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In broad terms, political corruption is the misuse of public (governmental) power for illegitimate, usually secret, private advantage.
All forms of government are susceptible to political corruption. Forms of corruption vary, but the most common are patronage, bribery, extortion, influence peddling, fraud, embezzlement, and nepotism. While corruption often facilitates criminal enterprise such as drug trafficking, money laundering, and criminal prostitution, it is not restricted to these organized crime activities, and it does not always support or shield other crimes. Generally, patronage is the act of supporting or favoring some person, group, or institution. ...
Bribery is the practice of offering a professional or an authority person money or other favours in order to circumvent ethics or other rules in a variety of situations. ...
Extortion is a criminal offense, which occurs when a person obtains money, behaviour, or other goods and/or services from another by wrongfully threatening or inflicting harm to his person, reputation, or property. ...
Influence peddling is the practice of using ones influence with persons in authority to obtain favors or preferential treatment for another, usually in return for payment. ...
Nepotism means favoring relatives or personal friends because of their relationship rather than because of their abilities. ...
Retail selling Street selling is the bottom of the chain and can be accomplished through purchasing from prostitutes, through cloaked retail stores or refuse houses for users in the act located in red-light districts which often also deal in paraphernalia, dealers marketing merriment at night clubs and other events...
Money laundering is the practice of engaging in financial transactions in order to conceal the identity, source and destination of the money in question. ...
Prostitution is the sale of sexual services, such as oral sex or sexual intercourse, for money. ...
Organized crime is crime carried out systematically by formal criminal organizations. ...
What constitutes corruption differs depending on the country or jurisdiction. Certain political funding practices that are legal in one place may be illegal in another. In some countries, police and prosecutors have broad discretion over who to arrest and charge, and the line between discretion and corruption can be difficult to draw, as in racial profiling. In countries with strong interest group politics, practices that could easily constitute corruption elsewhere are sometimes sanctified as official group preferences. In countries adopting the common law adversarial system or the civil law inquisitorial system, the prosecutor is the chief legal representative of the prosecution. ...
Racial profiling is the use of race as one consideration in suspect profiling or other law enforcement practices. ...
Negative effects
Effects on politics, administration, and institutions Corruption poses a serious development challenge. In the political realm, it undermines democracy and good governance by flouting or even subverting formal processes. Corruption in elections and in legislative bodies reduces accountability and distorts representation in policymaking; corruption in the judiciary compromises the rule of law; and corruption in public administration results in the unfair provision of services. More generally, corruption erodes the institutional capacity of government as procedures are disregarded, resources are siphoned off, and public offices are bought and sold. At the same time, corruption undermines the legitimacy of government and such democratic values as trust and tolerance. See also: Good governance See Election (movie) for the film directed by Alexander Payne. ...
The rule of law implies that government authority may only be exercised in accordance with written laws, which were adopted through an established procedure. ...
The terms governance and good governance are being increasingly used in development literature. ...
Economic effects Corruption also undermines economic development by generating considerable distortions and inefficiency. In the private sector, corruption increases the cost of business through the price of illicit payments themselves, the management cost of negotiating with officials, and the risk of breached agreements or detection. Although some claim corruption reduces costs by cutting red tape, the availability of bribes can also induce officials to contrive new rules and delays. Where corruption inflates the cost of business, it also distorts the playing field, shielding firms with connections from competition and thereby sustaining inefficient firms. The private sector of a nations economy consists of those entities which are not controlled by the state - i. ...
Corruption also generates economic distortions in the public sector by diverting public investment into capital projects where bribes and kickbacks are more plentiful. Officials may increase the technical complexity of public sector projects to conceal or pave way for such dealings, thus further distorting investment. Corruption also lowers compliance with construction, environmental, or other regulations, reduces the quality of government services and infrastructure, and increases budgetary pressures on government. The public sector is that part of economic and administrative life that deals with the delivery of goods and services by and for the government, whether national, regional or local/municipal. ...
Economists argue that one of the factors behind the differing economic development in Africa and Asia is that in the former, corruption has primarily taken the form of rent extraction with the resulting financial capital moved overseas rather invested at home (hence the stereotypical, but sadly often accurate, image of African dictators having Swiss bank accounts). Corrupt administrations in Asia like Suharto's have often taken a cut on everything (requiring bribes), but otherwise provided more of the conditions for development, through infrastructure investment, law and order, etc. University of Massachusetts researchers estimated that from 1970 to 1996, capital flight from 30 sub-Saharan countries totalled $187bn, exceeding those nations' external debts.[1] (The results, expressed in retarded or suppressed development, have been modelled in theory by economist Mancur Olson.) In the case of Africa, one of the factors for this behaviour was political instability, and the fact that new governments often confiscated previous government's corruptly-obtained assets. This encouraged officials to stash their wealth abroad, out of reach of any future expropriation. This article needs to be cleaned up to conform to a higher standard of quality. ...
// Etymology World map showing Africa (geographically) The name Africa came into Western use through the Romans, who used the name Africa terra — land of the Afri (plural, or Afer singular) — for the northern part of the continent, as the province of Africa with its capital Carthage, corresponding to modern-day...
World map showing Asia (geographically) Asia is the central and eastern part of Eurasia, and the worlds largest continent. ...
In economics, rent-seeking takes place when an entity seeks to extract uncompensated value from others by manipulation of the economic environment -- often including regulations or other government decisions. ...
Financial capital, or economic capital, is any liquid medium or mechanism that represents wealth, or other styles of capital. ...
General Haji Mohamed Soeharto (commonly spelled Suharto in the English-speaking world) (born June 8, 1921) was an Indonesian leader and military strongman. ...
The University of Massachusetts (commonly referred to as UMass) is the five-campus public university system of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. ...
Seen in Asian markets in the 1990s capital flight is when assets and/or money rapidly flow out of a country. ...
Sub-Saharan Africa, Africa south of the Sahara Desert, is the term used to describe those countries of Africa that are not part of North Africa. ...
Professor Mancur Olson (1932 - February 19, 1998) was a leading social scientist who, at the time of his death, worked at the University of Maryland, College Park. ...
In law, eminent domain is the power of the state to appropriate private property for its own use without the owners consent. ...
Types of abuse
Bribery: Bribe-takers and bribe-givers It takes two to create corruption: giving and taking bribes. In some countries the culture of corruption extends to every aspect of public life, making it extremely difficult to stay in business without resorting to bribes.
Graft Graft is the act of a politician personally benefitting from public funds in a way other than prescribed by law. Graft is comparable to insider trading in business. New York's Senator George Washington Plunkitt once famously claimed that there was a difference between "honest" and "dishonest" graft. The classical example of graft is a politician using his knowledge of zoning and decision making to purchase land which he knows his political organization is interested in developing on, and then selling it at a significant profit to that organization. Large gifts from parties within the government also qualify as graft, and most countries have laws against it. (For example, any gift over $200 value made to the President of the United States is considered to be a gift to the Office of the Presidency and not to the President himself. The outgoing President must buy it if he wants to take it with him.) There are two kinds of trading that are referred to as insider trading or inside dealing: Usually illegal: Trading of a security of a company (, stocks, bonds or stock options) based on material non-public information. ...
George Washington Plunkitt (1842-1924) was a long-time State Senator from the U.S. state of New York, representing the Fifteenth Assembly District, who was especially powerful in New York City. ...
In the political arena, it is difficult to prove corruption, but impossible to prove its absence. For this reason, there are often rumors about many politicians. A political campaign is an organized effort to influence the decision making process within a group. ...
Soft money refers to money used to advance a particular political campaign in such a manner as to skirt the legal limits on how much money individuals or organizations are allowed to contribute to political campaigns (termed hard money). ...
Politicians are placed in apparently compromising positions because of their need to solicit financial contributions for their campaigns. Often, they then appear to be acting in the interests of those parties that fund them, giving rise to talk of political corruption.
Supporters of politicians assert that it is entirely coincidental that many politicians appear to be acting in the interests of those who fund them. Cynics wonder why these organizations fund politicians at all, if they get nothing for their money. It should be noted that in the United States, firms, especially large ones, often fund both the Democratic and Republican parties, though most of them favor one party over the other.
Because of the implications of corporations funding politicians, such as the perceived threat that these corporations are simply buying the votes of elected officials, certain countries, such as France, ban altogether the corporate funding of political parties. Because of the possible circumvention of this ban with respect to the funding of political campaigns, France also imposes maximum spending caps on campaigning; candidates that have exceeded those limits, or that have handed misleading accounting reports, risk having their candidacy ruled invalid, or even be prevented from running in future elections. In addition, the government funds political parties according to their successes in elections. In some countries, political parties are run solely off subscriptions (membership fees). The subscription business model is a business model that has long been used by magazines and record clubs, but the application of this model is spreading. ...
Even legal measures such as these have been argued to be legalised corruption, in that they often favor the political status quo. Minor parties and independents often argue that efforts to rein in the influence of contributions do little more than protect the major parties with guaranteed public funding while constraining the possibility of private funding by outsiders. In these instances, officials are legally taking money from the public coffers for their election campaigns to guarantee that they will continue to hold their well-paid and influenctial positions.
Conditions favorable for corruption - Adverse governance structures
- Concentration of power in decision makers who are not practically accountable to the people.
- Democracy absent or dysfunctional. See illiberal democracy.
- Information deficits
- Opportunities and incentives
- Large investments of public capital.
- Poorly-paid government officials.
- Social conditions
- Self-interested closed cliques and "old-boy" networks.
- Illiterate, apathetic or ignorant populace, with inadequate public discernment of political choices. See bounded rationality and rational ignorance.
- Deficits of law
- Imperfect electoral processes
- Costly political campaigns, with expenses exceeding normal sources of political funding.
- Absence of adequate controls to prevent bribery or "campaign donations".
Technically speaking, an illiberal democracy could be any democracy that is not a liberal democracy. ...
In the physical sciences, specifically in optics, a transparent physical object is one that can be seen through. ...
Freedom of information can mean: whether a particular piece of information can be freely created, read, modified, copied and distributed; see free content (as well as free culture and free software) freedom to express ones opinions or ideas, generally, within a society; see freedom of speech the accessibility of...
The examples and perspective in this article do not represent a worldwide view. ...
Freedom of the press (or press freedom) is the guarantee by a government of free public speech for its citizens and their associations, extended to members of news gathering organizations, and their published reporting. ...
Many models of human behavior in the social sciences assume that humans can be reasonably approximated or described as rational entities, especially as conceived by rational choice theory. ...
Rational ignorance is a term most often found in economics, particularly public choice theory, but also used in other disciplines which study rationality and choice, including philosophy (epistemology) and game theory. ...
The rule of law implies that government authority may only be exercised in accordance with written laws, which were adopted through an established procedure. ...
A lawyer is a person licensed by the state to advise clients in legal matters and represent them in courts of law and in other forms of dispute resolution. ...
A political campaign is an effort to reach a certain political goal. ...
Measuring corruption Measuring corruption - in the statistical sense, to compare countries - is naturally not a straight-forward matter, since the participants are generally unforthcoming in regards to it. Transparency International, the leading anti-corruption NGO, provides three measures, updated annually: a Corruption Perceptions Index (based on experts' opinions of how corrupt different countries are); a Global Corruption Barometer (based on a survey of general public attitudes toward and experience of corruption); and a Bribe Payers Survey, looking at the willingness of foreign firms to pay bribes. Transparency International also publishes the Global Corruption Report. The World Bank collects a range of data on corruption, including a set of Governance Indicators. For Wikipedia statistics, see m:Statistics Statistics is the science and practice of developing human knowledge through the use of empirical data expressed in quantitative form. ...
The contrary is true The 10 least corrupt countries, according to the Transparency International perception survey, 2004. ...
A non-governmental organization (NGO) is an organization that is not part of a government and was not founded by states. ...
Since 1995, Transparency International has published an annual Index of perception of corruption ordering the countries of the world according to the level of public perception of corruption of public and political functionaries. ...
The Transparency International has held perception surveys from time to time. The 10 least corrupt countries, according to one held in 2005, are (in alphabetical order): Australia, Austria, Denmark, Finland, Iceland, New Zealand, Norway, Singapore, Sweden, and Switzerland
According to the same survey, the 9 most corrupt countries are (in alphabetical order): Angola, Bangladesh, Chad, Cote d'Ivoire, Equatorial Guinea, Haiti, Myanmar, Nigeria, and Turkmenistan
However, the value of that survey is disputed, as it is based on subjective perceptions. Sophistication of technology may be available to those countries considered by the public as "least corrupt" to conceal corruption beyond public purview or disguise it as legitimate dealings.
Within the United States Mississippi, North Dakota and Louisiana are the top three corrupt states. New Hampshire, Oregon and Nebraska have the least amount of corruption. The largest states, California and Texas, are ranked in the middle, California ranking 25th and Texas in 29th. Nebraska, which is listed last on the corruption rank is only .52 and thats out of 100,000 people.
See also Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Image File history File links i would like to see some quotations by or about goebbels. ...
Wikiquote logo Wikiquote is a sister project of Wikipedia, using the same MediaWiki software. ...
Forms or aspects of corruption This article needs to be cleaned up to conform to a higher standard of quality. ...
Crony capitalism or crapitalism is a pejorative term describing a capitalist economy in which success in business depends on an extremely close relationship between the businessman and the state institutions of politics and government, rather than by the espoused equitable concepts of the free market, open competition, and economic liberalism. ...
Bribery is the practice of offering a professional or an authority person money or other favours in order to circumvent ethics or other rules in a variety of situations. ...
Nepotism means favoring relatives or personal friends because of their relationship rather than because of their abilities. ...
The phenomenon of rent-seeking was first identified in connection with monopolies by Gordon Tullock, in a paper in 1967. ...
Lobbying is the practice of private advocacy with the goal of influencing a governing body, in order to ensure that an individuals or organizations point of view is represented in the government. ...
Good governance The terms governance and good governance are being increasingly used in development literature. ...
The rule of law implies that government authority may only be exercised in accordance with written laws, which were adopted through an established procedure. ...
In the physical sciences, specifically in optics, a transparent physical object is one that can be seen through. ...
Accountability has several meanings and is the subject of a broad debate among students of modern governance. ...
Theoretical aspects In economics, the principal-agent problem treats the difficulties that arise under conditions of incomplete and asymmetric information when a principal hires an agent. ...
The phenomenon of rent-seeking was first identified in connection with monopolies by Gordon Tullock, in a paper in 1967. ...
A conflict of interest is a situation in which someone in a position of trust, such as a lawyer, a politician, or an executive or director of a corporation, has competing professional and/or personal interests. ...
Anti-corruption authorities and measures Several places have organisations called the Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC). ...
The United Nations Convention against Corruption was adopted by the United Nations General Assembly by resolution 58/4 of 31 October 2003. ...
Examples of Corruption This article provides a list of major political scandals of the United States. ...
In the 1980s and 1990s there were in the Paris region (Île-de-France) multiple instances of alleged and proved political corruption cases, as well as cases of abuse of public money and resources. ...
This article needs to be cleaned up to conform to a higher standard of quality. ...
Bettino Craxi, viewed by many as the symbol of Tangentopoli, leader of the Italian Socialist Party, is greeted by a salvo of coins as a sign of loath by protesters contesting him. ...
Bettino Craxi Bettino Craxi (born Benedetto Craxi in Milan, Italy on February 24, 1934, died in Hammamet on January 19, 2000) was an Italian politician. ...
This article needs cleanup. ...
Corruption in Mumbai exists in various forms. ...
Corruption in fiction Mr. ...
See also: 1938 in film 1939 1940 in film 1930s in film 1940s in film years in film film // Events Movie historians and film buffs often look back on the year 1939 as the greatest year in film history. ...
Henry Adams Henry Brooks Adams (February 16, 1838 – March 27, 1918) was an American historian, journalist and novelist. ...
See also: 1879 in literature, other events of 1880, 1881 in literature, list of years in literature. ...
Photo of Carl Hiaasen by Robert Birnbaum Carl Hiaasen [pronounced hiya-sun] (born March 12, 1953) is an American journalist and novelist. ...
Carl Hiaasens novel Sick Puppy (1999) is regarded by some to be perfect entertainment and food for thought. ...
See also: 1998 in literature, other events of 1999, 2000 in literature, list of years in literature. ...
References - Axel Dreher, Christos Kotsogiannis, Steve McCorriston (2004), Corruption Around the World: Evidence from a Structural Model.
External links
Official sites
Research The contrary is true The 10 least corrupt countries, according to the Transparency International perception survey, 2004. ...
Cardiff University (Welsh: Prifysgol Caerdydd) is a university in Cardiff. ...
The Center for Public Integrity is a nonprofit, nonpartisan, organization in the United States which is concerned with monitoring campaign finance laws in the U.S. and works for campaign finance reform. ...
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