Abstract
Corruption—the appropriate of public resources for private purposes—is a modern phenomenon insofar as modern states are founded on the principle of the strict separation of public and private. This was not the case for much of human history, where “patrimonial” rulers regarded the public domain as a species of private property. Corruption needs to be distinguished from both rent-seeking and patronage/clientelism—in the first case, because many rents have perfectly legitimate uses, and in the second because clientelism involves a reciprocal exchange of favors and can be regarded as an early form of democratic participation. Moving from a patronage-based state to a modern-impersonal one is a fundamentally political act, since it involves wresting power away from entrenched elites who use their access to the state for private purposes. This is what happened during the Progressive Era in the US, and also what explains the relative success of anti-corruption bodies like Indonesia’s KPK.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.
Notes
- 1.
Johnston (2005: p. 11).
- 2.
An important exception to this was the republican tradition which started in Greece and Rome, and was carried by numerous city states in Italy, the Netherlands, and elsewhere. The very term “republic” comes from the Latin res publica, or “public thing,” denoting that the political order was representative of a larger public good.
- 3.
See Fukuyama (2011).
- 4.
See Fukuyama (2015).
- 5.
Khan and Sundaram Jomo (2000).
- 6.
Eisenstadt and Roniger (1984).
- 7.
Thus Scott (1972) describes a patronage system in pre-democratic Thailand and a clientelistic system in Ghana and India.
- 8.
See the definition given in Piattoni (2001).
- 9.
A classic case was the French foreign minister Tallyrand, who was a highly corrupt individual who was nonetheless a very talented diplomat who helped negotiate the settlement at the Congress of Vienna.
- 10.
- 11.
For more detail on the history of this period, see Chaps. 9–11 in Fukuyama (2014).
- 12.
Recanantini (2011).
- 13.
References
Basu, Kaushik. 2015. The Republic of Beliefs: A New Approach to ‘Law and Economics’. Policy Research Working Paper 7259. Washington, DC: World Bank.
Doig, Alan, David Watt, and Robert Williams. 2007. Why Do Developing Country Anti-corruption Commissions Fail to Deal with Corruption? Understanding the Three Dilemmas of Organisational Development, Performance Expectation, and Donor and Government Cycles. Public Administration and Development 27 (3): 251–259.
Eisenstadt, Shmuel Noah, and Luis Roniger. 1984. Patrons, Clients and Friends: Interpersonal Relations and the Structure of Trust in Society. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
Fukuyama, Francis. 2011. The Origins of Political Order: From Prehuman Times to the French Revolution. London: Macmillan.
———. 2015. Why is Democracy Performing So Poorly? Journal of Democracy 26: 11–20.
———. 2014. Political Order and Political Decay: From the Industrial Revolution to the Globalization of Democracy. London: Macmillan.
Heilbrunn, John R. 2004. Anti-corruption Commissions: Panacea or Real Medicine to Fight Corruption. Washington, DC: World Bank Institute. The Many Faces of Corruption.
Johnston, Michael. 2005. Syndromes of Corruption: Wealth, Power, and Democracy. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
Khan, Mushtaq H., and Kwame Sundaram Jomo. 2000. Rents, Rent-Seeking and Economic Development: Theory and Evidence in Asia. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
Kolstad, Ivar, and Arne Wiig. 2009. Is Transparency the Key to Reducing Corruption in Resource-Rich Countries? World Development 37 (3): 521–532.
López-Calva, Luis-Felipe, Jamele Rigolini, and Florencia Torche. 2012. Is There Such Thing as Middle Class Values? Class Differences, Values and Political Orientations in Latin America. Discussion Papers 6292. Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA), Bonn.
Mauro, Paulo. 1995. Corruption and Growth. The Quarterly Journal of Economics 110: 681–712.
Mauro, Paolo. 2004. The Persistence of Corruption and Slow Economic Growth. IMF Staff Papers 51: 1–18.
McAdams, R. 2015. The Expressive Powers of Law: Theories and Limits. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Mungiu-Pippidi, A. 2015. The Quest for Good Governance: How Societies Develop Control of Corruption. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
North, Douglass C., John J. Wallis, and Barry R. Weingast. 2009. Violence and Social Orders: A Conceptual Framework for Interpreting Recorded Human History. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Piattoni, Simona. 2001. Clientelism, Interests, and Democratic Representation: The European Experience in Historical and Comparative Perspective. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
Recanantini, Francesca. 2011. Effectiveness of Anti-Corruption Authorities (ACAs): Selected Emerging Lessons. Washington, DC: World Bank.
Scott, James C. 1972. Patron-Client Politics and Political Change in Southeast Asia. American Political Science Review 66 (1): 91–113.
World Bank. 2017. World Development Report 2017: Governance and the Law. Washington, DC: World Bank. Forthcoming.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2018 The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Fukuyama, F. (2018). Corruption as a Political Phenomenon. In: Basu, K., Cordella, T. (eds) Institutions, Governance and the Control of Corruption. International Economic Association Series. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-65684-7_3
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-65684-7_3
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-73822-2
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-65684-7
eBook Packages: Economics and FinanceEconomics and Finance (R0)