The Injustice of Political Corruption

Abstract

The corruption of public officials and institutions is generally regarded as wrong. But in what exactly does this form of corruption consist and what kind of wrong does it imply? Building on this question, the proposed panel aims to offer a venue for the discussion of the political dimension of corruption from the perspective of political theory, in a way that goes beyond the contextual evaluation of its economic and social costs. While the discussion of the economic and legal aspects of political corruption is widespread and substantial, few studies to date have been entirely devoted to the analysis of the specific kind of wrong that this form of corruption implies. What is more, the studies that have engaged with this question have done so mainly from a sociological perspective. The contribution of political theorists and philosophers has been quite limited and has come primarily from one single philosophical approach, neo-republicanism. However, insofar as political corruption may plausibly be seen to imply also a moral kind of wrong, the contribution of philosophers and political theorists seems in order. Political corruption may be morally wrong on principled grounds—for instance, because it amounts to the breaking of a promise according to which public officials put themselves at the service of the political community (rather than of their own personal advantage). But its moral wrongfulness may also depend on such consequentialist considerations as those regarding the damages corruption causes to certain social goods (e.g., civic trust). An even more specific question is whether political corruption can be considered a kind of injustice. This is an under-explored but important questions both from an analytical and normative point of view in consideration of the special status of issues in injustice. Notably, when we identify an issue as a matter of injustice, we are saying that some right violation has occurred and the state is legitimated and required to remedy this violation through the use of its coercive power. Therefore, understanding the exact sense in which certain forms of corruption are unjust has important implications concerning both our comprehension of this phenomenon and the development of its normative implications for anticorruption strategies. What citizens’ rights are violated by the corrupt behavior of public officials and within corrupt institutions? What normative understanding of in/justice is better fit to make sense of the wrongfulness of political corruption? What anticorruption duties may be derived from any such understanding? Papers are invited that address these and other related issues from within different traditions in political theory.