REPUBLISHED

Political patronage drives corruption, report says

Erblin Vukaj · Originally published: 19 March 2026

Political patronage has become the main mechanism fuelling corruption and distorting governance in the Western Balkans. This is the central conclusion of a regional report, which argues that the old “a vote for a job” arrangement has developed into a complex system of dependency and political control that has captured states.

The report, entitled “Political Patronage: A Catalyst for Corruption and Misgovernance in the Western Balkans,” comes at a time when countries in the region, including Albania, have committed to anti-corruption reforms as part of their European integration processes, but are seeing limited results.

The analysis comes from “Southeast European Leadership for Development and Integrity” (SELDI) and suggests that this stagnation is linked precisely to the role of political patronage, which continues to operate as a parallel infrastructure of power.

SELDI is a network of more than 30 civil society organizations in Southeast Europe that has monitored corruption and governance policies in the region for more than two decades.

Through standardized tools such as the “Corruption Monitoring System” and “State Capture Diagnostics,” the network has built a body of data on how institutions function and on the relationships between politics and the economy.

The latest report continues these analyses, but focuses directly on political patronage as a key factor.

In this context, patronage is not treated as a peripheral phenomenon confined to nepotism or party-based hiring. It is defined as a system of relationships in which public resources, from jobs to services, building permits, licences, tenders, concessions and contracts, are distributed on the basis of “political obedience and loyalty” rather than competition and merit.

This creates a network of dependency in which citizens and public administration employees are connected to those in power through informal relationships rather than legal ones. The report argues that this very system is turning corruption into an organized and enduring practice.

Thus, instead of being a departure from the rules, corruption is becoming part of institutions’ daily operation. In this sense, “political patronage” is emerging as a “catalyst” linking the abuse of public resources, institutional capture and the manipulation of democratic processes.

At the regional level, the report’s findings show a pattern repeated across all Western Balkan countries. Public administration is found to be politicized, with frequent changes tied to electoral processes, while state resources are used to secure electoral advantage.

Oversight institutions, including audit bodies, the Supreme State Audit institution and the justice system, are said to remain exposed to political influence, limiting their effectiveness. But a crucial element highlighted by the report is the normalization of these practices in public perceptions, making the system more resilient and harder to challenge.

Within this picture, Albania is presented as a typical example of the model. The report finds that the country’s public administration remains closely tied to political parties, particularly the party in power, while changes in government are accompanied by sweeping replacements of staff or the governing boards of state-owned companies.

This has created a structure in which a public-sector career depends more on political connections than on merit.

“[…] one practical scenario is the manipulation of procurement processes: setting narrow criteria, excluding competing operators or using direct negotiations to favour preferred entities,” the report states.

“These practices are implemented through technical documentation and procedures that appear lawful but are essentially designed to reduce competition and favour politically connected winners,” the report continues.

But one of the most sensitive aspects concerns electoral processes. The use of state resources for electoral mobilization and pressure, often indirect, on public employees to support particular political forces are identified as practices that also distort the democratic system.

In this way, patronage serves not only to distribute benefits, but also to retain and reproduce political power.

The report also suggests that Albania’s independent institutions remain vulnerable to political influence. Although oversight mechanisms exist on paper, in practice their autonomy is constrained by political interference and pressure. This creates a visible gap between the legal framework and its actual implementation.

One of the report’s strongest findings concerns the phenomenon’s social dimension. In Albania, as elsewhere in the region, patronage is often seen as a normal way to gain access to services or employment opportunities. This makes the system self-perpetuating: lacking trust in institutions, citizens turn to informal networks as a practical solution.

Compared with other countries in the region, the report suggests that Albania shares the same structural characteristics, but with a particular emphasis on the connection between patronage and electoral cycles.

This makes the system more dynamic, but no less entrenched. In countries such as Serbia and Montenegro, patronage appears more consolidated and centralized, while in Albania it is said to “remain more flexible, but equally effective in maintaining political control”.

In this context, the report also offers an explanation for the “relative failure” of anti-corruption reforms.

According to the analysis, most reforms have focused on building institutions and improving the legal framework while overlooking the informal patronage networks that actually determine how power operates.

For this reason, even interventions supported by the European Union have often produced limited results.

In this context, the SELDI report suggests that corruption in the Western Balkans is not simply a law-enforcement problem, but a model of governance built “on patronage relationships”. For Albania, this means that the challenge lies not only in strengthening formal institutions, but in dismantling the informal networks that continue to determine how the state actually functions.

Albania’s precedent: The patronage operatives

The clearest example of political patronage in Albania came to light ahead of the 2021 parliamentary elections, when a large Microsoft Access database containing detailed information on hundreds of thousands of citizens circulated in the media.

Media reports said the database contained around 910,000 voters in Tirana and other areas, a figure covering practically the vast majority of the capital’s active electorate.

The document contained not only basic identifying information, such as names, personal identification numbers, addresses, workplaces and contact details, but also structured political information, including party preferences, classification as a “reliable” voter or “not”, and other notes that in some cases included personal difficulties or problems involving state institutions.

A key element was the column identifying a person responsible for each citizen, the so-called “patronazhist”, or patronage operative. This individual, usually linked to party structures on the ground, was tasked with tracking, updating information on and influencing the electoral behaviour of designated voters.

This made the database more than a list: it was an operational instrument for political mobilization.

The case became publicly known as the “patronage operatives’ list” and raised serious concerns about the use of personal data, including suspicions that some of it might have been obtained from state systems, such as tax records or civil registries, or from companies themselves.

Data protection institutions and judicial authorities opened investigations, while the case prompted extensive public and political debate, since the journalists and the outlet that first exposed the scandal, Lapsi.al, were initially themselves pursued by the authorities.

Prime Minister Edi Rama, for his part, reacted as a “patronazhist” towards the practice. He downplayed the phenomenon, presenting it as a method of political organization also used by other parties and countries, and denied systemic violations. According to him, the data had been generated by party members themselves.

Beyond the political debate, however, the 2021 case remains the clearest illustration of political patronage operating in Albania in a structured and documented form.

It demonstrated that the relationship between parties and voters is built not only on programmes or ideological beliefs, but also on a system of direct monitoring and influence intertwined with access to resources and information.

In this sense, the “patronage operatives scandal” provides a key precedent for understanding how the concept of patronage, discussed theoretically and regionally in the SELDI report, has taken concrete form in Albania, embedded in electoral practice and beyond.

The SELDI network believes that overcoming the challenges posed by patronage operatives requires a complex, multidimensional approach.

“This approach should focus primarily on further professionalizing the public sector, stronger measures to combat state capture and improved transparency in governance,” the report states.

The goal is to guarantee competition and transparency alongside the creation and promotion of a merit-based public service and accountability in public procurement, thereby increasing citizens’ trust in public institutions.