Bribery in healthcare : the organization of political corruption in the healthcare sector

Abstract

The article explores the opportunities for corruption in the Italian healthcare sector, as affected by decentralization and marketization reforms. The study looks into the governance structure of corrupt transactions on the basis of trial records and interviews, concerning in particular two scandals that recently surfaced in Italy. The authors argue that cross-regional differences in the institutional setting explain variations also in corrupt networks, and that recent reforms have not tackled the problem of corrupt transactions, but merely affected their governance structure.