M. Philp, The definition of corruption
22.11.2011
The key elements of a definition of corruption are:
 A conception of public office with rules and norms for the conduct of that office – the office
being defined partly in terms of a broader public interest that it serves, which may run
against the personal interests of the office-holder or against interests that are deemed
illegitimate but are not strictly personal.
 A view that corruption involves the distortion or subversion of the exercise of public office
so that it meets private, partisan or sectional rather than public interests - so that some
people gain who should not and some lose who should not.
 The idea that three actors are normally involved in or affected by corrupt activity: the
occupant of the public office (A), the intended beneficiary of that office (B); and the actual
(ie., newly intended) beneficiary of the particular exercise of that office (C).1 This triadic
relation does not always hold (in a kleptocracy, for example, A and C are the same; whereas
with administrative payments B and C may be identical, although A also gains) but the
identification of three distinct roles – the occupant of public office, the intended beneficiary,
and the actual beneficiary encourages us to distinguish common theft or fraud from
corruption, and helps capture how corruption distorts the exercise of public office and
power.
Combining these elements we can arrive at a suitably tentative definition:
Corruption in politics occurs where a public official (A), acting in ways that violate the rules
and norms of office and that involve personal, partisan or sectional gain, to the (intended)
detriment of the interests of the public (B)2 (or some sub-section thereof) who is the
designated beneficiary of that office, to benefit themselves and/or a third party (C) who
rewards or otherwise incentivises A to gain access to goods or services they would not
otherwise obtain.
Recent discussions and publications relating to political corruption include:
Political Conduct, Harvard University Press, Cambridge Mass., 2007
‘Delimiting Political Accountability’ Political Studies (2009), 54, 1, pp. 28-53
‘Peacebuilding and Corruption’ in International Peacekeeping 15(3) June 2008, pp. 310-27
‘Corruption, definition and Measurement –in Measuring Corruption ed C Sampford, A
Shacklock, C. Connors and F Galtung (Ashgate, 2006) pp. 45-56.
‘Modelling Political Corruption in Transition’ in Political Corruption ed., Von Allerman
(Verlag, 2005)
'Political Corruption, Democratization and Reform' in S. Kotkin and A Sajo eds., Political
Corruption (Budapest, Central European University Press, 2003).
'Access, Accountability, and Authority: Corruption and the Democratic Process' Crime, Law
and Social Change 36 (4) 357-77 (2001)
'Defining Political Corruption' Political Studies (1997), XLV, 436-62. Section 2 reprinted in
the 3rd edition of Political Corruption ed., Heidenheimer and Johnson, (New York,
Transaction Press, 2003)
Since a misfiring of a corrupt intent still has the character of a corrupt act – so if A tries to ensure that C
rather than B benefits, that creates the corruption of the process, even if A fails.
2
Corrupt acts may not always harm, or directly harm, B. Moreover, the point is not that we define
corruption solely by its consequences, so much as that we define it by a combination of intention and the
distortion of political processes. So if by accident, A’s corrupt relation with C benefits B but it is still corrupt.
Moreover, even if A does not intend to harm B (or withhold a benefit from B), B’s interests are taken to include
a procedural interest in the rules of the political system being upheld.
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