Corruption and American Politics By Michael A. Genovese and Vict ...

political life. The academic debate over definitions has been a hardy perennial.¹⁰ I can scarcely settle the issue here, particularly because my concern is more with systemic corruption problems than with classifying specific actions or people.

Corruption involves the abuse of a trust, generally one involving public power for private benefit. But even in relatively settled societies key aspects of that notion are open to dispute and are routinely both twisted out of shape and swung as political clubs in the course of such contention. Where fundamental patterns of wealth, power, and opportunities are in flux, matters are even more complex: distinctions between “public” and “private” can be difficult to draw,¹¹ particularly in the midst of economic liberalization and privatization. Policy changes can redefine public roles and resources as private or create organizations that straddle state/society boundaries, in the process changing rules and accountability. The benefits and costs of corruption may be intangible, long-term, broadly dispersed, or difficult to distinguish from the routine operation of the political system.¹² Particularly where the problem is severe, corrupt demands and expectations can be so ingrained into a system that they go unspoken.

And by what standards do we identify “abuse”? One school of thought advocates definitions based on laws and formal rules because of their comparative precision, stability, and consistent application.¹³ Critics reply that laws may have little legitimacy (or may even be written by officials to protect themselves), that definitions of corruption must address the question of its social significance—not just its nominal meaning—and that cultural standards or public opinion thus offer more realistic definitions.¹⁴ But even where they can be specified with precision, relying upon cultural standards may so fragment the concept, or impose so many distinctions and subcategories upon it, that its core meaning is obscured and useful comparisons are discouraged.

My primary focus, as noted, is not upon categorizing specific actions, but rather upon systemic corruption problems: how societies set (or fail to set) legitimate, widely accepted limits on the uses of, and connections between, wealth and power—be it through laws or by the efforts of