The Meaning of Corruption in Democracies

When democracies go bad, corruption (rather than oppression, violence, tyranny, or related political pathologies) is likely to be high on the list of problems. This chapter focuses, first, on the conceptual landscape that connects corruption and democracy. ‘Democracy’ and ‘corruption’ are endogenous concepts: to identify ‘corrupt’ actions, practices, or institutions is also to identify exclusions that violate democratic norms. The second focus is structural: democratic systems are comprised of differentiated institutions – executive agencies, legislatures, judiciaries, open public sphere discourse, civil society organisations, and market-oriented firms and enterprises. Meanings of corruption in democracies follow the kinds of exclusion that violate the modes of inclusion appropriate to each domain: public trust, responsive representation, impartial adjudication, mutual persuasion, generalised trust and reciprocity, and voluntary exchange.