What Is Anti-Corruption Good For? The New Neoliberal Governance in Eastern Europe

Since the collapse of communism and subsequent transition to democratic capitalism in the early 1990s, politics in the former Eastern Bloc has been dominated by incessant accusations of corruption and the public resolve to fight it. Policymakers and experts have entered into a holy alliance to exorcise the spectre of corruption from the region. But who determines what constitutes corruption, let alone how to effectively counteract it? This thesis traces the rise of a particular form of anti-corruption in Bulgaria since the 1990s that appears fixated on making the judiciary more efficient. Understanding anti-corruption as a governmental technology, it explores the shared focus of neoliberal styles of reasoning and anti-corruption on the rule of law, and the impact that anti-corruption had on the judiciary as both the subject and object of reforms. In doing so, the thesis contributes to both critical engagement with institutional reforms in post-socialist countries, as well as the critical study of anti-corruption from a Foucauldian perspective. By reconstructing the political and socio-economic context of anti-corruption discursive practices and engaging with two case studies, the thesis shows how the governmental technology of anti-corruption introduced elements of a specifically neoliberal rationality in the Bulgarian judicial system and consolidated a neoliberal notion of the latter as a prime site for the resolution of all social conflict. These transformations are not, as is sometimes assumed in critical literature, reducible to the conditionalities of international organisations — at least in Bulgaria, they were co-produced by national actors such as political parties and think tanks, which contributed their own meaningful innovations. The thesis shows how neoliberal anti-corruption can serve to insulate the judiciary from democratic accountability, while elevating it to the role of a political power broker that undermines the very liberal order it is sworn to protect.