Corruption as Political Decay

This chapter begins by providing a diagnosis for the crisis of democracy based on systemic corruption. After reconstructing from the works of Plato, Aristotle, Polybius, and Niccolò Machiavelli, a notion of systemic political corruption particular to popular governments, it reviews recent neorepublican and institutionalist attempts at redefining political corruption within the current political regimes. It also underscores the lack of a proper conception of systemic corruption comparable in sophistication to the one offered by ancient and modern philosophers due to the inability to account for the role that procedures and institutions play in fostering corruption through their normal functioning. The chapter proposes a definition of systemic corruption as the oligarchization of power transpiring within a general respect for the rule of law. It describes the conception of corruption that appears as intrinsically connected to increasing socioeconomic inequality, which enables the inequality of political influence and drift toward oligarchic democracy.