3

THE MEANING OF CORRUPTION

IN DEMOCRACIES
Mark E. Warren

While not the worst of polit ical pathologies, corruption is the one most likely to be found in
democracies. Corruption is not as dangerous as war, nor as urgent as terror ism. Some have
even argued that the little bit of corruption that comes with democracies makes them work
better – by lower ing transaction costs, reducing the inef ficiencies of cumber some rules and
generally making things happen (Anechiarico and Jacobs 1996; see also Huntington 1968;
Leys 1965). But, more recently, a strong consensus has emerged that polit ical corruption is
neither a benefit to democracy nor an insig ni ficant irrit ant: it corrodes the norms, processes
and mechan isms of democracy itself (deLeon 1993; della Porta and Vannucci 1999; Elster
1989: 263–72; Johnston 2005; Lessig 2011; Mungiu-Pippidi 2006; Rose-Ackerman 1999;
Rothstein 2005; Thompson 1995; Warren 2004, 2006). By most measures, the world’s demo-
cracies are the least corrupt regimes. But when democracies go bad, corruption (rather than
oppression, violence, tyranny or related pathologies) is likely to be high on the list of prob-
lems, and citizens are likely to place corruption as high among their reasons for disaf fection.
This chapter focuses on the question of what corruption means in a democracy. My aim is
to map the conceptual and norm at ive land scape that connects ‘corruption’ and ‘democracy’.
Within democratic polit ical systems, I shall suggest, these are intrinsically connected concepts.
What defi nes a practice, action, exchange or institution as ‘corrupt’ is a corrosion of some
feature that enables ‘democracy’. The institutions and practices that comprise ‘democracy’ set
the stand ards in terms of which a practice, action, exchange or institution is defi ned as
‘corrupt’. Or, put in still other terms, ‘democracy’ and ‘corruption’ are endogenous concepts:
to identify ‘corrupt’ actions, practices or institutions is also to identify ways in which the
actions, practices or institutions that comprise ‘democracy’ are failing – though, of course,
corruption comprises only one set of ways in which democracy can fail.
I develop this under stand ing of corruption through two kinds of argu ment. The fi rst is
norm at ive: ‘democracy’ is comprised of institutions and practices that enable inclusion, such
that those who are potentially affected by collect ive decisions and actions have some influence
over them. From the perspect ive of this democracy- defi n ing norm, polit ical corruption
counts as a form of exclusion: corrupt actions, practices or institutions under mine the means
through which inclusions are enabled, by break ing principal–agent relations between
constituents and represent at ives, for example. In addition, democracies are highly suscept ible
to corruption just because their institutions are legit im at ised by high stand ards of inclusion.

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 Corruption in democracies

Where democracies are consol id ated, the stand ards intrinsic to democracy – stand ards that
enable inclusion, such as equal oppor tun it ies for influence, publicity and impar tial ity – are
widely shared and publicly affi rmed, even (and often especially) by those engaged in corrupt
practices. In contrast to particu lar istic, patronage-based or other non- democratic regimes,
corruption is unjusti fiable within the terms of the polit ical culture and so, typically, involves
duplicity. I shall thus conceive of corruption in a democracy as duplicitous exclusion – a
conceptual isation that emphasises the close norm at ive relationship between democracy and
corruption.
The second argu ment is structural: modern democracies are comprised of highly differen-
tiated systems of institutions and practices. All democracies accomplish the work of collect ive
decision and action through differentiated mixes of execut ive agencies, legislatures, judi-
ciar ies, open public sphere discourse, civil-society organ isations and market- oriented fi rms
and enter prises. Each actual ises ‘inclusion’ in ways that are distinct ive to the domain: public
trust, responsive represent ation, impar tial adjudication, mutual persua sion, general ised trust
and reciprocity and voluntary exchange. For this reason, corruption in a democracy is also
domain differentiated: the exclusions it entails follow norm at ive patterns that are distinct ive
to each domain, meaning that while ‘corruption’ can be defi ned as having a single norm at ive
core, its practical (and empir ically situated) mean ings will depend upon domain-specific
institutions and practices of inclusion. Although the broad norm at ive meaning of corruption
in a democracy is duplicitous exclusion, there is no one ‘problem’ of corruption in a
democracy: each domain requires a conceptual isation appropriate to the kind of corruption
to which it is suscept ible.
I develop these points as follows. In the fi rst section, I offer some broad obser vations on
the kinds of damage corruption effects in democracies. In the second, I suggest why our
received conception of polit ical corruption – the abuse of public office for private gain – inad-
equately captures the relationship between democracy and corruption. Third, I develop the
concept of corruption in a democracy as duplicitous exclusion. Finally, I distinguish the
domain-specific mean ings of corruption within the differentiated institutions and spheres
found in every function ing democracy.

Corrupting democracy
Consider an apparent paradox: corruption professionals count the developed democracies as
among the cleanest in the world. But the publics in these countries often think other wise. Of
the cleanest thirty or so countries listed in the 2012 Corruption Perception Index, almost all
are consol id ated democracies located in Europe and North America (Transparency
International 2012). Citizens in these countries will rarely if ever encounter a corrupt demand
or transaction. In contrast, in those countries that popu late the lower half of the list, corrup-
tion directly affects the everyday lives of citizens in ways both mater ial and moral.
But ask Americans (or to a lesser extent, Canadians or Swedes) whether polit ics in their
countries are ‘corrupt’, and chances are that the answer will be ‘yes’. If we were to go on
public opinion alone, we might judge these relat ively clean democracies as among the most
corrupt in the world (European Commission 2012: 106–8). US public- opinion surveys show
that much of the public – often a major ity – regards ‘polit ics’ and ‘most politicians’ as ‘corrupt’.
In 2008, 51 per cent respond ing to an American National Election Studies survey believed
that ‘quite a few’ politicians are ‘crooked’ (American National Election Studies 2010).
Political scient ists often view such fi nd ings as evidence of disaf fection from polit ics gener-
ally, rather than any particu lar pathology that could be addressed through institutional

43
 Mark E. Warren

change, reform, transparency or other fi xes. It is probably the case that clear, archetypal
corruption of the kind represented by Rod Blagojevich (a former governor of Illinois
impeached, removed from office and jailed for ‘pay-to-play’ corruption) and Jack Abramoff
(a Washington lobby ist convicted of bribing US legislators) are probably no longer pervasive
in the consol id ated democracies, even though instances will most certainly continue to occur.
But there is another possibil ity: when the public is saying ‘crooked ness’, they are accusing
inclusive (democratic) institutions of function ing exclusively, in the sense that power ful
interests are too often able to bend the powers of govern ment in ways that benefit a few and
harm the many (Lessig 2011). There is another nuance in popular opinion as well that bears
notice: the public pays close attention to the character of politicians, often even more than to
their plat forms. They focus on prom ises and commit ments, stead iness rather than ‘fl ip-flop-
ping’ and simple talk rather than soph ist icated parsing – in a word, trust wor thiness. There are
many ways to read these kinds of judgements, but one way would be to say that the public
under stands something of the burden that democracy places on cred ible speech. When people
accuse politicians of being ‘corrupt’, they often mean that they cannot be counted upon to
follow through on what they promise publicly; that they say one thing but their decisions are
responsive not to their constituents but to forms of influence that work in non-public ways
– and which could not be justi fied were they to become public. So when people say ‘corrup-
tion’, they may be point ing to exclusion of the kind that works though duplicity, in such a way
that the currency of speech that connects votes to policy is corroded. Citizens may have
unschooled views about how these forms of exclusion work, but they know that those who
represent their interests are entitled to be at the table, while they sense that their interests are
crowded out by more power ful interests, even as they are being prom ised other wise.
From a norm at ive perspect ive, these well-known character ist ics of public opinion suggest
that democracies are suscept ible to corruption because their institutions are legit im at ised by
the highest stand ards of any regime type and arguably the most difficult to engineer into
polit ical institutions. Thus, if democracies have affi n it ies with corruption, this circum stance
is the dark side of their virtues: corruption is a possibil ity only when polit ies set stand ards for
them selves of the kind that can be corroded (Mungiu-Pippidi 2006). From a norm at ive
perspect ive, democracy means that people are included in those collect ive matters that affect
them, that they have means to affect collect ive decisions, that institutions are impar tial and
fair with respect to the people affected by them, that decision-making is transparent and that
it is possible for people to find, under stand and contribute to the reason ing that justi fies them.
Democracies achieve these inclusions by distribut ing powers broadly to those affected and by
defi n ing the rules under which confl ict is conducted. They empower collect ive actions by
settling public purposes into institutions defi ned by their service to these purposes. Above all,
democracies are defi ned by the public nature of collect ive decisions and actions: decisions
gain their legit im acy from public reason ing, negotiations and bargains. They do so in ways
that even those who lose their battles view political processes as legit im ate and believe they
can fight another battle, another day, using the resources that democracies distribute to the
people: the powers to argue and persuade and the powers of the vote. Democracies depend
upon people’s confidence in the rules that regu late confl ict and their trust in institutions that,
in the meantime, distribute entitlements and protections fairly and impar tially.
‘Corruption’ is not the only way a democracy can fail these stand ards and resources that
are constitutive of its institutions. But it does name an import ant set of ways. Corruption
under mines the powers of voting and speak ing that people can use to influence collect ive
decisions – the very powers that defi ne democracy. It removes public contestation into non-
public chan nels of influence. It redirects the powers and resources of public agencies into

44
 Corruption in democracies

instru ments of partial, particu lar or private benefit. State powers of regu lation are bent to
advant age actors with influence. Corruption creates inef ficiencies in deliver ies of public
services, not only in the form of a ‘tax’ on public expendit ures but by shift ing public activ it ies
towards those sectors in which it is possible for those engaged in corrupt exchanges to benefit.
When public officials put prices on routine govern ment transactions and services, then
univer sal inclusions are transformed into particu lar istic transactions. Moreover, corruption
under mines the culture of democracy. When people lose confidence that public decisions are
taken for reasons that are publicly available and justi fiable, they often become cynical about
public speech and deliberation. People come to expect duplicity in public speech, and the
expect ation tarnishes all public officials, whether or not they are corrupt. And when people
are mistrust ful of govern ment, they are also cynical about their own capacit ies to act on
public goods and purposes and will prefer to attend to narrow domains of self-interest they
can control. Corruption in this way dimin ishes the horizons of collect ive actions and in so
doing shrinks the domain of democracy.
In a democracy, corruption involves a large variety of damages of these kinds. But we can
also view each of these damages as follow ing from harms to the resources that are constitutive
of democratic institutions. Corruption harms democratic processes by under min ing the
democratic powers of speak ing and voting, inject ing partial treat ment into impar tial institu-
tions and by eroding confidence in polit ical institutions and trust in public agents. Each
involves exclusions of those with claims to inclusion. Corruption dimin ishes the impact of
voting by break ing the principal–agent relations essential to democratic represent ation. It
reduces the public influence of voice and deliberation and corrodes the currencies of prom-
ises. It under mines the distributions of powers available to everyone – voice and votes – in
favour of unequally distributed resources, particu larly money but also other means of access
to power and influence. And it under mines the public purposes and capacit ies of govern ment
to act on behalf of the people. In short, corruption in a democracy is a form of exclusion.
And it is a form based on duplicity: public acknowledgement of the norms that comprise a
democracy combined with non-public circumvention of these norms.

Limits of the ‘public office’ conception of corruption

Despite these now widely recog nised harms to democracy, we lack a conception of polit ical
corruption that encompasses them. Our received conception of polit ical corruption – the
abuse of public office for private gain – has been outgrown by contemporary democracies and
the mean ings of corruption that have followed in their wake. This conception of polit ical
corruption has two import ant but limit ing features. First, the concept is essentially admin is-
trat ive: ‘public’ means ‘state’, and ‘state’ tends to mean admin istrat ive agencies. This concep-
tual lens reflects the origins of the concept in projects of state-build ing – in particu lar,
the professional ising and rational ising bureaucracies into civil services (Friedrich 1989).
The concept places a high premium on precisely defi ned duties of office since these provide
norms of account abil ity. Importantly, this conception presumes not just high-capacity
states but also states with stand ards of public service that can be violated (Mungiu-Pippidi
2006). Second, the concept builds on the insight that institutions can be better than the
individuals who constitute them. James Madison, the fi rst to fully appreciate this point,
under stood that the interests of public officials could be aligned with public good by
design ing institutions that divide and share decision-making powers, thus provid ing
officials with the motives and capacit ies to check and expose conspiracies against the
public interest (Madison et al. 1987, no. 51). Robert Klitgaard’s (1988) elegant formula,

45
 Mark E. Warren

Corruption = Monopoly + Discretion − Accountability, captures these two insights perfectly,

relat ing office-based account abil ity to distribution of powers.
Because of these insights, our received concept of polit ical corruption has been of enormous
practical import ance to institutional design within the contexts of high- capacity states.
Importantly, it focuses on the norms and duties of public office, in this way defi n ing stand ards
to which public officials can be held to account. And the conception has helped us to think
carefully and product ively about how to design institutions so that public officials have
incent ives to live up to the norms that defi ne their offices.
But the office-based conception of corruption is also an artefact of the problems of admin-
istrat ive institution builders. We are still admin istrat ive institution builders – now perhaps
more than ever. But the office-based conception does little to identify and clarify common
intu itions into the corruption of democratic institutions and practices. The key problem is
that it presupposes the substant ive norms that defi ne public offices, thus begging the question
as to how these norms are them selves constituted by polit ical processes. That is, the basic
framework is admin istrat ive rather than polit ical, in such a way that questions about the
integ rity of polit ical processes are imprecisely framed – democratic polit ical processes in
particu lar. Stated other wise, the office-based concept is not polit ical enough. And, not being
polit ical enough, it lacks sensit iv ity to the kinds of corruption that plague democracies – the
most polit ical of all regime types.
There are at least five reasons the office-based conception of corruption comes up short in
this respect. First, the office-based concept of corruption provides little grip on the norm-
creat ing processes that are at the heart of democratic polit ics. It is unique to democracy – in
particu lar, its deliberat ive aspects – that polit ical confl ict is regu lated by the norms of
open ness, publicity and inclusion, which issue in public purposes backed by public agencies.
The office-based lens focuses on the institutional results of democratic processes – that is,
admin istrat ive agencies with public purposes. However, it is a poor guide to the question of
what it would mean for the processes through which public purposes are created to be
corrupted, in spite of the fact that common sense says that a good share of the corruption
within democracies can be found here, in, for example, regu latory regimes that favour those
interests with access to policy-makers ( Johnston 2005, Chapter 4; Lessig 2011).
Second, and closely related, the admin istrat ive orient ation of our received conception
provides little guid ance for the duties of polit ical office (Thompson 1995; Warren 2006).
Administrative officials fulfi l their offices by holding a public trust and acting impar tially in
the public interest, ideally insu lated from polit ical pressures. The role of democratic repres-
ent at ives is, however, to defi ne the public interest, by respond ing to polit ical pressures.
Partiality, legislators remind us, is part of their job. So why should we think it corrupt if they
provide access to their constituents and supporters? We will need a concept of polit ical
corruption that is attuned to the kinds of public offices that require polit ical creativ ity and
responsiveness to citizens, since these offices are the heart of democratic institutions. Such a
concept must make it clear that polit ical corruption has to do with forms of responsiveness
that are exclusive and non-public. Closely related, citizens should not necessar ily trust legis-
lators to represent their interests, since trust is misplaced in any context in which there are
confl ict ing interests. But they should be able to trust the rules and procedures under which
confl ict is conducted, such that they have confidence that their opin ions register and enter
into comprom ises and that the reasons for decisions are public for all to see (Thompson 1993,
1995; Warren 2006).
Third, one strength of our received conception is that it is rule based. Because it focuses
on defi ned public offices, it allows an even-handed application of norms and stand ards to the

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 Corruption in democracies

behaviour of individuals. But this is also its weak ness. There are limits to what rules can
encompass, especially when officials’ tasks require creativ ity, as do many bureaucratic posi-
tions and all polit ical positions. Rule-based approaches to controlling corruption tend towards
rigid ity – and, when combined with policing, tend to devalue integ rity and professional ism.
At the limit, rule-based approaches can under mine democracy by hamstringing the capacit ies
of officials to act as responsive, efficient and creat ive agents of the people (Anechiarico and
Jacobs 1996). Ideally, institutions should reward integ rity over rule-follow ing, a quality that
people almost always seek in their elected represent at ives, not just because they do not trust
any set of rules to generate the intangibles of integ rity but also because they know that, in
fact, no amount of over sight can remove the temptations of abuse of power nor reach the
intangibles of public service and responsiveness.
Fourth, and closely related, the office-based conception is a poor conceptual tool for
identi fy ing corrupt institutions and cultures, just because its norm at ive leverage works by
compar ing individual conduct to duties of office. In environ ments in which whole institu-
tional cultures under mine public duties, the office-based conception has less to offer. Some
kinds of institutional incent ives are downward-level ling – as in the constant race for campaign
money in the US Congress – such that the norms support corruption, even against the public
(and democratic) purposes of the institution (della Porta and Vannucci 1999; Lessig 2011). For
individual office-holders, these contexts can operate as social traps: individuals who break
with the downward-level ling norms are punished through exclu sion from networks, by fail-
ures to raise campaign money sufficient for re- election, and by peers (Rothstein 2005;
Mungiu-Pippidi 2006).
Fifth, our received conception of corruption misses a particu lar kind of integ rity central
to democratic represent ation. Under our office-based conception, integ rity means that an
official’s behaviour reflects the norms of her office. While this approach makes perfect sense
in bureaucratic arenas, it is less mean ing ful in the more polit ical arenas, where expect ations
for represent ation are less settled and under stood. It is clear, however, that the integ rity of
democratic represent ation is established, in large part, through prom ises: a represent at ive has
integ rity when his decisions and actions reflect the speech that justi fies them. Duplicitous
speech corrupts the currency of prom ises and justi fications that is the life-blood of demo-
cracy. But while we use this notion of corruption in public conver sation, it is not encom-
passed by our received conception.

Democratic norms: political corruption as duplicitous exclusion

We need a conception of polit ical corruption that draws it closer to the problems of demo-
cracy. I suggest that we do so by asking a simple question: what does it mean to corrupt a
democratic process? To answer, we will need to identify the basic good, or norm, that is
subject to corruption. Democratic theor ists increasingly converge on the norm that every
individual potentially affected by a collect ive decision should have an oppor tun ity to affect
the decision, propor tionally to his or her stake in the outcome. We can, of course, refi ne this
norm for differ ing institutions, issues, levels of aggreg ation and the like. The point here,
however, is a simple one: polit ical corruption under mines democracy because it amounts to
exclud ing people from decisions that affect them. The very logic of corruption involves
exclusion: the corrupt use their control over resources to achieve gains at the expense of
those excluded. They do so by working around, under or against the institutions that achieve
inclusions.

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 Mark E. Warren

Although every form of corruption of democracy involves exclusion, not every form of
exclusion is corrupt. A regime may be exclusive, and the exclusions may produce the most
despicable evils. And where an exclusive elite simply holds to different norms than the broader
public, however odious, we would not usually say that they are ‘corrupt’. They have not
depar ted from, violated or under mined public norms, for to speak in this way is to assume
that they recog nise these norms. As Mungiu-Pippidi (2006) incisively notes, corruption
comes with democracy, particu larly its early stages, in part because of spread ing norms of
univer sal inclusion. Corruption in a democracy is not about norm at ive disagreement fought
out in public but rather a corrosion of public norms of inclusion that defi ne a regime as a
democracy.
Another distinct ive character istic of corruption in democracies follows: corruption
involves hypocrisy. For an elite (or group or individual) to be corrupt in the democratic sense,
it must both profess and violate the democratic norm of inclusion. Thus, in a democracy,
corrupt exclusion is distinguished by duplicity, a character istic that implies not just the
possibil ity of condem nation but also the possibil ity of immanent critique: the corrupt can be
called to account by their own stand ards. Corruption of democracy is about influences that
work out of the public eye and function to exclude those who have right ful claims to inclu-
sion – claims that are constitutive of a regime as a democracy. The very covert ness of corrup-
tion pays tribute to the viol ated norms.
Finally, polit ical corruption normally benefits those included within a relationship and
harms those who are excluded. While the gains of corruption are often easily identi fiable,
harms to specific goods are often more difficult to detect: environ ments are marginally
degraded, govern ments are less efficient, their officials less competent, build ings somewhat
less safe, consumer products a bit more expensive and oppor tun it ies less equal. But the harms
to democratic processes are more straight for ward: it is the fact of exclusion and the duplicity
of justi fication that corrupts democracy, whether or not specific harms can be identi fied.
What is corrupted are the polit ical processes and institutions that would, ideally, expose and
limit potential harms by includ ing those affected in the decisions that affect them.
In sum, corruption of democracy is a violation of the norm of empowered inclu sion of all
affected. More precisely: (1) Corruption involves unjusti fiable exclusion, measured against
public norms that defi ne a regime as ‘democratic’. In addition, two other conditions are
necessary. (2) A duplicity condition with regard to the norm of inclusion: the excluded have
a claim to inclusion that is both recog nised and violated by the corrupt. (3) A benefit/harm
condition with regard to the consequences of exclusion: the exclusion normally benefits those
included within a relationship and harms at least some of those excluded. Together, (1), (2)
and (3) defi ne the form of corruption that is specific to democracy.

Domain differentiated meanings of political corruption

While these norm at ive features of corruption as duplicitous exclusion are relat ively simple, a
system atic application of the concept is more complex. Even idealised and simplified
contemporary ‘democracies’ are not reducible to one institution or even a few. Elections, for
example, can coexist with patron–client relations to solid ify soft forms of author it arian ism.
Democratic inclusions are effected though complex institutional and social ecologies that
include constitutional states (differentiated into legislat ive, admin istrat ive and judicial func-
tions); robust public spheres of opinion form ation from which collect ive decisions and actions
draw their legit im acy; civil societ ies that cultivate citizen capacit ies and form alternat ive
venues of collect ive action; and market econom ies, which are correlated with, but

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 Corruption in democracies

Table 3.1 Differentiating domains and kinds of corruption

Domains of Executive Judicial Legislative Public sphere Civil society Markets

inclusion

Norms of Public Equal Responsive Mutual Generalised Fair and

inclusion trust stand ing and represent ation persua sion trust and voluntary
by domain protection; reciprocity exchange
impar tial ity under
conditions of
full
inform ation
Kinds of Abuse of Rights, truth Responsiveness Duplicity, Particularised Rent- seeking
corruption public and fair ness- to money or deception, trust enabled by
office for seeking power in ways dissimu lation leveraged market and
private processes that could not for group inform ation
gain under mined be publicly gains constraints
by power or justi fied
money
Damage to Loss of Eroded Failed Failed public Loss of social Unfair
democratic collect ive rights represent ation deliberation capital distribution;
inclusions agency distor ted or
dampened
invest ment

ambivalently related to, democratic institutions. Each domain potentially contributes to

democracy, and each has modes of corruption associated with its democratic potentials.
To under stand how corruption as duplicitous exclusion might apply to varied institutions,
then, we would need to ask what is the mode of inclusion – that is, the democratic function
– of the institution that might be harmed by corruption? We can then relate corruption to
democracy through the modes of harm specific to each institution. What would it mean to
corrupt each function? Table 3.1 summar ises some answers.

Executive agencies
The office-based conception of corruption is most at home in execut ive agencies. From the
perspect ive of democracy, the execut ive branch of the state is not the only location of
collect ive agency, but it is often the ulti mate location, owing to the state’s monopoly over
legit im ate means of coercion. In a democracy, a people’s confidence in its execut ive is a
confidence that it can act in response to collect ive problems. Thus, ideally, the mode of inclu-
sion in execut ive functions is based on a public trust – a trust that officials will abide by the
goals and rules that have been legitim ately decided within the more polit ical of domains
(Warren 2006). The notion that corruption involves violat ing a public trust (as in the office-
based conception) is thus most applicable to execut ive offices and functions. What is corrupted
is govern ment as the trustee and executor of collect ive purposes. Democracy is under mined
when people lack a collect ive agent they can trust to execute collect ive decisions. There are
also indirect harms to democracy: corruption not only leads to inef ficient and inef fect ive
govern ment (della Porta and Vannucci 1999: 256–8; Rose-Ackerman 1999: 9–26), but also
produces an atmosphere that is arbit rary, permeated by differential treat ment. Under such

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 Mark E. Warren

circum stances, individuals lack the secur it ies necessary for association, pressure, voice and
other modes of citizen participation that under write democracy. An atmosphere in which
even everyday acts of democratic participation require heroism can induce or rein force
passiv ity and distrust among citizens.

Judiciaries
Democracy depends upon public procedures that have the force of law, combined with the
rights and secur it ies that enable individuals to use these procedures by voting, speak ing,
organ ising and pressur ing. The democratic norm of inclusion thus depends upon judicial
institutions that provide actionable civil rights and liber ties, equal stand ing, equal protection,
access to counsel, impar tial prosecutors. Democracy also depends upon judicial over sight of
execut ive-branch police functions. The import ance of this kind of judicial system to democ-
racy is not just institutional but also psychological: knowable secur it ies, equally distributed,
are necessary for a confident and active citizenry.
Less noticeable but equally import ant is that judiciar ies are microcosms of talk-based polit-
ical processes – precisely the feature of democratic institutions that makes them super ior to
other modes of confl ict resolution. As custodians of law, judicial institutions ideally function
to ensure that it is applied with fair ness and equity. But because cases are brought where there
are confl ict ing interests and uncer tainty about what constitutes fair ness and equity, the norms
of judicial institutions are procedural rather than substant ive. Thus, the objects of corruption
in judicial systems are not fi rst- order norms of settled purposes as with execut ive functions
but rather second- order procedural norms of fair ness and impar tial ity that support deliber-
at ive processes. The integ rity of the process involves a confidence that, when the truth is
unknown and the demands of fair ness and equity ambiguous, argument ation and advocacy
are the best ways of approx im at ing true, fair and equit able outcomes. Thus, it is not the
outcomes (truth, fair ness, equity) that are subject to corruption in any immediate sense but
rather the processes through which they are achieved. The process is corrupted, and exclu-
sions effected, when motivations for gain other than those of winning the argu ment enter the
process – as when jurors are bribed, lawyers have confl icts of interests or judges seek polit ical
or ideological gains. The harm to democracy is that the rule of law becomes less certain,
exclud ing citizens from the legal rights, protections and secur it ies to which they are entitled.
There are also broader process exclusions: when argu ments no longer carry the burden for
determ in ing truth, fair ness and equity, judicial decisions become illegit im ate, which in turn
corrodes not only the culture of law but also the democratic ideal that confl icts are best settled
by talk structured by procedures that are fair and impar tial, open to all affected.

Legislatures
This feature of judicial institutions – their reliance on argu ment in the face of confl ict – also
defi nes the integ rity of democratic legislatures, although without the same process constraints.
The legislat ive domain is highly polit ical, of course, in the sense that it often works at the
limits of consensus about collective decisions. But, much like the judiciary, its norms of inclu-
sion are second-order – those of process. Citizens are included in this domain through their
votes for represent at ives in compet it ive elections, as well as through commu nications and
deliberations enabled by polit ical associations, letter-writing, demonstrations and other ways
of convey ing opin ions and interests to represent at ives. The objects of corruption are, there-
fore, these represent at ive link ages that enable democratic inclusions.

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The most famil iar form of corruption of represent ation is the buying and selling of votes
in elections as well as influence peddling in legislat ive drafting and voting processes. But these
are not the only objects of corruption. The legit im acy of outcomes depends upon justi fica-
tions that result from transparent deliberat ive processes. Thus, the deliberat ive dimen sion of
represent ation should be more actively inclusive even than voting: even those who lose can
try to persuade their represent at ives or mobil ise debates in the public domain through which
they hope to influence their represent at ive – if not directly through persua sion then indirectly
by changing the minds of those likely to vote in the next election.
The more elusive dimen sions of legislat ive corruption, then, have to do with inclusion in
deliberation – elusive because, in contrast to the bureaucrat’s perform ance-based duties of
office, a represent at ive’s key role is to create agreements in the face of confl icts over goals. So
whatever trust constituents place in them cannot be based on outcomes: no represent at ive can
deliver, not least because even under the best of circum stances outcomes will reflect a mix of
compet ing interests and voices. Rather, trust in a represent at ive is well placed when the
reasons he gives for a position are, in fact, the reasons that motivate his vote, bargain or
comprom ise. Citizens should be able to trust that represent at ives’ decisions are not the result
of undue attentiveness to those who have bought access through their campaign contribu-
tions. In a democracy, policy-making ought to be a public process and, under conditions of
represent ation, can only be a public process if citizens can have confidence not just that the
deliberat ive process is inclusive but also that votes are motivated by the reasons that emerge
from the process (Thompson 1995: 126–9; Warren 2006; see also Stark 2000: 230–2).
Legislative norms should therefore reflect not just the integ rity of voting but also the integ rity
of inclusive deliberation.
The office-based conception of corruption, however, biases solutions towards insu lat ing
represent at ives from polit ical influence. If we understand corruption as duplicitous exclusion
causes us to ask different questions. How are the influences distributed? Are there any who
have claims for inclusion but who are cut out by the differential access of those who have
more influence? Is the represent at ive respond ing to money rather than facts and argu ments?
Is the represent at ive carry ing out deliberations covertly or in public? If negotiations are
sheltered from public scrutiny, as they sometimes must be in cases of especially difficult or
strategic issues, are the result ing comprom ises and decisions publicly justi fiable? These ques-
tions go to the nature of the influences to which a represent at ive responds: are they inclusive
or exclusive? Are legislators dependent upon those with power and money in ways that
produce partial (and therefore exclusive) forms of responsiveness (Lessig 2011)? The
distinct ive marks of corruption in the legislat ive domain are those that contravene inclusive
public deliberation and justi fication, namely, secrecy in decision-making and duplicity in
speech. ‘Secrecy’ does not have to involve closed doors and secret deals; in complex
pieces of legislation, it can be functional. In the USA, a common tactic is that provisions or
earmarks for special interests are slipped into huge omnibus bills at stages in which they are
unlikely to be noticed. The harms to democracy are direct and extensive: corruption of this
sort severs represent at ive linkages, breaks the relationship between deliberation and decision-
making and under mines the creat ive elements of democratic confl ict resolution ( Johnston
2005).

Public spheres
Democracies depend upon deliberat ive processes, broadly under stood, that form the people’s
will in a way that is autonomous from state and market powers so that the people might be

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 Mark E. Warren

said to guide collect ive decisions (Habermas 1996: Chapters 7–8). In a democracy, public
opinion should not just guide, limit and legit im ate the state but also stand vigilant over the
accu mu lated powers of busi nesses and other organ isations.
Whatever influence the public sphere has, it exerts by means of symbolic and discursive
forces: through images, narrat ives and symbols that portray lives and emotions, through
collect ive inter pret ations of facts and through deliberations about right and wrong. These
elements of public discourse enable people to form conceptions of their interests and values
and to connect them to their polit ical actions. For these reasons, inclusion in the public sphere
is necessary for all other democratic forms of inclusion. From a democratic perspect ive, the
integ rity of the public sphere depends upon includ ing all affected by collect ive matters by
provid ing individuals and groups with the oppor tun it ies and spaces to argue and persuade –
that is, to exert ‘discursive force’. What counts as corruption of public spheres does not, then,
refer to corruption of right ness or truth. Politics is, in part, constituted by disagreements
about what counts as right or true. What matters, rather, are deliberat ive processes: they have
integ rity when people can make claims to right ness and truth, and hope to motivate others
with their claims in ways that are not reducible to the interests of power or money (Habermas
1987). From the perspect ive of motivations, speech is corrupt not when it is wrong or untrue
but when it is strategically duplicitous – manipu lat ive – intended to deflect, dissimu late,
distract or other wise obscure the claims of those who speak, in order to secure gains that
could not be justified to those who pay for them or are otherwise affected. A common
example of this kind of corruption would be research vetted by its sponsors but repor ted as
peer-reviewed – as having been tested through an appropriate deliberat ive process (Lessig
2011). As this example suggests, institutions that support the public sphere – universit ies,
research bodies and media organ isations – have professional codes of conduct that protect the
integ rity of their report ing and results and which can be breached in ways that corrode the
democratic functions of the public sphere.

Civil society
With respect to the domain of civil society, democracy does best where it is constituted by
horizontally structured groups, a certain propor tion of which bridge social cleavages (cf.
Putnam 2000: 336–49; Warren 2001: Chapter 7). ‘Civil society’ is the domain of associations
built from common values and shared goals that provide individuals with means for represent-
ation and voice, with alternatives to state-centred collect ive action and resources for resistance
and counter-hegemony. Civil society lends its force to democracy, on average, when its asso-
ciational structure is built out of general ised trust and reciprocity (Warren 2001; Uslaner
2008). But civil societies that build on ‘particu lar ized trust’ – trust that extends only to
members of famil ies, clans and known individuals – tends to under mine democracy, just
because it relates exclusive forms of association to control over resources of money and power.
Masonic lodges in Italy, one of the exclusive social venues that suppor ted Italian polit ical
corruption, exemplified these conditions (della Porta and Vannucci 1999: 165–70). These rela-
tionships will tend to corrupt democracy when the overall weight of particu lar ised trust and
reciprocity cause people to form purely exclusive social attach ments without more general
attach ments to compensate. This meaning of corruption comes close to that often found in
ancient political theory: Thucydides and Aristotle, for example, held that in a corrupt society

each part pretends to be the whole; each interest to be the common one; each faction
to make its view and voice exclusive. Under such circum stances the common good

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is seen (and so comes to be) a ruse for fools and dreamers while the polit ical arena is
a place where factions, like gladiators, fight to the death.
(Euben 1989: 223)

This ancient conception resonates with contemporary literat ures that fi nd, variously, that
societ ies high in general ised trust have low levels of official corruption (Uslaner 2008), that
mistrust ful and anomic societ ies provide conditions for official corruption (Banfield 1958;
Rose-Ackerman 2001) and that societ ies high in social capital are more democratic in their
governance (Putnam 1993, 2000; Lin 2001). The harms to democracy of a corrupt civil
society are extensive, includ ing loss of capacity for non- state collect ive action, loss of capacity
for disciplin ing and guiding the state and loss of generat ive capacit ies of democracy in favour
of a zero- sum game between compet ing and mutually suspicious groups.

Markets
Last but not least, in the developed democracies corruption has a distinct ive meaning in rela-
tion to market capital ism. To the extent that a democracy ‘chooses’ to organ ise collect ive
actions through markets, it also assumes that economic ‘inclusion’ should operate through
voluntary exchange within the context of full inform ation. ‘Corruption’ in this domain
amounts to exclusion through rent- seeking and occurs when actors use the powers of the state
to limit or monopol ise exchange or to alter the work ings of markets in their favour. This
sense of corruption is endemic to the differentiation between economic and polit ical power
that defi nes liberal democracy since it creates incent ives for wealthy actors to buy the resources
they do not control: the assent, protection and assistance of govern ment (Scott 1972: 28–34;
Rose-Ackerman 1999). Powerful actors are motivated to penet rate govern ment wherever
possible, if not to gain priv ileged access to govern ment contracts, then – and more commonly
in the developed democracies – to affect the rules of compet ition in ways favourable to them
( Johnston 2005: Chapter 4; Lessig 2011). Moreover, when a market exists for their coopera-
tion with economic actors, public officials have incent ives for corrupt exclusion: they can use
the rules and regu lations they control to create bottlenecks that increase the price of their
services to the wealthy ( Johnston 1982: 20–3; deLeon 1993: 28). The harms of market-
induced corruption to democracy are clear and well docu mented: when rights of influence
and access are for sale, the effect ive powers of democratic influence are under mined. And
when agents of the state sell their regu latory and monopoly powers, they use the powers
that belong to the people to enhance the powers of economic elites. Not only is the key
collect ive agent of democracy, the state, corrupted, but so also are the very collect ive rules,
under writ ten by state powers, that enable markets to function.

Conclusion
By developing the conceptual connection between democratic theory and the concept of
corruption, we can make sense of the diffusion of mean ings of corruption within today’s
democracies. We can do so in a way that identi fies a common norm at ive core – norms of
inclusion and exclusion – while encompassing the diversity of ways in which corruption can
under mine the wide variety of institutions that make democracies work. There is a practical
payoff as well: by detail ing the close relationships between democratic institutions and their
corruption, we can also see that addressing corruption should not be – indeed, cannot be –
separated from the project of strengthen ing democratic institutions and practices.

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 Mark E. Warren

Acknowledgements
This chapter reprints some text from Mark E. Warren (2004) ‘What Does Corruption Mean
in a Democracy?’ American Journal of Political Science, 48 (2): 327–42; and Mark E. Warren
(2006) ‘Corruption as Duplicitous Exclusion’, PS: Political Science and Politics, 34 (4): 803–7.

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 4
THE CONTRADICTIONS OF
CORRUPTION IN NIGERIA
Daniel Jordan Smith

Introduction
Nigeria is a country notorious for corruption. Many economic, polit ical and social problems
are blamed on corruption, by inter national observers and by Nigerians them selves. But
despite the almost univer sal perception that it is a problem, Nigerians’ under stand ings of what
counts as corruption are sometimes quite different than the common Western views as they
are defi ned in polit ical science and mani fested in donor- suppor ted anti- corruption initiat ives.
Further, Nigerians them selves often embrace contradictory views, in some moments seeming
to subscribe to the Western/donor perspect ive and at other times appear ing to mean some-
thing contrary.
Based on ethnographic research in south- eastern Nigeria, this chapter explores how
compet ing under stand ings of corruption in Nigeria reveal ongoing transform ations in
polit ical culture. Profound changes are occur ring in Nigeria in relationships of inequal ity
and the moral economy that mediates them. Using examples from Nigerians’ everyday lives,
I argue that the apparently contradictory discourses and practices vis-à-vis corruption
are windows onto these dynam ics of social change. People are embracing new expect ations
about account abil ity associated with a modern bureaucratic state even as they lament and
struggle to slow the demise of forms of social ity and account abil ity linked to kinship
and patron- client ism. Ultimately, what Nigerians mean by corruption is explained by its
connections to power, inequal ity and social relationships. More than simply offer ing
another society’s defi n ition of corruption, an ethnographic account suggests how under-
stand ing local exper iences of corruption can point us to what really matters for the people
who are affected.
The examples in this chapter come from south- eastern Nigeria – the Igbo- speak ing
region. However, the kinds of everyday corruption that I describe are not unique to the Igbo
or to the south- east. Indeed, part of my argument is that corruption and the discourses that it
produces are central to the way that Nigerians – and arguably people in many post- colonial
contexts – exper ience and under stand the relationship between state and society. The contra-
dictions of corruption both mirror and explain people’s growing expect ations of and
frustrated aspirations for democracy and development.

56