Criminalization of Corruption: Egalitarian Roots of Effective Corruption Prosecution in the Italian Clean Hands Operation

In 1992, Italian prosecutors uncovered a decades-long corruption system cutting across regions and levels of government. The Clean Hands operation resulted in hundreds of convictions and permanently changed the Italian political landscape. What conditions led to the success of the Clean Hands operation? Dr. Manzi shows how replacing hierarchical prosecutorial institutions with egalitarian ones paved the way for this unprecedented anti-corruption campaign. Through the case studies of prosecutors’ offices in Milan, Rome, Palermo, and Reggio Calabria, Dr. Manzi shows how egalitarian institutions promoted the emergence of effective legal innovations against complex criminal issues, such as domestic terrorism and mafia organizations. This eventually led to the emergence of an effective prosecutorial approach to systemic corruption in the Clean Hands investigation.