Corrupt exchanges: actors, resources, and mechanisms of political corruption

Abstract

Challenging a longstanding belief that political corruption flourishes primarily in developing countries, authoritarian regimes, or societies that tacitly favor patrimony, this text argues that corruption is a problem in most if not all democracies. In corrupt exchanges, the authors focus on the more conspicuous Italian case, using a combination of primary research methods (judicial proceedings, in-depth interviews, parliamentary documents, press databases, etc) as well as cross-national comparisons. Ultimately, they present a model for analyzing corruption as a network of illegal exchanges, a model that will serve both as a theoritical approach to a political problem bearing on all democratic institutions, and as a warning of a system in peril.