The Political Consequences of Corruption: A Reassessment

The article addresses the political consequences of corruption, and argues that the literature can be divided into three schools of thought: the ‘moralist’ school arguing that corruption is harmful to societies and governments; the ‘revisionist’ school pointing to possible positive effects of corruption; and a third school suggesting that the consequences depend on the political system in question. The author, however, argues that the findings are contradictory because of a lack of understanding of corruption’s specific political effects, and a disregard of the presence of differing consequences. The author then defines four common types of corruption as to separately investigate their political consequences: market corruption (think of a black market); patronage networks and machines working to expand patron-client networks; cronyism and nepotism; and crisis corruption where suppliers trade in extraordinary stakes.