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Mediated Corruption: The Case of the Keating Five

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 September 2013

Dennis F. Thompson
Dennis F. Thompson
Affiliation:
Harvard University
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Abstract

The Keating Five case exemplifies a form of a political corruption that is increasingly common in contemporary politics but frequently neglected in contemporary political science. I focus on this form by developing a concept of mediated corruption, which links the acts of individual officials to effects on the democratic process. Unlike conventional corruption, mediated corruption does not require that the public official act with a corrupt motive or that either public officials or citizens receive improper benefits. The concept of mediated corruption provides not only a more coherent account of the case of the Keating Five but also a more fruitful way of reuniting the concepts of systematic corruption in traditional political theory with the concepts of individual corruption in contemporary social science.

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Articles
Information
American Political Science Review , Volume 87 , Issue 2 , June 1993 , pp. 369 - 381
Copyright
Copyright © American Political Science Association 1993

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