Corruption and Governmental Legitimacy

A Twenty-First Century Perspective

Jonathan Mendilow, Ilan Peleg

• Publisher: Lexington Books
• Year: 2016
• Edition: 1
• eBook ISBN:
  9781498533980
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: International Relations
• Index: Politics & International Relations

This volume considers corruption as a multidimensional, complex phenomenon in which various forms of corruption may overlap at any given time. Extending the seemingly paradoxical notion of "legal corruption" to such settings as the USA, Spain, and the Czech Republic, the book seeks to augment our understanding of corruption in democracies by focusing on conduct that is considered by large segments of the population to be corrupt even though they are not explicitly defined as such by the law or the governing elites. Such behaviors are not often captured by corruption perception indexes or identified by scholars who regard corruption as a single category—usually restricted to bribery. However, they are liable to incur a heavy price both in terms of trust in specific governments and of general system support. As illustrated by developments in Spain, the Czech Republic, and the corrosive presidential campaign of 2016 in the USA, these actions are liable to endanger both the quality and actual viability of democratic orders. This volume looks into the possibilities of legal reforms and anticorruption campaigns aiming to correct the consequences of such corruption on government legitimacy. A comparison between the anticorruption campaigns in the competitive authoritarian context of Russia and the fully authoritarian setting of China helps to identify both the difficulties and the possibilities of such efforts in democratic regimes.

Table of contents

• Cover-Page
• Halftitle
• 1 Introduction—Corruption and Governmental Legitimacy: A Twenty-First-Century Perspective
• 2 The Rediscovery of Corruption in Western Democracies
• 3 Are Democracies Less Corrupt than Other Systems?
• 4 Perceptions of Corruption and Trust in the Government in the United States
• 5 Exploring Citizens’ Perceptions of Political Finance and Political Corruption: Lifting the Lid on Legal Corruption in Spain
• 6 Clientelism, Corruption, and the Concept of Anti-System Parties
• 7 Perceptions of Corruption in the Nonprofits Gray Zone
• 8 Corruption in Brazil: A Brazilian CEO’s Point of View
• 9 The Definition of Corruption in the United States: A Case Study of Deregulation by Litigation
• 10 Transparency as a Tool against Corruption: Conflict of Interest Reforms in Canada and France
• 11 Transparency as Anticorruption Device: Contemporary Russia
• 12 Anticorruption, Power Struggle, and Rule of Law in China: Random Thoughts on Xi Jinping’s “Tiger-killing” Anticorruption Campaign
• 13 Confusions and Disagreements about the Rotten in Politics
• Index
• About the Editors
• About the Contributors