Making Sense of Corruption Studies: An Introduction

Approaches to studying corruption are hugely diverse, reflecting myriad competing understandings of what the term means and how it should be applied. Our approach looks at corruption as an issue within the science of government more generally, tracing its evolution from ‘classical’ approaches that understand corruption as a distortion of the proper purposes of government to contemporary emphases on corruption as a form of institutional equilibrium. Governance reflects a complex set of both formal and informal interactions that determine the distribution of resources, with societies that are unable to establish impersonal and merit-based systems remaining trapped in unproductive rent-seeking activities. Drawing on this approach, the introduction describes the chapter structure of the book in three parts: ‘concepts and approaches’, ‘varieties and connotations’, and ‘the anti-corruption repertory’.