Conceptual Foundations: Competing Concepts and Normative Frameworks

Abstract

This panel is motivated by a shared diagnosis: despite its centrality to contemporary political analysis and policy-making, corruption remains a deeply contested concept, and this contestation is not merely semantic. How corruption is conceptualized shapes what we see as corrupt, how we measure it, whom we hold accountable, and which institutional responses appear justified or effective. Panel 1 brings together contributions in political philosophy, normative theory, and conceptual analysis to clarify the normative foundations of competing concepts of corruption and to examine their implications for institutional evaluation, measurement, and reform. The papers collectively challenge the dominance of narrow, legalistic, and behavior-centered definitions that equate corruption with rule-breaking, illicit transactions, or private gain. Several contributions argue that such approaches systematically miss structurally significant forms of institutional wrongdoing—forms that are often formally legal, routinized, or embedded in accepted practices. By shifting attention from observable misconduct to the normative structure of offices, mandates, and justificatory relations, these papers propose alternative conceptual frameworks that capture corruption as a failure internal to institutional roles rather than as an externally legible event. Contributions to this panel distinguish between abuse of office and abuse of power, reconceptualize corruption as a deficit of office accountability, and extend role-based accounts beyond the public sphere to private institutions. Together, they develop a unified view of corruption as a distinctive institutional pathology: a breakdown in the relations of justification that authorize the exercise of power within normatively structured roles. This perspective foregrounds institutional integrity, interactive injustice, and accountability as core evaluative standards, offering a more fine-grained diagnosis of corruption that is sensitive to democratic erosion, regulatory capture, and ethically hollow governance.

Title	Details
How Conceptualizing Corruption as Deficit of Office Accountability Challenges Existing Measures	View Paper Details
Meaning-Makers: The Contested Concepts of Anti-Corruption Protesters	View Paper Details
Corruption as an Umbrella Concept	View Paper Details
Abuse of Office Vs. Abuse of Power: A Normative Criterion for Defining Corruption in Democratic Institutions	View Paper Details
Private Corruption	View Paper Details