What is «corruption»? What different kinds of corruption exist in our modern societies? How does corruption manifest itself in governments, corporations, the judicial system and every other sphere of our lives? To answer these questions, Pedro Pinto interviews Donatella della Porta in this episode of «It’s Not That Simple», a podcast by the Francisco Manuel dos Santos Foundation.

 An expert on corruption, Donatella della Porta is a professor of political science, dean of the Faculty  of Political and Social Sciences  and Director of the PhD program in Political Science and Sociology at the Scuola Normale Superiore in Florence, where she also leads the Center on Social Movement Studies (Cosmos). 

Among the main topics of her research are social movements, political violence, terrorism, corruption, the police and protest policing. She has directed a major ERC project - Mobilizing for Democracy, on civil society participation in democratization processes in Europe, the Middle East, Asia and Latin America. In 2011, she was the recipient of the Mattei Dogan Prize for distinguished achievements in the field of political sociology; in 2021, she received the Research Awards of the Alexander von Humboldt Stiftung in recognition of her lifetime’s research activities. 

She is an Honorary Doctor of the universities of Lausanne, Bucharest, Goteborg, Jyvaskyla and the University of Peloponnese. She is the author or editor of 90 books, 150 journal articles and 150 contributions in edited volumes.

In this episode, della Porta discusses what the term «corruption» means and what kinds of practices constitute an act of corruption. She also examines the resiliency of corruption in our societies, how it uses the corrupt political and judicial systems to avoid criminal prosecution and thus perpetuate itself in a vicious cycle. Della Porta also addresses the evolution of corruption throughout the world in the last few decades, namely how “democratic backsliding” has been at the root of the increasing levels of corruption in many countries. Finally, della Porta considers how to fight corruption, the role of whistleblowers and how to protect them, in a conversation well worth listening to. 

More on this topic 

• Lo Scambio Occulto: casi di corruzione politica in Italia, Donatella della Porta, 1992

• Democracy and Corruption in Europe, Donatella della Porta and Yves Mény, 1997

• Corrupt Exchanges: Actors, Resources, and Mechanisms of Political Corruption, Donnatella della Porta and Alberto Vannucci, 1999

• The Hidden Order of Corruption: An Institutional Approach, Donnatella della Porta and Alberto Vannucci, 2012

• Donatella della Porta on social capital and political corruption

https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.1515/9780691186849-013/pdf

• Donatella della Porta (with Alberto Vannucci) on the “perverse effects” of political corruption

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1111/1467-9248.00094?journalCode=psxa

Other references in Portuguese

• Essay of the Foundation “Corrupção” by Luís de Sousa

 https://www.ffms.pt/publicacoes/detalhe/15/corrupcao

• Essay of the Foundation “Jobs for the Boys”, by Patrícia Silva

https://www.ffms.pt/publicacoes/detalhe/4947/jobs-for-the-boys-as-nomeacoes-para-a-administracao-publica

• “45 Anos de Combate à Corrupção”, a study by Luis Rosa for the Francisco Manuel dos Santos Foundation

https://www.ffms.pt/publicacoes/detalhe/5208/45-anos-de-combate-a-corrupcao

• An interview with Luís Rosa about his study “45 Anos de Combate à Corrupção”

https://www.ffms.pt/play/video/5299/e-possivel-combater-a-corrupcao

• Podcast Da Capa à Contracapa, “Como tem sido combatida a corrupção desde Abril de 1974?” with Luís Rosa and Maria José Morgado

https://www.ffms.pt/podcasts/da-capa-a-contracapa/5306/com