Conceptualizing Political Corruption In a Democracy: A Contested Domain

Abstract

Political corruption reflects a failure of political institutions in a society. One of the attempts of this paper is to understand the relationship between political institutions and corruption, which is important for a successful fight against corruption. The paper tries to theorize political corruption in a democracy and then discusses various approaches that are employed in different parts of the world to address the problem highlighting the fact that merely creating new institutions to tackle corruption is not the panacea. The attempt is to show that there is a gap in the popular conception of corruption because of which connections between corruption and democracy are not drawn. Corruption essentially indicates a deficit of democracy and there is need to understand that corruption is not just a problem of few individuals but it is more a problem of the system itself. The systematic approach towards corruption helps and ensures in arriving at a realistic problem solving mechanism.