Impartiality and the Definition of Corruption
| DOI | 10.1177/0032321717722360 |
| Date | 01 May 2018 |
| Published date | 01 May 2018 |
| Author | Robert Alan Sparling |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
research-article2017
Article
Political Studies
2018, Vol. 66(2) 376 –391
Impartiality and the Definition
© The Author(s) 2017
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https://doi.org/10.1177/0032321717722360
DOI: 10.1177/0032321717722360
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Robert Alan Sparling
Abstract
The study of political corruption has been beset by disagreements concerning the exact definition
of the term. One definition that has grown increasingly popular in the social-scientific literature in
recent years is that proposed by Oskar Kurer and developed by Bo Rothstein: political corruption
should be understood as a breach of the norm of impartiality. This article argues that while
this definition has intuitive plausibility and while its relative parsimony makes it attractive for
cross-cultural social-scientific research, it suffers from a number of the ills attending all attempts
to depoliticize inherently political concepts. Not only is the definition insufficient to capture
numerous instances of the abuse of the public office for private gain, but it is dangerous insofar as
it papers over fundamental disagreements about the nature of the good regime. To insist upon this
parsimonious definition of corruption is to foreclose a number of essential questions of political
philosophy.
Keywords
corruption, impartiality, Bo Rothstein, Brian Barry, political theory
Accepted: 14 June 2017
In the sizeable literature on the subject of political corruption, there remains relatively
little in the way of fundamental philosophical inquiry into the concept itself. Certainly,
some of the earlier attempts to define the term (Friedrich, 1966; Klitgaard, 1988; Nye,
1967) have faced strong criticism, and the complexities of the task of definition have long
been recognized (Gardiner, 1993; Heidenheimer and Johnston, 2002; Johnston, 1996),
but practitioners have tended to opt for good-enough definitions that permit them to
advance in the concrete task of charting and combatting abuses of entrusted power for
private gain (Rose-Ackerman and Palifka, 2016: 7–10). There is, however, a small but
growing literature of a philosophical nature dedicated to the examination of this highly
contested concept. Some have attempted to offer varieties of political corruption captur-
ing a wider range of behaviours than are often captured under traditional definitions.
School of Political Studies, University of Ottawa, Ottawa, ON, Canada
Corresponding author:
Robert Alan Sparling, School of Political Studies, Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Ottawa, 120
University (7078), Ottawa, ON K1N 6N5, Canada.
Email: rsparlin@uottawa.ca
Alan Sparling
377
Dennis Thompson’s institutional corruption comes to mind, as does Lawrence Lessig’s
more expansive version of the concept (Lessig, 2011; Thompson, 1995). Seumas Miller
has offered a purposely wide definition of institutional corruption in order to include the
diverse phenomena that we would reasonably understand with that term (Miller et al.,
2015). There are now several competing definitions on offer, though none has yet to
achieve hegemonic status (see Heidenheimer and Johnston, 2002; Kurer, 2014; Philp and
Dávid-Barrett, 2015).
One of the most important observations in the philosophical debate on the subject
remains that made by Mark Philp in his now-classic essay on defining political corrup-
tion: ‘to identify political corruption we must make commitments to conceptions of the
nature of the political and the form of the public interest’ (Philp, 1997: 446). Some have
taken up this call and attempted to craft definitions applicable to particular political con-
stitutions. Mark Warren (2004), for instance, has offered a definition he believes appro-
priate to liberal democracies). Others, however, have purposely eschewed this appeal to
the political dimensions of definition for fear that they will undermine the project of
attaining social-scientific standards of objectivity and universal applicability. This is the
case for one of the most important voices in anti-corruption scholarship today, Bo
Rothstein (Rothstein, 2011b; Rothstein and Teorell, 2008), who has sought a parsimoni-
ous definition of corruption that is so uncontroversial and universal that it can be applied
across the globe regardless of political positions. Rothstein argues that when one seeks to
determine the exact antonym of corruption, one can do no better than the term ‘impartial-
ity’. Drawing on Brian Barry, Rothstein argues that the concept of impartiality has the
advantage of being intellectually parsimonious and thus capable of being used as a basic
measure for quality of government around the world. Rothstein wishes to cut through
unconvincing cultural relativism and point to a definition of corruption that is sufficiently
universal and uncontroversial as to make it appropriate as a social-scientific measure for
the quality of government. He argues that all the things that people around the world
intuitively conceive of as corrupt – ‘clientelism, favouritism, discrimination, patronage,
nepotism’ – can be understood as sins against the norm of impartiality (Rothstein, 2014:
745–746). The beauty of the concept of impartiality is that it can be treated procedurally,
so Rothstein need not enter into the difficult political debates about particular policies,
regimes, or conceptions of the good. Indeed, he focuses solely on the ‘output’ side of poli-
tics – the impartial exercise of government power – rather than the ‘input’ side, the form
of the constitution and the modes of decision making. The ideal of impartiality appears to
be uncontroversial and apolitical; for this reason, the definition of corruption as an abuse
of impartiality has numerous partisans. Oskar Kurer was one of the first to argue that cor-
ruption ought best to be understood as a breach of impartiality, and many others have
found the definition compelling (Ceva and Ferretti, 2014; Grönlund and Setälä, 2012;
Kurer, 2005; Mikkelsen, 2013; the position is aired thoroughly in Heywood, 2015).
Now, on one level partiality seems like an insufficient definition of corruption. After
all, if a country’s public officials cheat everyone equally, demanding ‘facilitation pay-
ments’ of all comers, the sin for which they would likely be accused is not partiality. Still,
such instances can be framed as partiality toward their benefactors, and the textbook
example of corruption – judicial bribery – is certainly one in which we would say that
impartiality had been breached. There is, then, some intuitive plausibility to the sugges-
tion that impartiality is the opposite of corruption. Certainly, numerous cases of corrup-
tion could be clearly described as instances in which neutral public agents have been
rendered partial. But as intuitive as this argument is, defining corruption as the antonym
378
Political Studies 66(2)
of impartiality does not deliver on the promise of universality. While certain institutions
are logically inseparable from the norm of impartiality, the norm is not generalizable into
the central principle of governmental integrity. Impartiality is neither uncontroversial nor
apolitical, and it is, indeed, a dangerous ideal if transformed into the touchstone of good
government precisely because it attempts to depoliticize debates about corruption. The
suggestion that impartiality ought to be the central defining feature of an uncorrupted pol-
ity suffers from all the ills of attempts to propose extrapolitical definitions of thoroughly
political concepts. Corruption is a concept that depends upon underlying notions of purity
and the public good. To define corruption in terms of this purely formal ideal is to fore-
close a number of central questions of political philosophy.
Impartiality as a Procedural Norm
There are some realms in which the norm of impartiality is not only unobjectionable but
inescapable. A judge must be impartial when deciding a dispute between two parties. After
all, the very office of an independent judge arises from the difficulty of judging in one’s
own case. Impartiality is an a priori, necessary condition of the office. This is why there is
universal disapproval of judicial bribery. This does not mean that it is universally true that
judges may not receive gifts: on the contrary, in numerous historical periods gifts to judges
were expected as signs of respect for their authority and often functioned as a kind of user
fee, but judges were nonetheless expected to remain uninfluenced by those extraneous
objects. To judge is to examine the objective merits of a case. To allow friendship, bias, or
pecuniary considerations to sway one’s judgment is to cease to perform one’s role. It is not
impossible to be able to judge impartially in spite of having a personal penchant towards
one party – one can even imagine someone judging correctly in her own case. But this
requires a degree of rational self-mastery few think reliable; thus, it is a fundamental prin-
ciple of natural justice that no one should be judge in her own case. The office of the judge
exists for the purpose of attaining impartiality. But ought this norm to be taken as the
indispensable criterion of political uprightness more generally? Is the judge the model for
all public office? And does impartiality suffice as a definition of corruption’s antonym?
There is a long tradition of...
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