Theories explaining corruption in post-communist countries

This article is looking at theoretical approaches to the study of corruption and tries to answer the question what could be the reason behind differences in the level of corruption between post-communist countries and established democracies in Europe on the theoretical level. First, this article discusses the problems of the definition of corrupt on. Next, this article presents the most important theories explaining corruption from the sociological point of view. This article will focus especially on norms (which are connected to rational choice, theory of ‘bad apples’ and ‘bad barrel’ and to criminological theories), on values (Max Weber, Inglehart and his theory of post-materialism), and finally on the extensive literature on corruption omitting any kind of theory. This paper will conclude with a discussion about which theories could explain the different levels of corruption in different countries.