Political Corruption in a World in Transition

Alix Meyer, Éric Phélippeau, Ezequiel Martins Paz, Fernando Jiménez Sánchez, Frank Rusciano, Jonathan Mendilow, Maria D. Bermudez, Michael Shafir, Molly Brigid McGrath, Mónica García Quesada, Olivia Newman, Paulina Alvarado-Goldman, Petra Svacinova, Robert Boatright, Roman Chytlek, Sofia Wickberg and Stanislav Balik

in Vernon Press Titles in Economics from Vernon Art and Science Inc

Abstract: This book argues that the mainstream definitions of corruption, and the key expectations they embed concerning the relationship between corruption, democracy, and the process of democratization, require reexamination. Even critics who did not consider stable institutions and legal clarity of veteran democracies as a cure-all, assumed that the process of widening the influence on government decision making and implementation allows non-elites to defend their interests, define the acceptable sources and uses of wealth, and demand government accountability. This had proved correct, especially insofar as ‘petty corruption’ is involved. But the assumption that corruption necessarily involves the evasion of democratic principles and a ‘market approach’ in which the corrupt seek to maximize profit does not exhaust the possible incentives for corruption, the types of behaviors involved (for obvious reasons, the tendency in the literature is to focus on bribery), or the range of situations that ‘permit’ corruption in democracies. In the effort to identify some of the problems that require recognition, and to offer a more exhaustive alternative, the chapters in this book focus on corruption in democratic settings (including NGOs and the United Nations which were largely so far ignored), while focusing mainly on behaviors other than bribery.

Keywords: Corruption; legal corruption; perceptions of corruption; abuse of power; patrimonialism; favouritism; patronage; access to power; bribery; state capture; lobbying; conflict of interest; clientelism; policies of influence; symbolic crusades; anticorruption policies; democracy; governance; state capacity; quality of government; legal code; social trust (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019 Written 2017-10-06
Edition: 1
ISBN: 978-1-62273-332-3
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