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On Political Scandals and Corruption

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 March 2014

Graeme C. Moodie
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SCANDAL AND CORRUPTION ARE CUSTOMARILY THOUGHT OF in much the same ways as pigs and whistles; they go together. Strangely, however, academic studies of corruption seem to pay little attention to scandal. It is strange if only because in societies like this corruption tends to be obscure, a condition in which its participants wish it to remain, and it is to the occasional scandal that we are indebted for what knowledge is generally accessible. This is particularly true in Britain where the major scandals have usually been followed (sometimes illuminated) by official inquiries; certainly that has been the practice in this century from the Marconi shares scandal in 1913 to the Poulson scandal sixty years later which spawned both a committee and a Royal Commission. A closer look at the incidence of political scandal, this article will suggest, is an additional tool for the study of corruption and perhaps particularly so for comparative studies. A more fundamental (and more widely canvassed) problem, however, is so to define corruption as to facilitate reliable comparisons across temporal and cultural boundaries. We will first discuss that problem.

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Articles
Information
Government and Opposition , Volume 15 , Issue 2 , 01 April 1980 , pp. 208 - 222
Copyright
Copyright © Government and Opposition Ltd 1980

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References

1 For example, I have noticed very few mentions and no discussion of it in that invaluable pioneering compendium, Heidenheimer, Arnold J. (ed.), Political Corruption. Readings in Comparative Analysis, Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1970.Google Scholar

2 The Radcliffe‐Maud Committee on Local Government Rules of Conduct which reported in 1974 and the Salmon Commission on Standards of Conduct in Public Life which reported in 1976.

3 Heidenheimer, op. cit., pp. 1–10. See too the brief survey in Riley, S., ‘Teaching Political Corruption’, Teaching Politics, 8, 1979, pp. 71–8Google Scholar

4 Friedrich, C. J., The Pathology of Politics, Harper & Row, 1972, p. 128.Google Scholar

5 Williams, Robert J., ‘The Problems of Corruption: A Conceptual and Comparative Analysis’, a paper delivered to a Public Administration Committee Conference in York, 1976, p. 2.Google Scholar

6 ‘What is the Problem of Corruption?’ Journal of Modern African Studies, 3(2), 1965, pp. 215–30. Most is reprinted in Heidenheimer, op. cit. pp. 31–7 and 341–5.CrossRefGoogle Scholar In my view insufficient attention has been paid to his recommendations about how to study corruption.

7 See Riordon, William L., Plunkitt of Tammany Hall (1st ed., 1905). In the Dutton, 1963, edition see, in particular, pp. xxii, 4–5, 30–32, and 37–40.Google Scholar

8 Rose‐Ackerman, Susan, Corruption. A Study in Political Economy, Academic Press, 1978, p. 9.Google Scholar This is a particularly valuable study for anyone interested in the conditions favourable to corruption and thus with its ‘cure’.

9 According to Martin Woollacott, The Guardian, 22 September 1973, ‘leading European buyers routinely take cuts from the manufacturing houses [in Hong Kong, 1973].… to whom they give their orders. The normal rate is half per cent of the value, paid into a Swiss bank annually.’

10 In his ‘The Effects of Corruption in a Developing Nation’, Western Political Quarterly, 12 1966; reprinted in Heidenheimer, , op. cit., pp. 523–33.Google Scholar

11 I take this to be part of what Leys meant by his ‘central question’ for the study of corruption: ‘In any society, under what conditions is behaviour most likely to occur which a significant section of the population will regard as corrupt?’. See the article cited above.

12 See his whole discussion of political corruption in op. cit. pp. 127–41.

13 See, for example, Michael Roberts’s discussion of the place of interested individuals who may attend local authority party group meetings that make policy for a council of which they are not members and who thus need not declare their interest. ‘Conduct in Local Government ‐ Situating the Redcliffe Maud Report’, Public Administration Bulletin, 18 06 1975 , pp. 39–48, at p. 43.Google ScholarPubMed

14 It was the absence of this at Henry II’s dinner‐table, so legend has it, that misled his knights into thinking it was the King, and not merely the temporarily irate and frustrated individual, who wished to be rid of Thomas Becket.

15 See, for example, Heidenheimer, op. cit., chap. 2.

16 See Waterbury, John, ‘An Attempt to Put Patrons and Clients in their Place’, in Gellner, Ernest and Waterbury, John (eds.), Patrons and Clients in Mediterranean Societies, Duckworth, 1977, p. 329–42.Google Scholar

17 There is, of course, biblical precedent for regarding all lapses as evidence of human corruption since the Fall, but it is surely politics itself that results from the Fall, with political corruption a perverted or at least special sub‐category thereof.

18 Peters, John G. and Welch, Susan (see their ‘Political Corruption in America: A Search for Definitions and a Theory’, American Political Science Review, 72 (3), 09 1978, pp. 958–73Google Scholar) offer an interesting analysis of the components of corrupt acts and the use of those components for a comparison of various acts and the degreees to which they are corrupt. This analysis is conducted explicitly within the American context, but is a good example of how a detailed breakdown can help analysis.

19 See the relevant excerpts in Heidenheimer, , op. cit., at, respectively, pp. 489–91, 540–5, and 564–8.Google Scholar See, too, the comment by Colin Leys quoted earlier in this article (see above, fn. 6).

20 Dobel, J. Patrick, ‘The Corruption of a State’, American Political Science Review, 72 (3), 09 1978, pp. 958–73CrossRefGoogle Scholar

21 Cf. J. Lowi’s, Theodore analysis in his The End of Liberalism, New York, W. W. Norton, 1979.Google Scholar

22 For the reference to the Knapp Commission I am indebted to PintoDuschinsky, Michael, ‘Corruption in Britain Corruption in Britain’, Political Studies, XXV, 2, 06 1977 , pp. 274–84.Google Scholar In this review of the Report of the Royal Commission on Standards of Conduct in Public Life, Cmnd. 6524 of 1976, a strong case is made for setting up some permanent civil inspectorate to assist in obtaining information about corruption.

23 See Robinson, M. R., ‘The Lynskey Tribunal’, Political Science Quarterly, 03 1953, reprinted in Heidenheimer, , op. cit., pp. 249–58.Google Scholar

24 See Stewart Martin, James, All Honorable Men, Little, Brown, 1950, p. 11.Google Scholar

25 ‘True or false, actual or invented, it can be sold. The greater the scandal the higher the price it commands. If supported by photographs or letters, real or imaginary, all the better.’ Lord Denning’s Report, Cmnd. 2152 of 1963, p. 114.

26 See the comments on the situation in early twentieth‐century America in Brooks, Robert C., ‘The Nature of Political Corruption’, in Heidenheimer, , op. cit., pp. 56–61.Google Scholar

27 See Heidenheimer’s interesting distinctions between ‘black’, ‘gray’ and ‘white’ corruption depending on whether a practice is condemned or condoned by one or both the elite and the masses in a particular society, op. cit., pp. 26–28.

28 See Bailey, F. G., Gifts and Poison, the Politics of Reputation, Blackwell, 1971 Google Scholar, for a social anthropological discussion.

29 See Rose‐Ackerman’s observation that the fragmentation of authority to deal with corruption (venality) may lead merely to ‘a strategy of “following the scandals” rather than a broader look at the range of alternatives available’; op. cit., p. 225n.

30 Self‐righteousness, one of the motives that seems to have informed aspects of the Watergate cover‐up, for example, has the great advantage that it brings a continuous pay‐off in self‐satisfaction.

31 Compare Friedrich, op. cit., p. 129: ‘Corruption is a corrective of coercive power and its abuse, when it is functional’.

32 See his Asian Drama. An Inquiry into the Poverty of Nations, Penguin, 1968, Vol. II, pp. 949–50.Google Scholar

33 See the case made in Pinto‐Duschinsky, op. cit., pp. 281–4.

34 Op. cit., p. 56; and see Rose‐Ackerman’s infinitely more sophisticated analysis of the political economy of corruption cited above.

35 See Friedrich again, at p. 141: ‘Corruption in the historical perspective appears to be ever present where power is wielded’.