On Political Scandals and Corruption

Bibliographic Data

ID5773381
AuthorsGraeme C Moodie (corresponding author)
Year1980
Volume15
Issue2
Pages208-222
Publication date1980-04-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueGovernment and Opposition (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0017-257X • E-ISSN: 1477-7053
PublisherCambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1111/j.1477-7053.1980.tb00272.x
OpenAlexW2095325453
LanguageEN
Citations received19
References cited3

SCANDAL AND CORRUPTION ARE CUSTOMARILY THOUGHT OF in much the same ways as pigs and whistles; they go together. Strangely, however, academic studies of corruption seem to pay little attention to scandal. It is strange if only because in societies like this corruption tends to be obscure, a condition in which its participants wish it to remain, and it is to the occasional scandal that we are indebted for what knowledge is generally accessible. This is particularly true in Britain where the major scandals have usually been followed (sometimes illuminated) by official inquiries; certainly that has been the practice in this century from the Marconi shares scandal in 1913 to the Poulson scandal sixty years later which spawned both a committee and a Royal Commission. A closer look at the incidence of political scandal, this article will suggest, is an additional tool for the study of corruption and perhaps particularly so for comparative studies. A more fundamental (and more widely canvassed) problem, however, is so to define corruption as to facilitate reliable comparisons across temporal and cultural boundaries. We will first discuss that problem

Language change · Political corruption · Corruption and Economic Development

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