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Political land corruption: evidence from Malta – the European Union’s smallest member state

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 October 2017

Paul Caruana-Galizia  and
Matthew Caruana-Galizia
Paul Caruana-Galizia
Affiliation:
Department of Economic History, London School of Economics, UK E-mail: [email protected]
Matthew Caruana-Galizia
Affiliation:
International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, Washington, USA E-mail: [email protected]
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Abstract

Political corruption in the land sector is pervasive, but difficult to document and effectively prosecute. This article provides new evidence on political land corruption in Malta, the European Union’s smallest member state and one of the world’s most densely populated countries. It shows how the country’s highly restrictive zoning laws, along with a de jure independent regulator, have created opportunities for extensive and endemic corruption in the granting of land development permits in zones that are outside development. It provides an example of governments creating institutions as rent-collection instruments – not to correct market failures, but to create opportunities for corruption. The unique underlying data set was collected through an automated web-scraping program as the regulator first turned down then ignored freedom of information requests for the data.

Keywords

corruptionland policyland sectorMaltazoning
Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of Public Policy , Volume 38 , Issue 4 , December 2018 , pp. 419 - 453
Copyright
© Cambridge University Press, 2017 

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