preview

Decentralization Of Corruption In The United States

Better Essays

Definition
The first and foremost problem in dealing with corruption is trying to define the term. There is plenty of literature out that describes a general definition: Tilman (1970) first defined corruption as the result of the adoption of a market-pricing mechanism for government goods and services rather than a mandatory pricing model of allocation Shah (2007) broadly describes corruption as the exercise of official powers against public interest or the abuse of public office for private gains. Other authors delve deeper in their description of corruption as the illegal privatization of state property and the selling of state power by public officials. This often takes the form of creating private gain by said public officials through classic rent-seeking activities, which will be described in the next section (Vasavakul 2008; Gainsborough 2009; Bai 2013; Morris 1991; Lancaster 2001; Rock 2004; Rose-Ackerman 2000; Treisman 2000).
Other scholars have attempted to take different approaches to defining corruption in terms of a centralized versus decentralized nature. Shleifer and Vishny (1993) conclude that government bureaucracies and agencies act as monopolists selling complementary government-produced goods that are legally required for private sector activity. Waller, Verdier and Gardner (2002) go further by explaining that decentralized corruption is a system in which higher-level officials collect a fixed amount of bribe income from each bureaucrat who collects a

Get Access