Abstract
Political corruption is a contested concept. Both terms in the concept are the object of controversies in political theory and concern what corruption is and how it is a politically relevant phenomenon. Political corruption has been contested across time, space, cultures, and philosophical traditions. Usually, political corruption is assumed to involve an exchange between a private corruptor and a public official who pursues her personal interest by abusing her power of office. While this account may be true with respect to some such instances as bribery, some significant uncertainties affect its plausibility. Practices such as patronage or state capture might escape this account either because they do not involve a corruptor or because the corrupted officer does not pursue her personal interest but, say, that of her party or faction. Interestingly, despite, or perhaps in reason of, this semantic uncertainty, political corruption is generally perceived as a disease of the public function, something which any sensible political theory of the good state should want to avoid. Why is such a negative intuition about the nature of political corruption so widespread? A growing debate in political theory is now starting to inquire into the exact nature of the wrongness of political corruption.
In this timely book, Robert Sparling engages with this important but still developing debate. Despite the interest in the topic of corruption in modern political thought, contemporary political philosophers have mainly devoted their theories to developing ideal accounts of social justice or political legitimacy (under the heading of “ideal theory,” 189). The discussion of such intuitively negative ideas as that of corruption has been less central, with some noteworthy but limited exceptions. 1 Sparling enters the debate with one of the first comprehensive discussions of the conceptual and normative contours of this controversial idea, and he does so from a distinctive, historically informed, and philosophically sophisticated perspective.
The book presents itself as an inquiry into the concept of political corruption rooted in an historical survey of how this idea has been presented since the Renaissance across a variety of interpretations that range across leadership ethics (chapter 2), republicanism (chapter 3), the politics of transparency (chapter 4), nostalgic denigration of the bureaucratic state (chapter 5), liberal moderation (chapter 6), revolutionary purism (chapter 7), and the ethics of bureaucratic office (chapter 8). By reviewing the overlaps and the clashes in the corruption discourse across this thematic history of an idea (chapter 1), Sparling questions the boundaries between universalism and particularism. He further urges that we clarify our normative presuppositions when we engage with the characterization of political corruption and its cures. This critical journey puts the reader in dialogue with a distinguished community of modern corruption scholars, including Erasmus, Machiavelli, La Boétie, Bolingbroke, Montesquieu, Robespierre, Kant, and Weber—a dialogue that expands to address the contemporary epigones of those thinkers (as is found in chapter 9).
The distinctiveness of Sparling’s philosophical perspective comes from a revival of the republican vocabulary of political virtues and vices. Through this language, political corruption is presented as a vicious degradation of some kind of political wholeness; the opposite of the vice of political corruption is the virtue of political integrity (xi). This idea of integrity denies the separateness of individual from institutional morality (the integrity of the soul and the integrity of the city, e.g., 41–43) and invites readers to question the idea of purity as an attribute of political action. Such presumed purity of action bears on the conduct of political officeholders, administrators, and citizens alike. 2 In this sense, Sparling recognizes that the “concept of political corruption is fundamentally an expression of political morality” (x). The kind of political morality to which Sparling appeals is also particular. It is a teleological political morality, of an Aristotelian descent, and one that characterizes a healthy regime (and a healthy class of officeholders in that regime) as that which is most conducive to the flourishing of its members (xii).
There is certainly much to say about the merits of Sparling’s erudite critical survey. The cartography of political corruption he canvasses is an engaging read for anyone who has an interest in theories of the good society and the purposes of political action. Within this rich investigation, the reader will also find specific claims that are interesting in their own right. Take, for example, Sparling’s discussion of different understandings of political transparency and civic trust (or distrust) as “popular” and yet insufficient to serve as antidotes to political corruption. 3 Through his critical engagement with the simple definition of political corruption as an abuse of public power for private gain, Sparling problematizes the very line of partition between “public” and “private” and thus strikes at the heart of the normative liberal mainstream in political theory. This is a courageous and refreshing exercise of historically informed critical thinking, and one that shows the significance of this book for current debates in political theory beyond the domain of corruption studies.
There are also some specific substantive worries one might want to consider before embracing the specific philosophical angle Sparling endorses. The teleological political morality Sparling defends rests on controversial presuppositions, such as the claim that social and political institutions can act purposefully, either in themselves or through the joint action of their members. 4 Moreover, the argument is open to the well-known concerns regarding the plausibility of identifying a characterizing purpose for each institution in instances of moral disagreement about the ends of institutional action. The worry, voiced by many liberals, is that by pursuing one substantive purpose (among many possible alternatives), institutional action violates individual freedoms and thus becomes a form of paternalistic interference. 5
Setting aside these specific substantive worries with the argument in the book, I would like to comment on a more fundamental methodological presupposition on which the overall distinctiveness of Sparling’s contribution rests. Within debates around political corruption, the term “corruption” is normally considered to be pejorative; when we call something “corrupt,” we immediately think that it is an object of condemnation. But this understanding might be a source of confusion when, for example, the consequences of political corruption are not obviously negative or when they, in fact, materialize against an unjust or illegitimate institutional background. Think of a Nazi official who withholds some documents that could prompt the deportation of Jews, or a police officer who fabricates evidence to convict a known pedophile. While there is a clear sense in which the two officers’ behaviors are at odds with the purposes of their institutions, there is also a sense in which they can be seen as sustaining those purposes against corrupted practices. The worry here is that a normatively laden definition of political corruption will succumb to these tensions, thus weakening the clarificatory function it is expected to perform.
Considerations of this kind have arguably motivated some scholars to adopt the very narrow definition of political corruption with whose plausibility Sparling himself engages at length. Such a definition indicates exclusively abuses of public power for private gain. 6 One of the limits of this narrow view, of which Sparling is acutely aware, is that it cannot account for many phenomena that belong to the semantic area of political corruption (e.g., patronage or state capture) but lack this public-vs.-private dimension. Other commentators have thematized the tension between conflicting judgments on certain cases of political corruption by developing the sui generis category of “noble cause corruption,” which occurs when an abusive use of powers of office has positive consequences. 7 However, the problem with this solution (and with Sparling’s), is that it is limited to a consequentialist reading of political corruption and a teleological assessment of its wrongness. This solution cannot, therefore, say much as concerns the evaluation of those cases of political corruption whose consequences are not immediately visible, clearly measurable, or an object of contested evaluation.
I do not wish to downplay the importance of Sparling’s invitation to consider the immediately negative connotation of political corruption. In fact, such a focus underscores the need to clarify and investigate the criteria in virtue of which something can be considered corrupt and be condemned as such. However, this republican jargon of vices versus virtues risks impeding an equally needed discussion of the circumstances in which political corruption may be justified or, at any rate, excused. This discussion is needed, I believe, because in certain nonideal circumstances, political corruption can have an important heuristic function; it brings to light deeper forms of structural injustices or illegitimacy that require questioning the very rules governing institutions and their constitutive roles. In this sense, consider for example the corrupt behavior of an officeholder who bypasses the rules for the assignment of housing benefits in order to favor the members of a marginalized minority. Such acts can be read as ones of resistance to historic injustice in social and political interactions. Losing sight of this role for corrupt intervention risks making this concept (and its normative assessment) collapse into that of the general injustice or illegitimacy of a certain regime as a whole. 8
This last comment should not be seen as an external critique to Sparling’s fascinating substantive teleological argument in the book. It should rather reinforce the point that more philosophical analysis of the concept of political corruption is needed, as well as a clarification of the normative grounds of its assessment. This consideration speaks in fact to the wide-ranging interest of works such as Sparling’s for the general field of political theory. It reinforces the importance of understanding the “emancipatory” (3) power of calling something “corrupt.” But it also suggests the need for rendering the use of this concept more informative by clarifying its extension and avoiding its inflationary use.