An Intellectual History of Political Corruption

B. Buchan, L. Hill

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781137316615
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Political History & Theory
• Index: Politics & International Relations

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.

Notes

Introduction

1. 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.

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.

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

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

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

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

7. See, for example, J.S. Nye (1967) ‘Corruption and Political Development: A Cost-benefit Analysis’, American Political Science Review 16, 417–27; R. Klitgaard (1988) Controlling Corruption (Berkeley: University of California Press), p. 10.

8. Wedel, ‘Rethinking Corruption’, 456–7, 463–4.

9. S.P. Huntington (1968/2006) Political Order in Changing Societies (New Haven: Yale University Press), pp. 59–64; and D.H. Bayley (1966) ‘The Effects of Corruption in a Developing Nation’, The Western Political Quarterly 19 (4), 719–32, especially 727–30.

10. 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.

11. 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.

12. 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.

13. Wedel, ‘Rethinking Corruption’, 476–90. 174

14. 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).

15. Bukovansky, ‘The Hollowness’, 194–200.

16. Ackerman, Corruption and Government, p. 9.

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

18. Ibid., 91; Bukovansky, ‘The Hollowness’, 202; and Wallis, ‘Systematic Corruption’, pp. 25–35.

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.

20. Ibid., p. 202.

21. Ibid., pp. 211–12.

22. Some of these issues are discussed in our later chapters. For an overview, see J. Soll (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.

23. 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.

24. R. Koselleck (2004) Futures Past: On the Semantics of Historical Time, K. Tribe (trans.) (New York: Columbia University Press), p. 85. See also N. Olsen (2011) History in the Plural: An Introduction to the Work of Reinhart Koselleck (New York: Berghahn), p. 172.

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

26. 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.

27. 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).

28. See, for instance, F. Anechiarico (2009) ‘The Ethical Pothole: Tolerable Corruption?’ The Public Manager 38 (3), 43; J.D. Collins, K. Uhlenbruck and P. Rodriguez (2009) ‘Why Firms Engage in Corruption: A Top Management Perspective’, Journal of Business Ethics 87, 102; H.H. Werlin (2007) ‘Corruption and Democracy: Is Lord Acton Right?’ The Journal of Social, Political and Economic Studies 32 (2), 368.

29. 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.

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

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

32. Miller et al., Corruption, p. 5.

33. This focus does, of course, leave gaps in terms of mapping the development of corruption ideas in America, for example. Attempting to tell this part of the story in full here lies beyond the scope of the present study.

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

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

1 Conceptions of Political Corruption in Antiquity

1. The Oxford English Dictionary defines political corruption as ‘[p]erversion or destruction of integrity in the discharge of public duties by bribery or favour’. While this conception emphasises the perversion of integrity, J.S. Nye’s definition focuses more on the actions themselves. Here, corruption is defined as ‘behaviour which deviates from the normal duties of a public role because of private-regarding . . . pecuniary or status gains . . . this includes such behaviour as bribery . . . nepotism . . . and misappropriation’ (J.S. Nye (2009) ‘Corruption and Political Development: A Cost-Benefit Analysis’ in A.J. Heidenheimer and M. Johnston (eds) Political Corruption: Concepts and Contexts (New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers), p. 281).

2. J.P. Euben (1978) ‘On Political Corruption’, The Antioch Review 36 (1), 110.

3. A. Saxonhouse (2004) ‘Corruption and Justice: The View from Ancient Athens’ in J. Kleinig and W. Hefferman (eds) Corruption: Public and Private (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield), pp. 30–1.

4. Saxonhouse, ‘Corruption and Justice’, pp. 30–47; Wallis, ‘Systematic Corruption’, p. 8.

5. Seneca (1969) Letters from a Stoic, R. Campbell (selected, trans. and intro.) (London: Penguin), Letter 91, p. 179.

6. Marcus Aurelius (1916) The Meditations (The Communings with Himself of Marcus Aurelius Antoninus) C.R. Haines (trans.) (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press), 10.7.

7. Marcus Aurelius referred to ‘the great cyclic renewals of creation’ in Meditations, 11.1. See also Epictetus (1989) The Discourses as Reported by Arrian, the Manual, and Fragments, two vols, W.A. Oldfather (trans.) (London: Harvard University Press), 2.1.17–24; 3.8.2–7. See also Cicero (1988) De Re Publica; De Legibus, C.W. Keyes (trans.) (London: William Heinemann Ltd), 6. 21.

8. The Holy Bible, Authorised King James Version (1952) (London: Collins’ Cleartype Press), Revelation: 19.2, 20.9–15.

9. W. Mullen (1976) ‘Republics for Expansion’, Arion: A Journal of Humanities and the Classics New Series 3 (3), 324.

10. R.C. Wilson (1989) Ancient Republicanism: Its Struggle for Liberty against Corruption (New York: Peter Lang), p. 1.

11. Cicero (1971) Selected Works, R. Baldick, C.A. Jones and B. Radice (eds) (Great Britain: Penguin), Ch. 4: ‘A Practical Code of Behaviour’; passim and commentary, p. 158.

12. Wilson, Ancient Republicanism, p. 26.

13. Within classical discourses, the charge of ‘effeminacy’ was highly pejorative; ‘womanliness’ or ‘unmanliness’ was equated with enervation, voluptuousness, decadence and narcissism. The military ideals ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• 2. Patronage, Politics and Perishability in Early Medieval Political Thought
• 3. From Baratteria to Broglio: The Perils of Public Office in Medieval and Renaissance Political Thought
• 4. Affection, Interest and Office in Early Modernity
• 5. Ideological Change in Eighteenth-Century Britain
• 6. The Historical Vicissitudes of Corruption
• Conclusion
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index