EXPOSURE TO CORRUPTION PRESSURES AT THE LOCAL GOVERNMENT LEVEL IN EUROPE

Corruption at the local level is a worrying phenomenon in the EU. The aim of the paper is to identify characteristics of the councillors at the second tier level that describe opinion about their greater or lesser exposure to corruption pressures. The goal of the analysis of opinion of more than five thousand councillors from 14 European countries is to investigate whether their subjective impression of the underlying corruption pressures can be described by their socio-demographic characteristics. Results of the cluster analysis have shown that there are two groups of local councillors in the EU, that they experience corruption differently, and that the corruption risks affect local councillors in post-transition countries more. Local councillors who consider that they are less exposed to corruption pressures are from the “old” EU countries, from countries with a generally lower level of corruption. This is also a cluster with a greater share of women and professional politicians. There are statistically significant differences observed regarding their exposure to corruption between councillors in local government units with larger or smaller level of fi scal decentralisation, and this is the most interesting finding of this research. The purpose of this paper was to identify vulnerable groups of local councillors in order to strengthen their integrity, for which some of the recommendations are given in the conclusion.