Author(s)

Jan-Erik Lane

Public Policy Institute, Belgrade, Serbia.

The established theory of corruption needs to be re-examined, as it has a few flaws. It attributes a major role to corruption, pretending that it weighs extremely heavily upon social, economic and political outcomes. The lack of comparative data is troubling for vindicating such hypotheses, and it is barely compensated for by the resort to experts’ views around the globe, which in the form of the well-known Transparency Index (CPI) gives a probably inflated picture of the occurrence of corruption, especially in Third World countries. In a new approach, one would make crucial distinctions between various concepts of illegal behavior, reserving “corruption” for bribery as well as separating between petty corruption and big corruption.

Various Meanings of “Corruption”, Petty versus Big Corruption, Corruption Perceptions Index, Rule of Law, WB Governance Project

Lane, J. (2017) Corruption: A New Analysis. Open Journal of Political Science, 7, 157-169. doi: 10.4236/ojps.2017.71012.