Skip to main content

Introduction

  • Chapter
  • 370 Accesses

Part of the book series: Political Corruption and Governance ((PCG))

Abstract

Although corruption has been ‘ubiquitous’ throughout human history and in all kinds of societies,1 it has not always been a subject of great interest. Since the mid-1990s, it has emerged — or perhaps re-emerged — as a major topic of investigation, with inquiry focussed largely on questions about appropriate policy responses to the economic and political problem of corruption.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.

Buying options

Chapter
USD   29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD   39.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
USD   54.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info
Hardcover Book
USD   54.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Durable hardcover edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Learn about institutional subscriptions

Preview

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

Notes

  1. rl S.M. Lipset and G.S. Lenz (2000) ‘Corruption, Culture, and Markets’ in L.E. Harrison and S.P. Huntington (eds) Culture Matters: How Values Shape Human Progress (New York: Basic Books), pp. 112–24.

    Google Scholar 

  2. See, most recently, O. Fiona Yap (2013) ‘When do Citizens Demand Punishment of Corruption’, Australian Journal of Political Science 48 (1), 57–70; M. Barcham, B. Hindess and P. Larmour (eds) (2012) Corruption: Expanding the Focus (Canberra: ANU Press), pp. 97–112.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  3. See, most recently, O. Fiona Yap (2013) ‘When do Citizens Demand Punishment of Corruption’, Australian Journal of Political Science 48 (1), 57–70; M. Barcham, B. Hindess and P. Larmour (eds) (2012) Corruption: Expanding the Focus (Canberra: ANU Press), pp. 97–112.

    Google Scholar 

  4. J.R. Wedel (2012) ‘Rethinking Corruption in an Age of Ambiguity’, Annual Review of Law and Social Science 8, 463.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  5. Daniel Treisman correlates lower levels of corruption with Protestantism, with former British rule and with ‘more developed economies’ (D. Treisman (2000) ‘The Causes of Corruption: A Cross-National Study’, Journal of Public Economics 76, 399–457).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  6. U. von Alemann (2004) ‘The Unknown Depths of Political Theory: The Case for a Multidimensional Concept of Corruption’, Crime, Law and Social Change 42, 33;

    Google Scholar 

  7. M. Philp (2007) Political Conduct (Harvard: Harvard University Press), p. 104.

    Google Scholar 

  8. S.R. Ackerman (1999) Corruption and Government: Causes, Consequences, and Reform (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), p. 9.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  9. M. Bukovansky (2006) ‘The Hollowness of Anti-corruption Discourse’, Review of International Political Economy 13 (2), 181–209.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  10. See, for example, J.S. Nye (1967) ‘Corruption and Political Development: A Cost-benefit Analysis’, American Political Science Review 16, 417–27;

    Article  Google Scholar 

  11. R. Klitgaard (1988) Controlling Corruption (Berkeley: University of California Press), p. 10.

    Google Scholar 

  12. S.P. Huntington (1968/2006) Political Order in Changing Societies (New Haven: Yale University Press), pp. 59–64;

    Google Scholar 

  13. and D.H. Bayley (1966) ‘The Effects of Corruption in a Developing Nation’, The Western Political Quarterly 19 (4), 719–32, especially 727–30.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  14. See, for example, P. Mauro (1988) ‘Corruption: Causes, Consequences and Agenda for Further Research’, Finance and Development 35 (1), 12; Treisman, ‘The Causes of Corruption’, passim.

    Google Scholar 

  15. S.M. Lipset and G.S. Lenz (2000) ‘Corruption, Culture, and Markets’ in L.E. Harrison and S.P. Huntington (eds) Culture Matters: How Values Shape Human Progress (New York: Basic Books), pp. 112–24.

    Google Scholar 

  16. See, for example, M. Génaux (2002) ‘Early Modern Corruption in English and French Fields of Vision’ in A.J. Heidenheimer and M. Johnston (eds) Political Corruption: Concepts and Contexts, 3rd edn (New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers), pp. 107–22.

    Google Scholar 

  17. Wallis concedes, however, that lower level ‘venal corruption’, in the form of bribery among politicians and public officials, continues (J.J. Wallis (2006) ‘The Concept of Systematic Corruption in American History’ in E.L. Glaeser and C. Goldin (eds) Corruption and Reform: Lessons From America’s Economic History (Chicago: University of Chicago Press), pp. 25, 55–6).

    Google Scholar 

  18. B. Smith (2008) ‘Edmund Burke, the Warren Hastings Trial, and the Moral Dimension of Corruption’, Polity 40 (1), 75.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  19. J.G.A. Pocock (1975) The Machiavellian Moment: Florentine Political Thought and the Atlantic Republican Tradition (Princeton: Princeton University Press), pp. 114, 177, 316.

    Google Scholar 

  20. Some of these issues are discussed in our later chapters. For an overview, see J. Soil (2010) ‘J.G.A. Pocock’s Atlantic Republican Thesis Revisited: The Case of John Adams’s Tacitism’, Republics of Letters: A Journal for the Study of Knowledge, Politics, and the Arts 2 (1), 21–37.

    Google Scholar 

  21. M. Knights (2010) ‘Towards a Social and Cultural History of Keywords and Concepts by the Early Modern Research Group’, History of Political Thought 31 (3), 428.

    Google Scholar 

  22. R. Koselleck (2004) Futures Past: On the Semantics of Historical Time, K. Tribe (trans.) (New York: Columbia University Press), p. 85.

    Google Scholar 

  23. See also N. Olsen (2011) History in the Plural: An Introduction to the Work of Reinhart Koselleck (New York: Berghahn), p. 172.

    Google Scholar 

  24. See, for example, International Monetary Fund (1997) Good Governance: The IMF’s Role (Washington: IMF).

    Google Scholar 

  25. S. Dearden (2003) ‘The Challenge to Corruption and the International Business Environment’ in J.B. Kidd and F.-J. Richter (eds) Corruption and Governance in Asia (Houndmills: Palgrave), pp. 27–42.

    Google Scholar 

  26. See, for example: Nye, ‘Corruption and Political Development’; Ackerman, Corruption and Government, p. 205; and C. Nicholls, T. Daniel, M. Polaine and J. Hatchard (2006) Corruption and Misuse of Public Office (Oxford: Oxford University Press).

    Google Scholar 

  27. See, for instance, F. Anechiarico (2009) ‘The Ethical Pothole: Tolerable Corruption?’ The Public Manager 38 (3), 43;

    Google Scholar 

  28. J.D. Collins, K. Uhlenbruck and P. Rodriguez (2009) ‘Why Firms Engage in Corruption: A Top Management Perspective’, Journal of Business Ethics 87, 102;

    Article  Google Scholar 

  29. H.H. Werlin (2007) ‘Corruption and Democracy: Is Lord Acton Right?’ The Journal of Social, Political and Economic Studies 32 (2), 368.

    Google Scholar 

  30. G.M. Hodgson and S. Jiang (2007) ‘The Economics of Corruption and the Corruption of Economics: An Institutionalist Perspective’, Journal of Economic Issues 41 (4), 1043, 1047.

    Google Scholar 

  31. S. Miller, P. Roberts and E. Spence (2005) Corruption and Anti-Corruption: An Applied Philosophical Approach (New Jersey: Pearson Prentice Hall), p. 4.

    Google Scholar 

  32. M. Philp (1997) ‘Defining Political Corruption’, Political Studies 45 (3), 436–62.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  33. P. Burke (1976) ‘Tradition and Experience: The Idea of Decline from Bruni to Gibbon’, Daedalus 105 (3), 144.

    Google Scholar 

  34. See, for example, J. Lipsius (1594) Two Bookes of Constancie, J. Stradling (trans.) (London: Printed by R. Johnes), Bk I, Ch. XVI, pp. 37–41;

    Google Scholar 

  35. G. Williamson (1935) ‘Mutability, Decay, and Seventeenth-Century Melancholy’, ELH 2 (2), 147.

    Article  Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Copyright information

© 2014 Bruce Buchan and Lisa Hill

About this chapter

Cite this chapter

Buchan, B., Hill, L. (2014). Introduction. In: An Intellectual History of Political Corruption. Political Corruption and Governance. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137316615_1

Download citation

Publish with us

Policies and ethics