One definition of public corruption, from Transparency International, is “the abuse of entrusted power for personal gain.” We expand upon that in a way that lets us address some specific aspects of public corruption. Public corruption is the abuse of official positions or public trust for illegitimate partisan and/or private gain. We take this definition apart and explore it in detail below.
- Abuse of a government office or public trust occurs when a government official acts in a way that results in partisan or private gains rather than advancing or protecting the common good.
- Abuse of authority occurs when an official misuses or wrongfully applies a position of influence, power, or official capacity for personal gain, to harm others, or for purposes inconsistent with the public interest or the duties of the office. It is essentially a violation of the public trust.
- Public officials are often granted a degree of discretion to perform their duties. Abuse of discretion occurs when an official disregards the principles of fairness, impartiality, and public interest that are meant to guide that discretion.
- A public action is illegitimate when it breaks the public’s trust and/or involves illegal activities, violates public policy, or lacks a legal and fair process.
- Some actions may be legal but are still perceived by many people as corrupt because they raise serious concerns regarding fairness, trust, and accountability. (See the special topics below on campaign finance and on common sense versus legal definitions of bribery.)
- The private gain to a citizen or business comes in the form of some policy favor or public service that is unavailable to all other citizens or businesses. Examples include powerful government jobs, sole-source procurement contracts, product safety certifications, tax breaks or subsidies, and pardons.
- The private gain to a government official could be monetary, but it could also come in other forms, such as political power, celebrity, or sexual favors.
- The private gains could be limited to one public official. They could also go to a government official’s family members, lovers, friends, political allies, staffers, business partners, and others.
- The partisan gain could result from any abuse of power that gives one political party, faction, politician, or official a political advantage over rivals: more power, more money, more loyalty, favorable media reports, more ability to suppress opposition speech or votes, and so on.
Note 1: Political corruption is often used interchangeably with public corruption. However, some political scientists limit political corruption only to gains in power, while the gains from public corruption could include many kinds of benefits, including power and wealth. We focus on the broader concept of public corruption because of the many ways money, celebrity, sex, and so on can be harnessed to political power.
Public corruption can be petty or grand.
- Petty corruption refers to low-level, often quite routine, acts of bribery, extortion, and other illicit transactions that enable people to enrich themselves at the direct expense of others. Bribing a customs official to move imports through the system faster (speed money) is an example of petty corruption. Another example is a police officer extorting minor sums of cash on the threat of arrest or prosecution for a ‘fictional’ offense.
- Grand corruption operates at a much larger scale both in terms of abuse of power and the gains involved, to the point where the impact is often felt by many across a country, or even beyond national borders. The most common example involves the abuse of public procurement contracting, where a major contract, say for a road, a bridge, or armaments, is given by a powerful government official in exchange for a bribe. Other examples are seeking loyalty in exchange for favorable regulation or favors such as tariff exemptions.
- Petty and grand corruption are linked.Widespread petty corruption only happens in countries where there is significant grand corruption and where the beneficiaries of petty/small extorted bribes make payments to more senior officials to ensure that their criminal actions are not sanctioned.
- This short course will focus only on grand public corruption.
Special topic: Common sense versus legal definitions of bribery. There are often differences between what most citizens would consider to be corrupt and what the law defines as corrupt. The case of McDonnell v. United States (2016) provides an example.
Shortly after he was elected Governor of Virginia, McDonnell met with Jonnie Williams, the founder and CEO of Star Scientific, Inc. (Star), who wanted the Food and Drug Administration to classify his product, Anatabloc, as a pharmaceutical. That classification would be more profitable than the alternative classification of nutraceutical. However, such a classification would require expensive testing, clinical trials, and studies, and Star lacked the funds. Between 2009 and 2012, Williams and McDonnell met several times and agreed that “independent testing {of Anatabloc} in Virginia was a good idea.”
Williams provided expensive gifts to the McDonnells and “was willing to help” with their financial troubles. A launch event for Anatabloc was held at the Governor’s Mansion, and Mrs. McDonnell facilitated meetings between Star officials and officials at the University of Virginia and Virginia Commonwealth University to get the studies started.
The McDonnells were eventually found guilty on 11 counts of corruption, under federal statutes that make it a felony to take “official action” in exchange for money, campaign contributions, or any other thing of value. McDonnell appealed his conviction and argued that the jury instructions given at trial did not properly define the term “official action.”
The Supreme Court was then asked to decide if, for federal bribery statutes, an “official action” is limited to the exercise or threatened exercise of actual governmental power, and if the term is not limited in this manner, are the statutes unconstitutional?
The unanimous decision was that “An ‘official act’ must involve a formal exercise of governmental power on something specific pending before a public official.” This wording rules out promises to act as well as threats to act or not act.
Supporters of the ruling argue it clarifies the line between ethical misconduct and criminal behavior, prevents chilling effects on legitimate political activity, and puts a check on prosecutorial overreach.
Critics argue the decision effectively legalized “paying for access” and made it harder to convict officials for corrupt actions that may have previously been considered illegal.
Next week, we will explore what kinds of people and businesses get involved with public corruption.
