2 Plagiarism and Corruption

In Ancient Rome, the plagiarius was a kidnapper. Martial used the word to designate ‘literary theft.’Reference Marsh ⁸ Most Romans, however, associated it with individuals who either stole slaves or stole and sold freemen into slavery, a crime repressed by a specific law, Lex Fabia de plagiariis. Similarly, ancient French law called plagiat (the present French word for plagiarism) the theft of children.Reference Treppoz ⁹ Around 1600, the latter’s place was finally taken by ‘children of the brain’ and plagiarism acquired its present signification.Reference Weber-Wulff ¹⁰ Charles Nodier defined it in 1812 as ‘l’action de tirer d’un auteur [...] le fonds d’un ouvrage d’invention, le développement d’une notion nouvelle ou encore mal connue, le tour d’une ou de plusieurs pensées’ – in other words, misappropriating the essence, innovative notions, or thoughts of another author’s work.Reference Nodier ¹¹ Plagiarism is a complex concept but, as suggested by the very title of Domenico Giuriati’s 1903 Il plagio. Furti letterari, artistici e musicali,Reference Giuriati ¹² it has been frequently perceived as a form of theft and was associated with this phenomenon’s negative moral, ethical, and legal connotations. Interestingly, certain scholars have adopted a different stance. Nick Groom has claimed that plagiarism, an ‘aesthetic activity,’ can be used to subvert the ‘dominant work ethic’ he associated with creating value through the expenditure of labour and capital in production – a perspective reminiscent of Marx-inspired anti-capitalist activism. Similarly, Marilyn Randall identified plagiarism as a guerrilla tactic for feminist authorship (Ref. Reference Marsh8, p. 35). More relevant for this article, another atypical interpretation of plagiarism has to be mentioned that concerns a cultural dimension. Ranamukalage Chandrasoma, Celia M. Thompson, and Alistair Pennycook have analysed plagiarism as an act of resistance to the dominant forms of rhetoric that contradict non-Western students’ epistemological traditions. Alistair Pennycook has further developed this idea, speaking of plagiarism as resistance against the more general imposition of alien rules.Reference Bloch ¹³ China, with its tradition of collectivism, is frequently used as an example of a culture that devalues the Western concept of authorship while placing a greater value on imitation, which is encouraged and valued in the creation of new intellectual property. This results in a different system of values concerning plagiarism. Accordingly, it was claimed that ‘Chinese students neither understand Western concepts nor feel that such plagiarism is an unacceptable practice’ (Ref. Reference Bloch13, pp. 219–220). During the mid-2000s, Dilin Liu and Le Ha Phan opposed one of the supporters of this view, Colin Sowden, and rejected ‘culturally stereotyped views of plagiarism’. They claimed that, in fact, plagiarism is perceived as immoral in Chinese and Vietnamese cultures. Yet, Dilin Liu and Le Ha Phan’s views seem to be contradicted by a growing body of empirical research.Reference Lei and Hu ¹⁴ A somehow similar situation might concern parts of sub-Saharan Africa. Calixthe Beyala, a Cameroon-born French novelist, was convicted of plagiarism in 1996 and later faced a number of similar accusations. In her defence, she vigorously invoked the African ‘oral tradition which falls outside of Western literary practice, thereby placing herself, like an outlaw, outside of, and thus unanswerable to, the law.’Reference Angelo ¹⁵ This is an important aspect that was instrumental in the selection of this article’s case studies. In order to avoid distortions due to Chinese-type major cultural differences, the four case studies are European. Differences of perception clearly exist among Germans, Hungarians, Romanians, and Russians, and they are scrutinized in this article. However, at least at the level of principle, nobody in the four countries rejects the Western negative perception of plagiarism.

The foregoing all concerns plagiarism in general. The current article preoccupies itself with academic plagiarism, which ‘is a crime against academy. It deceives readers, hurts plagiarized authors, and gets the plagiarist undeserved benefits.’Reference Bouville ¹⁶ Academic plagiarism has been variously defined as reflecting the plagiarist’s failure to meet academic standards; as an infringement of academic informal practices that undermines trust between teacher and student; as a practice that breaches ethical standards; and as a violation of intellectual property.Reference Rosamond ¹⁷ However, it is obvious that there is a significant difference between an undergraduate student who cheats when submitting a term paper and a Prime Minister that uses a plagiarized PhD to enhance his personal prestige and electoral support. The former commits a ‘crime against academy’. The latter discredits academia but also shatters the citizens’ confidence in and respect for political class, state institutions, and rule of law. Moreover, it is likely that it was his position and influence that contributed decisively to his dissertation not being appropriately scrutinized by the jury. Consequently, this article is based on the idea that the specific case of high level politicians who plagiarized their PhD dissertations is best analysed as a case of corruption.

The latter has variously been defined from public-office centred, public-interest centred, and market perspectives.Reference Philp ¹⁸ Within the first approach, Joseph S. Nye identified corruption as:

This includes bribery, nepotism, and misappropriation. Critically, it represents a deviation from the Weberian legal-rational type of authority that the state apparatus of a modern democracy is supposed to incarnate. Officials are expected to serve the state and subordinate their personal relationships with citizens to legal mechanisms centred on the office, not the incumbent.Reference Lovell ²⁰ This is clearly incompatible with any type of private gain. Consequently, the office-based approach is a useful instrument for the study of corruption in executive agencies, which includes the cases of corrupt high-level officials. In a democracy, executive functions are associated with the idea of a collective agent that people can trust to execute collective decisions. Therefore, such functions imply public trust: the government is the trustee and executor of collective purposes. Corruption – and especially corruption of individuals at the top of the executive branch – involves violating that trust. This undermines democracy, leads to inefficient and ineffective government, and creates an atmosphere marked by differential treatment and arbitrary actions.Reference Warren ²¹ These effects have been emphasized in the case of more traditional forms of corruption, but they also are present when PhD plagiarism of high-level officials is concerned. The case studies presented in the next four sections will show how serious the consequences of this phenomenon are, especially in the case of weak, unconsolidated democracies.

3 Germany’s Minister of Defence: Baron Cut-and-Paste

4 Hungary’s President: The Plagiarist Olympic Champion

In January 2012, the Hungarian business weekly HVG revealed that the country’s President, Pàl Schmitt, had plagiarized the 1992 doctoral dissertation on the modern Olympic Games that he had defended in 1992 at the University of Physical Education, now part of Semmelweis University in Budapest.Reference Facsar ³⁶ Out of 215 pages, 16 were carbon copied from the translation of a 1991 German text by Klaus Heinemann while other 180 contained text as well as tables and charts taken from a 1987 book by a Bulgarian author, Nikolay Gueorguiev.Reference Karasz ³⁷ Only 18 pages were written by Schmitt himself. ³⁸

Schmitt won gold medals for fencing at the Olympic Games of 1968 and 1972. During the 1980s he became a communist State Secretary for Sports,Reference Beliczay ³⁹ and since 1983 he has been a member of the International Olympic Committee. Showing ‘a chameleon-like ability to adapt to changing circumstances’, after the fall of communism he made a swift turn right. ⁴⁰ He became the head of the Hungarian Olympic Committee in 1990, was vice president of the International Olympic Committee between 1995 and 1999,Reference Beliczay ³⁹ served as a Member of the European Parliament for the ruling right-wing Fidesz party, and was elected President in the summer of 2010 by the Hungarian Parliament thanks to the support of the Fidesz Prime Minister, Viktor Orbán, whose coalition holds a two-thirds majority.Reference Karasz ³⁷ The presidency is mainly ceremonial, but allows the incumbent to challenge legislative acts. Schmitt did not do so, in spite of the fact that some of the 365 laws fast-tracked by Fidesz in its first 18 months in office were criticized by the European Commission and the Council of Europe. ⁴⁰

The news of plagiarism provoked outrage in social media. The President spoke of ‘unfounded allegations’Reference Karasz ³⁷ and claimed that the texts in question were identical because he had worked with Gueorguiev and Heinemann, something the former’s daughter and the latter himself strongly denied. A Semmelweis University commission investigated the case and concluded that there was no plagiarism, but the university’s Senate decided otherwise and on 29 March withdrew Schmitt’s doctoral degree. The President stated on public radio that the decision was illegal. ³⁸ He would nevertheless accept it, ‘but this has got nothing to do with me being a president’.Reference Facsar ³⁶ He also declared that he was willing to rewrite the dissertation. In Parliament, opposition Socialists and Greens had initiated an impeachment procedure but this was rejected by Orban’s two-thirds majority. ⁴¹ Yet, the growing scandal resulted in ‘Hungary’s most polarising political drama since riots in the autumn of 2006’. ⁴⁰ After days of political turmoil,Reference Karasz ³⁷ on 2 April 2012 a large demonstration was held in front of the President’s official residence in Buda. Socialists, Greens, civil society activists, but also members of the extreme right Jobbik party and of Fidesz demanded Schmitt’s resignation. ⁴¹ The President claimed once more that ‘his conscience was clear’Reference Facsar ³⁶ but, in order to avoid dividing ‘his beloved nation’, accepted to resign.Reference Karasz ³⁷

5 Romania’s Prime Minister: the Non-Resigning Plagiarist

Undoubtedly, the Romanian Prime Minister, Victor Ponta, provides the most colourful – and outrageous – case study. In June 2012, Nature revealed that more than half of his 2003 University of Bucharest dissertation on the functioning of the International Criminal Court (also published as a book in 2004) consisted of duplicated text. At that time, Ponta was Secretary of State in the government of Adrian Năstase, who also was his doctoral supervisor.Reference Schiermeier ⁴⁵ Ironically, Năstase was eventually jailed twice for corruption. The university’s ethics commission found plagiarized elements on 115 out of the 297 pages of the dissertation and confirmed charges. The state agency responsible for investigating PhD plagiarism, the Romanian National Council for the Attestation of University Titles (NCAUT), concluded that 85 pages had been entirely copied and pasted. But Prime Minister Ponta disbanded NCAUT during its very meeting examining his own case. Instead, he decided that the National Ethics Council (NEC) be in charge of PhD investigations, too.Reference Schiermeier ⁴⁶ Incidentally, earlier that month all NEC members had been replaced with protégés of the Prime Minister one day before the Council examined the plagiarism charges against Ponta’s Minister of Education, Ioan Mang, who was, of course, cleared of any wrongdoing with respect to the eight academic papers he had copied and pasted.Reference Pantazi ⁴⁷ Predictably, the NEC also cleared the Prime Minister, whose only minor mistake was found to be the omission of references in footnotes. Ponta claimed that all charges were part of a vicious political campaign launched against him by then Romanian President, Traian Băsescu, and therefore there was no reason for him to resign.Reference Schiermeier ⁴⁶ Because the entire society (but not Ponta’s Social Democratic Party, the more or less reformed former Communist Party) was outraged, the Prime Minister stated, at first, that he would stop using the PhD title; and, later, that he would relinquish it. This was not legally possible, but in December 2014 he passed a Government Emergency Ordinance modifying the National Education Law to allow holders of academic degrees to relinquish them without providing any explanation. Yet, the ordinance has not yet been implemented and Ponta still holds a PhD.Reference Prisacariu ⁴⁸

The Prime Minister was hardly the only high-ranking Romanian politician in this situation. The Vice-Prime Minister and July 2015 Acting Prime Minister Gabriel Oprea also plagiarized his 2001 doctoral dissertation. When this was revealed in 2015 he was promptly cleared by the NEC. Moreover, as a professor at the Romanian Police Academy, he supervised at least six plagiarized doctoral dissertations.Reference Sercan ⁴⁹ Ponta’s Minister of Economy, Mihai Tudose, inserted in his 2010 PhD dissertation about 50 pages from a dissertation defended one year earlier by a police superintendent. Interestingly, the latter told journalists that he was contacted by Tudose, to whom he simply ‘sold the copyright as [he would have done with] any other merchandise’.Reference Garaiman ⁵⁰

Overall, 33% of Romanians perceive their education system as corrupt or highly corrupt (Ref. 35, p. 119), but it is believed that the most serious situation is precisely that of plagiarized doctoral dissertations. The Group for Social Dialogue, one of the most prestigious Romanian civic organizations, even held a highly publicized debate entitled ‘Plagiarism as State of the Nation’ in September 2015, during which Andrei Pleșu, a university professor and former Minister of Culture, suggested that all holders of legitimate PhD degrees relinquish them until people like Ponta admit their guilt and resign.Reference Pantazi ⁵¹

Of course, the latter scenario is highly unlikely because PhD plagiarism is only one of the forms taken by the pervasive corruption of the Romanian political elite, a social group that Tom Gallagher characterized as ‘cynical and amoral to an extent unusual even in the former Soviet satellites’.Reference Gallagher ⁵² A Stratfor report spoke of its ‘culture of corruption’.Reference Friedman ⁵³ Accordingly, Transparency International’s Corruption Perception Index ranks Romania 69th out of 174 countries ³⁴ while 76% of its citizens believe that political parties are corrupt or extremely corrupt. In the case of the Parliament, the percentage is 68%. ³⁵ The lack of a clean political party led to large scale electoral apathy and further encouraged mass emigration to Western Europe. In turn, this allowed Ponta to lead in the opinion polls and to receive the largest number of votes in the first round of the November 2014 presidential election despite his plagiarism. Yet, on his orders, polling stations at embassies and consulates abroad prevented a large part of the four million Romanians abroad from voting. This backfired, as live TV coverage of large queues, protests, and riots at consulates made first round abstentionists back home vote against Ponta in the second round. He lost the presidential election, but stated that there was no reason for him to resign from his position of Prime Minister. ⁵⁴ He repeated this statement when he was formally indicted for corruption in September 2015. However, in November 2015, more than 30 teenagers died in a nightclub fire ultimately due to corrupt practices that resulted in the non-respect of anti-fire legislation. This triggered a 20,000-strong protest demonstration asking for Ponta’s resignation and for the departure of corrupt politicians from public life. Finally, the plagiarist stepped down.Reference Tran ⁵⁵

Overall, the Romanian Prime Minister’s case is relevant for the way high level political corruption, which includes an academic component, compromises trust in politicians and politics, induces electoral apathy and severely distorts democratic processes in a country whose semi-consolidated democracy remains weak and vulnerable. ⁵⁶

6 Russia’s President: The Plagiarist Tzar

In March 2006, two fellows at the Brookings Institute in Washington, DC, Clifford Gaddy and Igor Danchenko, discovered that more than 16 pages of the 20-page theoretical chapter of Vladimir Putin’s 1997 dissertation entitled ‘Strategic Planning of the Reproduction of the Mineral Resource Base of a Region under Conditions of the Formation of Market Relations’ as well as six diagrams and tables had been taken almost word-for-word from the 1978 classic US management textbook Strategic Planning and Policy by William R. King and David I. Cleland that had been translated into Russian during the early 1990s by a KGB-related institute. There were no quotation marks and the source was not mentioned.Reference Khvostunova ^{57 –} Reference Shuster ⁵⁹ The 218-page dissertation earned Putin a Candidate of Science degree, which is the lower stage of Russia’s two-level PhD structure (the higher one being that of Doctor of Science),Reference Knyazev ⁶⁰ from the St. Petersburg Mining Institute. ⁵⁸

Putin started his doctoral programme after becoming an assistant to the rector of Leningrad State University responsible for international relations, in 1990. Soon, he also became an adviser and then the Chairman of the Committee for International Relations at the St. Petersburg City Hall. From 1994, he concurrently held the position of Deputy Chairman of the St. Petersburg City Government. In 1996, he moved to Moscow to become Deputy Chief of the Presidential Property Management Directorate and in March 1997 he was appointed Deputy Chief of Staff of the Presidential Executive Office and Chief of Main Control Directorate.Reference Putin ⁶¹ Despite his busy timetable, he returned to St. Petersburg to defend his dissertation at the Mining Institute. The latter’s rector, Vladimir Litvinenko, eventually became Putin’s adviser on energy policy and a potential candidate for the position of head of the huge state-owned Gazprom energy company. ⁵⁸

There is a strong suspicion that the dissertation was in fact written by a ghost-writer. To quote a senior associate at the American Foreign Policy Council, E. Wayne Merry, ‘It’s probably an open question whether Putin even read his dissertation until shortly before he had to defend it’. ⁵⁸ In any case, it was extremely difficult to obtain a copy of the text, which suggests that the Russian President had tried to prevent a possible plagiarism scandal.

Yet there was no scandal when plagiarism was revealed – and nobody has ever mentioned resignation. Putin himself ‘never dignified the reports with any comment’.Reference Khvostunova ⁵⁷ State TV stations did not mention them. The independent Kommersant Vlast weekly did publish a cover story, but one that gave equal weight to plagiarism accusations and to pro-Putin statements by Vladimir Litvinenko. Except for some Russian bloggers, ‘everybody knows about [the plagiarism], but nobody wants to bring it up’.Reference Shuster ⁵⁹ This is no different from what is happening in the case of other prominent Russian dubious doctorate-holders, such as Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu, Minister of Culture Vladimir Medinsky, former Defence Minister Boris Gryzlov, former Minister for Regional Development Vladimir Yakovlev, President of Chechnya Ramzan Kadyrov, and the nationalist party leader and Member of Parliament, Vladimir Zhirinovsky. All faced plagiarism accusations which have never been investigated.Reference Osipian ⁶² Moreover, no less than 349 of the 612 members of the two chambers of the Russian Parliament hold doctoral degrees – normally in fields different from that of their first degree – despite the fact that only 76 are involved in research and teaching (Ref. Reference Osipian62, pp. 268–271).

Some Western scholars claim that this situation should be perceived in the post-Soviet context that preserves the tradition of communist strongmen with doubtful academic credentials: ‘it was really quite common for an up-and-coming apparatchik to get a ghost-written work done to obtain a degree’.Reference Wayne Merry ⁶³ The problem, however, goes beyond politicians. Seventy-two percent of Russians believe that their education system is corrupt or extremely corrupt. ³⁵ Bribes are paid to school and university officials to have children admitted to the institution of their choice, and to professors in order to get good grades.Reference Raiklin ⁶⁴ At the PhD level, ‘ready-made dissertations’ are for sale for prices between €3000 and €35,000 (Ref. Reference Klußmann6). A study identified no less than 169 legally registered, tax-paying firms offering doctoral ghost-writing (Ref. Reference Osipian62, p. 267). In fact, this is only one of the many dimensions of the corruption that permeates all aspects of the life of the Russian people ‘from cradle to grave’ (Ref. Reference Raiklin64, p. 412) and which is believed to comprise no less than 20% of the country’s GNP.Reference Shlapentokh ⁶⁵ Not surprisingly, Russia is ranked by Transparency International 136th out of 174 countries in its Corruption Perception Index. ³⁴

Still, pervasive corruption including wide scale PhD plagiarism is not the only reason that prevented a scandal erupting in Putin’s case. The Russian plagiarist is also a dictator. He has succeeded in creating a consolidated authoritarian regime characterized by a 6.46 Freedom House Democracy Score (7 represents the worst possible level). Next to the almost complete elimination of citizens’ political rights and civil liberties, the President and his inner circle use their power to direct greater personal wealth to themselves and to loyal oligarchs. They only pursue corruption charges selectively against political rivals. ⁶⁶ Accordingly, 83% of the citizens believe that the Putin-controlled Parliament is corrupt or extremely corrupt. ³⁵

Consequently, the President’s plagiarism, the surprising lack of an associated scandal, and the absolute absence of the idea of resignation, illuminate two different but closely related aspects. On the one hand, as a dictator, Putin cannot be indicted because he is above the law; and he cannot be criticized overtly because he controls the mass media and the society at large. On the other hand, his act of academic-related corruption is legitimated by the culture of corruption his regime has helped develop. All this is proof of a distortion of ethical values totally incompatible not only with democracy but also with many of the key characteristics of a modern polity, be it democratic or not.

7 Analysis and Conclusion

In purely academic terms, it might be noted that the four case studies are associated with a somehow bizarre second-level plagiarism. All plagiarists seem to have paid ghost-writers to do their work; in turn, the ghost-writers plagiarized printed or internet sources. At least in the case of zu Guttenberg, this was a total surprise for the customer, who certainly questioned the ghost-writer’s ethical position.

Less amusingly, the academic corruption of politicians perverts the educational purposes of research and scholarship and has a deeply negative influence on the processes of doctoral education and fundamental research (Ref. Reference Osipian62, p. 263). Negative consequences, however, go beyond these fields. It was found that there is a clear correlation between long-term investment in education and a decrease in corruption. These two elements tend to reinforce each other, thus creating a virtuous circle. One of the main causes is believed to reside in the fact that education builds self-reinforcing social trust, which helps curb corruption. Yet, if the expansion of high-quality public education is perceived as being implemented in corrupt ways, a situation greatly favoured by highly visible academic scandals such as those presented in previous sections, education ceases to be a generator of public trust and its anti-corruption effects dissipate (Ref. 35, pp. 6–7).

This suggests that, notwithstanding its uncontestable importance, the academic dimension of the four case studies is dwarfed by the socio-political one. It is clear that this is public office corruption, with prominent members of the executive obtaining private gain by deviating from the normal duties of their public role, as they convert their authority into personal assets. Private gain is represented by enhanced reputation resulting in increased electoral support (Ref. Reference Osipian62, p. 265). The deviation from normal duties was present, first, within the act of plagiarism itself: most likely because of the position and influence of the candidate, the members of the jury did not appropriately scrutinize the dissertations in question. At least in the case of Putin, the rector of the university eventually was rewarded with a political position. Second, political instruments at the disposal of the plagiarists were used abusively to prevent legal retribution. Ponta changed legislation to clear himself of charges, Schmitt used his allies’ parliamentary majority to prevent impeachment, and Putin simply took advantage of his dictatorial immunity to legal investigation.

This raises serious ethical questions. One might be tempted to blame the four as individuals, but the numerous similar cases of slightly lower-level politicians suggest that this is not the right approach. In fact, ‘choices about moral decisions and actions are not made solely by the individual’.Reference Hatcher ⁶⁷ Research indicates that ethical motivation and action depend on the continual creation of personal moral identity through social conditioning and socialization.Reference Hatcher ⁶⁷ This brings the discussion to the critical point represented by political culture and democratic practices. The survival of the Soviet tradition of communist officials using ghost-writers in order to acquire undeserved academic degrees ⁵⁸ as well as a background of generalized corruption turned Putin’s plagiarism into something close to an uncanny ‘normality’. Răzvan Theodorescu, a member of the Romanian Academy of Sciences and a former Minister of Culture in the government led by Ponta’s corrupt doctoral supervisor, Adrian Năstase, provided an explicit acknowledgement of differences he perceived between Western and Eastern Europe:

These differences are well-illustrated by the large variation among the four case studies in what Martin Bull and James Newell called ‘the degree of scandal’, something determined mainly by different expectations in different national publics (Ref. Reference Bull and Newell33, p. 235), which in turn relate to political culture and associated (un)democratic practices. The overall repertoire of the four politicians’ unethical acts included the plagiarism itself; rewarding of members of the PhD jury with political positions; trying to make the dissertation unavailable to public scrutiny; lying in public statements; arbitrarily changing laws and modifying the membership of institutions involved in the investigation of academic fraud; using the protection of political allies to prevent impeachment; refusing to resign despite large-scale public protest; and controlling mass media in order to prevent a scandal erupting. Yet, there were huge differences between what zu Guttenberg and Putin were willing and able to choose from this repertoire. As shown in Table 1, there is a clear parallel between the four politicians’ attitude toward resignation (taken as the most relevant indicator of their behaviour), the public reaction to their plagiarism, and the levels of corruption and democracy in the four countries. More democracy is associated with a better civil society rating, less corruption, stronger outrage resulting in public protest, and quicker resignation of the plagiarist. Dictatorship and weak civil society mean more corruption, no scandal, and no talk about resignation. Each of the four case studies is representative of a different stage on the continuum between the two extremes.

Table 1

Democracy indicators and perception of corruption for Germany, Hungary, Romania, and Russia; public reaction to and behaviour of case study PhD plagiarist officials

Sources: Transparency International; ^{34 , 35} Freedom House ⁶⁹

It is hardly a new finding that ‘the development of corrupt practices is more likely where cultural attitudes are not strongly supportive of a country’s democratic institutions [...] or of democracy more generally’, a situation that in Central and Eastern Europe has resulted in most corrupt countries being at the same time the least democratic ones (Ref. Reference Bull and Newell33, p. 236). Data presented in Table 1 can be used to support the idea that the less democracy–more corruption relationship is one of mutual enforcement. On the one hand, the corruption-related acts of the four plagiarists were more outrageous in countries where less democracy meant that they were less exposed to legal retribution. On the other hand, those corruption-related acts further weakened democracy. Indeed – and perhaps surprisingly – the key element emphasized by the four case studies is how closely academic plagiarism practices of high-ranking politicians intertwine with and re-enforce the most serious democratic failures in their respective countries. In the German consolidated democracy, zu Guttenberg’s acts and attitude have been considered indicative of, and contributing to, that country’s ‘degeneration of political culture’ (Ref. Reference McKay32, p. 63), something that support from his party and the Chancellor as well as the increase in his popularity after plagiarism was revealed seem to confirm. In Hungary, Schmitt could and did defy public outrage for three months because of the political support provided by his nationalist allies, whose authoritarian trends he had supported through his acts as a President. In Romania, Ponta mocked justice and democracy under the protection of a ‘culture of corruption’ he helped develop during his entire tenure, and that made them ineffective if not irrelevant. In Russia, Putin did not even face a scandal because of the marriage between dictatorship and rampant corruption he had successfully promoted. This is to say that this specific type of plagiarism goes far beyond academia. It is a socio-political phenomenon that affects the entire polity and society. Because it combines with and significantly enhances other anti-democratic processes, it represents a direct, aggressive, and effective threat to democracy.

Consequences cannot be ignored even in the case of a consolidated democracy such as Germany. They are, however, much more destructive in the post-communist states, where they include the significant lowering of citizens’ confidence in, and respect for, the political class, political parties, state institutions, and the rule of law. This results in declining levels of public trust, electoral apathy, and disaffection with politics (Ref. Reference Bull and Newell33, p. 244). Support for democracy is deeply undermined, and citizens might start to consider alternative, undemocratic forms of government. This is particularly dangerous in post-communist Central and Eastern Europe, where democratic consolidation is increasingly challenged by populist and authoritarian temptations, and in the members of the Commonwealth of Independent States, most prominently Russia, where democratization remains a remote and probably unrealistic prospect.