Corruption: Expanding the reach

Abstract

in this article we come up with a multiple definition of corruption that accounts for three kinds of corruption –individual, institutional and systemic- likely to be found in any kind of political regimen. The corruption is not seen as an exceptional or abnormal behavior, is the «normal» result of the human proneness to cooperate. We saw how the systemic corruption was understood in the occidental political tradition as the main cause of regimen change; this causal relation is outstanding to explain the actual threats face by the modern democracies. We study in detail the impacts of corruption and dispute the widespread theory of the life cycle of corruption and its dependency on the economic development. We stress the need of different and better measures of corruption to account for systemic corruption and new institutions designed to reverse their generalization in modern democracies.