Political Corruption: Problems and Perspectives
| Date | 01 August 1997 |
| Author | Paul Heywood |
| Published date | 01 August 1997 |
| DOI | 10.1111/1467-9248.00089 |
| Subject Matter | Article |
Political Corruption:
Problems and Perspectives
PAUL HEYWOOD
Introduction: On Why We Are All Now Concerned About Corruption
As the twentieth century comes to an end, one of the issues which has domin-
ated its ®nal decade ± political corruption ± shows little sign of diminishing in
importance. The evidence is abundant. In the United States of America and the
United Kingdom, two of the world's most well-established democracies, recent
national elections have been punctuated by stories relating to corruption: in the
former, President Bill Clinton has been dogged both by the so-called White-
water scandal, and by questions over how his 1996 re-election campaign was
funded; in the latter, John Major's Conservative government found itself caught
up during the 1997 election campaign in allegations about `sleaze', centring in
particular on the `cash-for-questions' issue.1 In a rather less well-established
democracy, Pakistan, the government of Benazir Bhutto was dismissed in early
November 1996 by President Farooq Leghari, accused (amongst other things)
of undermining judicial independence and engaging in massive corruption. The
following day, India's former prime minister, Narasimha Rao, already accused
of vote-buying and forgery, was charged with criminal conspiracy to cheat a
businessman. In Russia, still struggling to establish democracy on a secure
footing, President Boris Yeltsin admitted in March 1997 that `[o]ne of the main
faults of the Russian authorities at all levels is corruption'.2
These examples (all of which have occurred since the original deadline for
submission of manuscripts to this volume) are merely illustrative of a
phenomenon which was seen until quite recently as being virtually the preserve
of authoritarian or `developing' nations ± basically, that is, non-democracies
(or, at best, proto-democracies). Where political corruption existed in demo-
cratic nations, certainly established western democracies, it was usually viewed
as an aberrant deviation from the norm.3 Such a view was undermined by the
extraordinary revelations of systemic corruption which began to emerge in Italy
I am grateful to Richard Aldrich, Anthony Butler, Ian Forbes, Lotta Hedman, Erik Jones,
Chris Pierson, Sue Pryce, Lucy Sargisson and Mary Vincent for their valuable comments on this
chapter.
1 See R. J. Bartley (ed.), Whitewater (Dow Jones, 1994) and Whitewater Vol. 2 (Dow Jones, 1997);
David Leigh and Ed Vulliamy, Sleaze: the Corruption of Parliament (London, Fourth Estate, 1996).
2 Quoted in The Times, 7 March 1997.
3 See Arnold J. Heidenheimer (ed.), Political Corruption. Readings in Comparative Analysis
(New Brunswick NJ, Transaction, 1970): although there are sections covering the United States
and Western Europe, these cases are predominantly local level or else historical. In contrast,
corruption in the developing nations ± principally in South and South East Asia and Africa ± is
presented as being more systemic. Japan, where seemingly endemic political corruption has often
been explained in culturalist terms, and Latin America receive virtually no attention in the
Heidenheimer volume.
# Political Studies Association 1997. Published by Blackwell Publishers, 108 Cowley Road, Oxford OX4 1JF, UK and 350 Main
Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA.
418
Political Corruption: Problems and Perspectives
in the early 1990s: the entire Italian post-war body politic was revealed to have
rested on a complex web of corrupt networks which encompassed politicians,
bureaucrats and businessmen at the highest levels. But, even if the Italian
example represented an extreme, endemic high-level political corruption could
no longer be presented primarily as a problem of non-democracies. Instead,
corruption scandals began to emerge with insistent regularity in several other
European democracies ± notably, Italy's southern neighbours Spain and
Greece, but also France, Germany, Austria and Belgium. By the mid-1990s,
it appeared that no nation was immune to the corrosive impact of political
corruption. Academic interest in the phenomenon experienced a parallel
upsurge, characterized by a proliferation of conferences devoted to the issue,
with related publications.4
This volume obviously forms part of the trend. Its claim to distinctiveness lies
in bringing together scholars working within a number of dierent areas of the
social sciences, who have approached the issue of political corruption from a
variety of analytical perspectives. The chapters which follow draw on insights
from political science, philosophy, economics, sociology and law; the
methodologies deployed include comparative approaches, game theory, focus
group discussions, and case studies. Yet, whatever the distinctive merits or
otherwise of this volume, the question arises of why political corruption has
generated such interest in recent years. After all, as Alatas has commented,
corruption is trans-systemic:
it inheres in all social systems ± feudalism, capitalism, communism and
socialism. It aects all classes of society; all state organizations, monarchies
and republics; all situations, in war and peace; all age groups; both sexes;
and all times, ancient, medieval and modern.5
Part of the answer lies in the perception that the phenomenon has spread to new
areas: no state any longer seems safe, not even the most mature democracy. The
Italian revelations of the early 1990s acted as a form of catalyst to investigative
journalists and, increasingly, magistrates in other democracies. Eectively, the
Italian example produced a `demonstration eect', sensitizing other western
democracies to the issue of political corruption. It is hardly a coincidence that
revelations of corruption scandals assumed a new momentum after the `mani
4 It should be acknowledged that some seasoned observers of corruption had been driving this
particular wagon long before others amongst us jumped aboard. See in particular, Arnold J.
Heidenheimer, Michael Johnston and Victor T. LeVine, Political Corruption. A Handbook (New
Brunswick NJ, Transaction, 1989), and the journal Corruption and Reform, which dates from 1986.
Amongst recent publications, not all of which have resulted from conferences, see Donatella della
Porta and Yves MeÂny (eds), DeÂmocratie et corruption en Europe (Paris, Editions La DeÂcouverte,
1995; English version published by Pinter, 1997); F. F. Ridley and A. Doig (eds), Sleaze: Politicians,
Private Interests & Public Reaction (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1995); Walter Little and
Eduardo Posada-Carbo (eds), Political Corruption in Europe and Latin America (London,
Macmillan, in association with the Institute of Latin American Studies, University of London,
1996); M. Levi and D. Nelken (eds), The Corruption of Politics and the Politics of Corruption
(Oxford, Blackwell, 1996); H. E. Bakker and N. G. Schulte Nordholt (eds), Corruption and
Legitimacy (Amsterdam, SISWO, 1996); International Social Science Journal, Corruption in Western
Democracies 149/3 (1996). In addition, a number of Internet sites which focus on corruption have
been established; a useful site from which to begin exploring can be located at `http://
gwdu19.gwdg.de/uwvw/'.
5 Syed Hussein Alatas, Corruption: its Nature, Causes and Consequences (Aldershot, Avebury,
1990), pp. 3±4.
# Political Studies Association, 1997
PAUL HEYWOOD
419
pulite' (clean hands) investigations were initiated in Milan. The rise in exposure
of political corruption, rather than the fact of its existence, in turn became self-
sustaining, prompting anti-corruption drives in several states.
However, the fact that corruption should have generated such public concern
cannot be divorced from the wider political context within which it was
uncovered. The early 1990s coincided with the collapse of the post-war order:
until then, the Cold War had provided political actors with ideological and geo-
strategic reference points. Its end destroyed the certainties which had charac-
terized post-war Europe. Moreover, it contributed to the unravelling of a
political settlement in Italy which had originally been based on an anti-
communist coalition built around the Christian Democrats.6 The revelation of
widespread political corruption helped undermine one of the support
structures ± the claim to operate on the basis of public accountability ± which
had underpinned western democracies in the post-war world, and distinguished
them from communist regimes. The lack of trust in public organizations
associated with what has been termed the postmodern politics of fear and risk
was exacerbated by the sheer scale of political corruption: without trust,
democracy itself was threatened.7 For some, therefore, political corruption is
simply one more manifestation of the contemporary crisis of the nation state or,
more particularly, western democratic states.
To others, such speculation may seem fanciful ± or at best overblown. Rather
more mundane reasons can be adduced for public concern about political
corruption. For instance, it is possible that what changed in the early 1990s was
the public's readiness to tolerate political corruption, the result in turn of a
downturn in economic circumstances. Just as the proposals contained in the
Maastricht Treaty began to meet with growing scepticism when they were used
in several member states of the European Union to justify stringent controls on
public expenditure, so...
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