Corruption

Susan Rose-Ackerman

Chapter 30 in Readings in Public Choice and Constitutional Political Economy, 2008, pp 551-566 from Springer

Abstract: Corruption is an archetypal topic for students of public choice. It brings together the private search for economic gain with the government’s efforts to supply public goods, correct market failures, and aid the needy. Public choice’s insistence on viewing politicians and government bureaucrats as motivated by the same economic interests as private individuals and firms provides a background for understanding why corruption occurs and why it is difficult to combat. Corruption in my formulation is the misuse of public office for private gain. This definition leaves open the issue of just what constitutes misuse, but it recognizes that sometimes public office can legitimately provide private benefits to politicians and bureaucrats. Thus, targeted ‘‘pork barrel’’ projects and special interest legislation are not corrupt. They result from the day-to-day operation of a representative political system. If a legislator works to pass a statute that is favored by his or her legal campaign donors, this is not corrupt even if it violates democratic ideals. Those who seek to discredit government across the board often put the ‘‘corruption’’ label on all kinds of government actions. Although many of these phenomena are indeed proper subjects of study and the loci of reform efforts, it will not help the analysis of democracy to put them all into the corruption pot.

Keywords: Public Choice; Public Program; Monopoly Power; Corrupt Deal; Bribe Payer (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2008
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:sprchp:978-0-387-75870-1_30

Ordering information: This item can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/9780387758701

DOI: 10.1007/978-0-387-75870-1_30

Access Statistics for this chapter

More chapters in Springer Books from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().