腐败，涵盖1948年至1994年期间。 政治腐败的运作方式是，治安法官请求议会取消众议院议员的议会豁免权，以便对渎职指控进行法律的起诉。 收集的数据将包括选区的社会、人口、经济和政治特征，以便研究或多或少容易发生腐败的选区的特征。意大利是一个特别好的调查案例，因为该国的政治腐败程度是战后任何富裕民主国家中最高的。 那里政治腐败的持续和极端性质产生了独特的可用数据，并可能允许进行系统的因果分析。 的截面战后意大利政治腐败的（国家以下）时间序列分析可以确定民主环境中政治腐败的决定因素是否主要是经济因素（例如，发生在一个基本上发达的经济体中持续不发达的小块地区），文化（最初发生在该国政治文化薄弱和社会资本水平低的地区），或体制性因素（由于选举制度的具体特点与政党制度的竞争动态相结合而发生），以及这些因素如何相互作用。 由于家庭责任和医疗问题，调查员的工作最近暂时中断。 这项研究涉及智力方向的重大转变，这将推动研究者进入她的学科的一个更中心和更明显的领域。 这种转变需要不同寻常的研究资源，特别是减少教学的间隔，以便有足够的时间进行研究。

The purpose of this project is to assemble and analyze an annual database covering Italy's 32 electoral districts examining possible correlates of political corruption, covering the period from 1948 to 1994. Political corruption is operationalized as requests by magistrates to parliament to lift the parliamentary immunity of a member of the Chamber of Deputies in order to proceed with legal prosecution on charges of malfeasance. The data collected will include sociological, demographic, economic and political characteristics of electoral districts in order to study the characteristics of districts prone to more or less corruption. Italy is an especially good case to investigate since the country had the highest levels of political corruption of any wealthy democratic nation in the postwar era. The persistent and extreme nature of political corruption there generates unique data available and potentially permits systematic causal analysis. A cross-sectional (subnational) time-series analysis of political corruption in postwar Italy can ascertain whether the determinants of political corruption in democratic settings are largely economic (occurring in pockets of persistent underdevelopment in an otherwise largely developed economy, for instance), cultural (occurring initially in those parts of the country marked by weak political cultures and low levels of social capital), or institutional (occurring because of specific features of the electoral system acting in combination with competitive dynamics of the party system), as well as how such factors may interact. The investigator's productivity has recently suffered temporary interruption due a combination of family responsibilities and medical problems. The research proposed involves a major shift in intellectual direction, one that will propel the investigator into a more central and visible area of her discipline. Such a shift requires unusual research resources, and especially an interval of reduced teaching in order to devote adequate time to research.