The search for definitions: The vitality of politics and the issue of corruption

While most people would say they know corruption when they see it, debate continues over the best way to define the concept for analysis. A long-standing classical tradition treated corruption as a property of whole societies and their politics. More recently, most definitions have focused on the classification of behaviour employing various standards, such as the law, public opinion, or the idea of the public interest, to identify abuse of office for private benefit. Another modern conception of the process, one offering advantages for the study of bureaucratic corruption, is the principal-agent-client approach. But modern definitions have been criticized as lacking a connection with social and cultural values, and as leaving us with concepts considerably more limited and static than the real-world issue of corruption. One remedy might be to focus on the political processes and conflicts that give rise to meaningful ideas of corruption. Some 'neo-classical' approaches do this, either by relying on both formal and social standards, or by creating a category of corruption 'mediated' through, and doing harm to the vitality of, democratic politics. In more settled systems, behaviour-classification definitions may work well; but in transitional or deeply divided societies, we may need to focus on the political conflicts shaping the idea of corruption, rather than searching for clearly defined categories of corrupt behaviour.