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First published 1997, this volume examines the way in which political corruption remains neglected as a matter of scholarly enquiry and research. There is still a powerful and traditional taboo which is quite out of the step with the topic's real world significance and the increasing attention it receives from serious sections of the media. The book aims by systematic exposition and case study to break down that taboo and to demonstrate the topic's importance within a framework provided by the discipline of geography. The novelty of the book is then that it considers a formerly unconsidered factor - corruption - as part of the world's geography, as both part of the geographical context in which human activity takes place and as a spatially variable condition explicable at least in part in terms of other geographies. The conclusion is that much geographical scholarship ignores this factor at the risk of its credibility.

Few concepts have witnessed a more dramatic resurgence of interest in recent year than corruption. It is, however, a concept that dates back to antiquity with this recent popularity representing the latest iteration in a long history of contestation over corruption. In one of the first surveys of the variable contours of meaning invested in the term, from antiquity through to the end of the eighteenth century, this book explores the significant role corruption has played in political discourse through the centuries. It finds that corruption was not always a concept particular to the abuse of public office, but was often applied to more nebulous fears of moral, spiritual and physical degeneration. This book marshals both historical and conceptual analysis to demonstrate a conceptual oscillation between restrictive 'public office' and expansive 'degenerative' connotations of corruption that persisted until the second half of the eighteenth century when the public office conception overtook and finally superseded the degenerative one. The result is a survey that is fundamental to the understanding of modern ideas of corruption and represents an invaluable tool to both students and scholars of the subject.

This article explores how realism in political theory can inform our understanding of political corruption. Whereas political moralists see corruption as a problem of implementation, which does not undermine their values, realists see corruption as posing a more fundamental problem, challenging the very nature of politics and undermining the attempt to establish and exercise authority in the ordering of conflict and the allocation of resources. Recent realist work has sought to characterize a discrete type of 'institutional' corruption, and to construct political corruption as the antithesis of good governance or impartiality. Other work has focused on the micro level, drawing on new insights from psychology and experimental economics to analyze individual decisions and motivations to behave corruptly. This article challenges scholars to build future research upon a richer understanding of the realities of political life that are intrinsic to both individual and institutional patterns of corruption. Adapted from the source document.

A theory of political corruption must give a plausible descriptive account of what counts as politically corrupt conduct, and a plausible normative account of the reasons why (if any) such conduct is wrongful, and distinctively so. On Ceva and Ferretti's sophisticated descriptive and normative account of corruption if and only if the act is carried out by a public official acting in her capacity as officeholder, and she knowingly acts to ends which are not congruent with the terms of her mandate. By their own admission, Ceva and Ferretti focus for the most part on just, or nearly just, regimes – which include democratic regimes. In this paper, I probe the strength and implications of their account for political corruption in clearly unjust regimes, in which individuals' basic civil, political and socio-economic rights are routinely and systematically violated. I argue that their account does not straightforwardly apply to these cases, and that their cursory treatment of all-things-considered justified corruption in those regimes exposes a gap in their account of corruption.

The article analyzes the definitions of political corruption based on the following approaches used in political science to classify forms and manifestations of corruption: subject-oriented, actor-based and targeted. Within the framework of these approaches, we offer an updated definition of political corruption which can involve public officials of all levels. Political corruption is instrumentally defined as the unlawful use by a public official of various types of administrative resources of public authority to extract personal and (or) group political benefits (political enrichment), including in favor of third parties. The author singles out such form of corruption as state policy corruption, the essence of which is to skew the state policy in favor of private interests at the expense of public interests in order to unlawfully gain both tangible economic and intangible political benefits. The institutional mechanism of state policy corruption is the unlawful use by public officials of its legislative and regulatory administrative resources not to implement public policy in order to realize national interests and goals in various spheres of life of society and the state, but to create "rules of the game" that allow obtaining illegal advantage, to extract personal and (or) group benefit, which may have both tangible and intangible expression. Actors of such corruption can be senior public officials, whose competence includes adopting laws and regulations that determine state policy in various areas and mechanisms for its implementation. It is noted that state policy corruption is characterized by "autocorruption" – a situation where there is no external stimulation to commit a corruption act, it is not necessary, and its executor and final beneficiary are the same actor and (or) actors belonging to the same community. The author identifies the relationship between state policy corruption as a symbiosis of political and economic corruption at the highest levels of power and the peak of systemic corruption with corrupt state capture.

Contents -- Executive summary -- Access to information and political finance reform: promising policy areas for building transparency -- Corruption and human rights -- Part one: Political corruption 1 Introduction -- Transparency International, Where did the money go? -- Transparency International, Standards on Political Finance and Favours -- 2 Political finance -- Political money and corruption -- The challenge of achieving political equality in South Africa -- Soft money ' reform in the United States: has anything changed?

This article explores how realism in political theory can inform our understanding of political corruption. Whereas political moralists see corruption as a problem of implementation, which does not undermine their values, realists see corruption as posing a more fundamental problem, challenging the very nature of politics and undermining the attempt to establish and exercise authority in the ordering of conflict and the allocation of resources. Recent realist work has sought to characterize a discrete type of "institutional" corruption, and to construct political corruption as the antithesis of good governance or impartiality. Other work has focused on the micro level, drawing on new insights from psychology and experimental economics to analyze individual decisions and motivations to behave corruptly. This article challenges scholars to build future research upon a richer understanding of the realities of political life that are intrinsic to both individual and institutional patterns of corruption.

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.