In its most general sense, corruption means the perversion or abandonment of a standard. Hence it is common to speak of the corruption of language or of moral corruption. More narrowly, corruption refers to the abandonment of expected standards of behaviour by those in authority for the sake of unsanctioned personal advantage. In the business sphere, company directors are deemed corrupt if they sell their private property to the company at an inflated price, at the expense of the shareholders whose interests they are supposed to safeguard. Lawyers, architects and other professionals are similarly guilty of corruption if they take advantage of their clients to make undue personal gains.
Political corruption can be defined as the misuse of public office or authority for unsanctioned private gain. Three points about the definition should be noted. First, not all forms of misconduct or abuse of office constitute corruption. An official or a government minister who is merely incompetent or who betrays government secrets to a foreign power for ideological reasons is not generally considered corrupt. Second, legislators and public officials in most countries are entitled to salaries and other allowances. Corruption occurs only when they receive additional unsanctioned benefits, such as bribes. In practice, it is frequently hard to draw the line between authorized and unauthorized payments; in any case, this will change over time and will be drawn differently in different countries. A benefit regarded as a bribe in one country may be seen as normal and legitimate in another. Legal definitions of corrupt practices are only an imperfect guide because benefits forbidden by law are often sanctioned by social custom, and vice versa. The boundaries of accepted behaviour can be especially difficult to determine in countries affected by rapid political and social change. Third, electoral corruption needs to be defined differently from other forms. Whereas most political corruption involves the abuse of public office, electoral corruption is the abuse of the process by which public office is won.
Common forms of corruption are bribery, extortion (the unauthorized extraction of money by officials from members of the public) and misuse of official information. Bribery need not consist of a direct payment to a public official. ‘Indirect bribery’ may take the form of a promise of a post-retirement job, the provision of reduced-price goods, or the channelling of business to legislators or to members of their family.
Corruption was a serious problem in biblical and classical times, and was found in most periods of history. Cases of judicial corruption were particularly frequent. By the 1960s, an influential school of ‘revisionist’ political scientists nevertheless presented an optimistic view about the decline of corruption in advanced western democracies (Heidenheimer 1970). Some of the revisionists maintained that corruption did not present as grave a problem as previous writers had suggested. In many newly independent nations, where corruption was supposedly rampant, the practices condemned by western observers as corrupt (for example, making payments to low-level officials for routine services) were accepted as normal by local standards. Moreover, some forms of corruption, far from damaging the process of social and economic development, could be positively beneficial. Bribery enabled entrepreneurs (including foreign companies) to cut through red tape, thereby promoting the economic advance of poor nations. Corruption was seen as a transitory phenomenon, which was likely to decline as economic and social progress was achieved. The general trend was to be seen, it was argued, in the history of Britain and the USA. In Britain, electoral corruption, the sale of titles and government jobs, and corruption relating to public contracts had been rife until the nineteenth century. The introduction of merit systems of appointment to the civil service, the successful battle against electoral corruption and a change in public attitudes towards the conduct of government had led to a dramatic decline in corruption—a decline which coincided with the nation’s economic development. Similarly, in the USA, corruption had been rampant in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, which had been a period of intense economic and social change. As suggested by Robert Merton, the corrupt urban party machines, such as the Democratic Party organization in New York City (Tammany Hall) had provided avenues for advancement for underpriviliged immigrant groups. After the Second World War, full employment, the advance of education, the decline of political patronage and the growth of public welfare benefits combined to eliminate the deprivation that had previously led to corruption. A new civic culture replaced the former loyalties to family and to ethnic group. According to a common view, the party machine and the corruption that had accompanied it withered away.
This interpretation has come under challenge. Corruption is neither so benign in underdeveloped countries, nor is it so rare in advanced ones as previously thought. It is unrealistic to suppose that advances in education or in techniques of public administration, the development of a ‘public-regarding ethos’ or economic development can lead to the virtual disappearance of corruption. The growth of governmental activity and regulation in the modern state increases the opportunities and the temptations for corruption. Improvements in education need not lead to the elimination of corruption but to its perpetuation in new, sophisticated forms.
Revelations since the 1970s have led scholars to give increased attention to the contemporary problems of corruption in advanced democracies and in communist countries. In the USA, the Watergate affair of 1972–4 led to a wave of investigations that resulted in hundreds of convictions for corruption, including that of Vice-President Spiro Agncw. Others convicted included the governors of Illinois, Maryland, Oklahoma and West Virginia. Rampant corruption was uncovered in a number of states including Florida, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Texas. In Britain, the conventional view about the virtual elimination of corruption was shattered by several major scandals in the 1970s. The far-reaching Poulson scandal, involving local government corruption in the north of England as well as Members of Parliament, erupted in 1972. Local government corruption was proved in South Wales, Birmingham and in Scotland, while in London several police officers were imprisoned.
Since the 1980s, corruption has re-emerged as one of the most contentious and damaging issues in a number of countries. In the western democracies, some of the most serious scandals have involved large-scale, illegal funds to politicians for use in election campaigns. From 1981, all the major parties in the former West Germany were shaken by the Flick affair. Even more far-reaching have been the consequences of revelations that have led to the overthrow of the ruling Liberals in Japan and of the Christian Democrats in Italy.
The destabilizing effects of allegations of top-level corruption were also seen in the former Soviet Union, where the attack on graft was a central feature of Gorbachev’s policy of perestroika and, in particular, of his criticism of the Brezhnev regime. The downfall of communist systems since the late 1980s has, however, merely led to the replacement of an old style of corruption by a new one. Mafia-type activities and corruption relating to privatization have emerged as barriers to the consolidation of stable democracies in these countries.
The 1990s have also seen the emergence of corruption as an issue of concern to western governments and to international organizations in their policies relating to aid to the Third World. Organizations ranging from the World Bank to the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development have taken the view—in contrast to the revionism mentioned earlier—that corruption has severely damaged the prospects for economic growth, especially in Africa and Latin America.
The definitions, causes and effects of corruption and techniques of reform continue to be matters of controversy among sociologists and political scientists. What is increasingly accepted in the 1990s is that political corruption is a widespread, pervasive and serious phenomenon.
Michael Pinto-Duschinsky
Brunel University
Reference
Heidenheimer, A.J. (ed.) (1970) Political Corruption: Readings in Comparative Analysis, New York.
Further reading
Heidenheimer, A.J., Johnston, M. and LeVine, V.J. (eds) (1989) Political Corruption: A Handbook, New Brunswick, NJ.
Journal of Democracy (1991) Special issue 2(4).
Rainer, N., Philp, M. and Pinto-Duschinsky, M. (eds) (1989) Political Corruption and Scandals: Case Studies from East and West, Vienna.
Theobald, R. (1990) Corruption, Development and Underdevelopment, Durham, NC.
