Conceptualizing Political Corruption

The article identifies a set of core criteria for political corruption and discusses the difficulties associated with existing definitions in the political corruption literature. Philip discusses the three most commonly cited definitions of political corruption that take public interest; public office or market-centered approaches as core determinants in identifying and defining political corruption, and argues that numerous challenges arise with each approach. To solve definitional challenges, the author postulates that a distinction must be drawn between political corruption and incompetence where, while incompetence can be harmful and undermine the efficacy of political solutions to social or inter-group conflict, corruption subverts the principles and procedures that demarcate the public domain and govern the representation and pursuit of individual or group interests.