Thinking About Political Corruption

Peter deLeon argues that while it is often individuals who actually engage in political corruption, it is the US political system that condones or encourages such actions. Once this perspective is recognised, one can begin to understand ways in which the costs of corruption might be alleviated.

Few concepts have witnessed a more dramatic resurgence of interest in recent years than corruption. This book provides a compelling historical and conceptual analysis of corruption which demonstrates a persistent oscillation between restrictive 'public office' and expansive 'degenerative' connotations of corruption from classical Antiquity to 1800.

Analysing political corruption as a distinct but separate entity from bureaucratic corruption, this timely book separates these two very different social phenomena in a way that is often overlooked in contemporary studies. Chapters argue that political corruption includes two basic, critical and related processes: extractive and power-preserving corruption.

From the prizewinning journalist and internationally recognized expert on corruption in government networks throughout the world comes a major work that looks homeward to America, exploring the insidious, dangerous networks of corruption of our past, present, and precarious future. “If you want to save America, this might just be the most important book to read now." —Nancy MacLean, author of Democracy in Chains Sarah Chayes writes in her new book, that the United States is showing signs similar to some of the most corrupt countries in the world. Corruption, she argues, is an operating system of sophisticated networks in which government officials, key private-sector interests, and out-and-out criminals interweave. Their main objective: not to serve the public but to maximize returns for network members. In this unflinching exploration of corruption in America, Chayes exposes how corruption has thrived within our borders, from the titans of America's Gilded Age (Andrew Carnegie, John D. Rockefeller, J. P. Morgan, et al.) to the collapse of the stock market in 1929, the Great Depression, and FDR's New Deal; from Joe Kennedy's years of banking, bootlegging, machine politics, and pursuit of infinite wealth to the deregulation of the Reagan Revolution--undermining this nation's proud middle class and union members. She then brings us up to the present as she shines a light on the Clinton policies of political favors and personal enrichment and documents Trump's hydra-headed network of corruption, which aimed to systematically undo the Constitution and our laws. Ultimately and most importantly, Chayes reveals how corrupt systems are organized, how they enable bad actors to bend the rules so their crimes are covered legally, how they overtly determine the shape of our government, and how they affect all levels of society, especially when the corruption is overlooked and downplayed by the rich and well-educated.

A bold new approach to combatting the inherent corruption of representative democracy This provocative book reveals how the majority of modern liberal democracies have become increasingly oligarchic, suffering from a form of structural political decay first conceptualized by ancient philosophers. Systemic Corruption argues that the problem cannot be blamed on the actions of corrupt politicians but is built into the very fabric of our representative systems. Camila Vergara provides a compelling and original genealogy of political corruption from ancient to modern thought, and shows how representative democracy was designed to protect the interests of the already rich and powerful to the detriment of the majority. Unable to contain the unrelenting force of oligarchy, especially after experimenting with neoliberal policies, most democracies have been corrupted into oligarchic democracies. Vergara explains how to reverse this corrupting trajectory by establishing a new counterpower strong enough to control the ruling elites. Building on the anti-oligarchic institutional innovations proposed by plebeian philosophers, she rethinks the republic as a mixed order in which popular power is institutionalized to check the power of oligarchy. Vergara demonstrates how a plebeian republic would establish a network of local assemblies with the power to push for reform from the grassroots, independent of political parties and representative government. Drawing on neglected insights from Niccolò Machiavelli, Nicolas de Condorcet, Rosa Luxemburg, and Hannah Arendt, Systemic Corruption proposes to reverse the decay of democracy with the establishment of anti-oligarchic institutions through which common people can collectively resist the domination of the few.

From the days of Athenian democracy to the back rooms of Chicago politics today, corruption has plagued all political systems for all time. It is ubiquitous, vexing, and at times, threatens the very fabric of society. No culture, no system of government, no code of ethics has been able to eliminate political corruption. While the United States generally ranks comparatively low in measures of political corruption (Transparency International rates the U.S. as the 18th "least" corrupt nation in the world, with Denmark at number one, New Zealand, second, and Sweden third, the U.K. 16, France 23, Spain 28, Israel 33, South Korea 40, Italy 55, Cuba 65, with Somalia last at 180), yet it too continues to confront the sting of political corruption. For something to count as political corruption in the United States, it must have a public impact, be a part of some violation of public trust. As such, another useful distinction can be drawn between individual corruption and systemic corruption. The former is individual wrongdoing. An officeholder on the take, a legislator who sells his vote, would be examples of "bad apples." Systemic corruption encompasses a broader sphere. Instead of bad apples, here you have a "bad system." The undermining of democratic legitimacy or equality might be considered examples of systemic corruption, as might campaign financing practices. Such corruption runs deeper than mere individual transgression. Corruption is embedded into the day-to-day operation of the system. In focusing on the individual, we often overlook the systemic. It is easier, and in the short run, more gratifying to catch, punish, and condemn an individual like Governor Blagojevich. Yet what of the systemic forces that led the governor to behave in such a manner? Is there undue systemic pressure to accumulate money, so much so that the system pushes politicians "over the edge"? A politician need not "sell" offices to enter into a Faustian bargain. It may be perfectly legal to collect campaign contributions, yet it may also have a corrosive or corrupting effect on the integrity of the democratic process. With so many issues of corruption swirling around in the current American political climate, it is timely that there is new scholarship that casts much-needed light on these systemic forces. The brilliant discussions by a stellar list of distinguished scholars, led by Michael A. Genovese and Victoria A. Farrar-Meyers, in the insightful edited volume, Corruption and American Politics, delivers the best and most up-to-date thinking by some of the finest political minds in the nation. This will be an essential resource for all collections in political science and American studies.

Recent years have seen an unprecedented rise in interest in the topic of corruption, resulting in a rising demand for suitable teaching materials. This edited collection brings together two different approaches to the study of corruption — the first represented by a large, practically-oriented literature devoted to identifying the causes of corruption, assessing its incidence and working out how to bring it under control; the second by a smaller collection of critical literature in political theory and intellectual history that addresses conceptual and historical issues concerned with how corruption should be, and how it has been, understood — and uses the second to reflect on the first. This collection will be of interest to post-graduate students in political science, law, sociology, public policy and development studies, to senior public servants, and to professionals working in multilateral agencies, NGOs and the media.

Since the early 1990s, a series of major scandals in both the financial and most especially the political world has resulted in close attention being paid to the issue of corruption and its links to political legitimacy and stability. Indeed, in many countries – in both the developed as well as the developing world – corruption seems to have become almost an obsession. Concern about corruption has become a powerful policy narrative: the explanation of last resort for a whole range of failures and disappointments in the fields of politics, economics and culture. In the more established democracies, worries about corruption have become enmeshed in a wider debate about trust in the political class. Corruption remains as widespread today, possibly even more so, as it was when concerted international attention started being devoted to the issue following the end of the Cold War. This Handbook provides a showcase of the most innovative and exciting research being conducted in Europe and North America in the field of political corruption, as well as providing a new point of reference for all who are interested in the topic. The Handbook is structured around four core themes in the study of corruption in the contemporary world: understanding and defining the nature of corruption; identifying its causes; measuring its extent; and analysing its consequences. Each of these themes is addressed from various perspectives in the first four sections of the Handbook, whilst the fifth section explores new directions that are emerging in corruption research. The contributors are experts in their field, working across a range of different social-science perspectives.