![handle is hein.journals/pclscceqry24 and id is 1 raw text is:
Volume XXIV]
POLITICAL SCIENCE
QUARTERLY
THE NATURE OF POLITICAL CORRUPTION
IN the whole vocabulary of politics it would be difficult to
point out any single term that is more frequently em-
ployed than the word corruption. Party orators and
writers, journalists, muck rakers and reformers all use it
with the utmost freedom, and it occurs not uncommonly in the
less ephemeral pages of political philosophers and historians.
Transactions and conditions of very different kinds are stig-
matized in this way, in many cases doubtless with entire justice;
but apparently there is little disposition to inquire into the essen-
tial nature of corruption itself and to discriminate in the use of
the word.
Detailed definitions of corrupt practices and bribery are of
course to be found in every highly developed legal code, but
these are scarcely broad enough to cover the whole concept as
seen from the viewpoint of political science or ethics. The
sanctions of positive law are applied only to those more flagrant
practices which past experience has shown to be so pernicious
that sentiment has crystallized into statutory prohibitions and
adverse judicial decisions. Even within this comparatively
limited circle clearness and precision are but imperfectly at-
tained. Popular disgust is frequently expressed at the inepti-
tude of the law's definitions and the deviousness of the law's
procedure, as a result of which prosecutions of notoriously de-
linquent offici :, politicians and contractors so often and so
ignominiously fail in the courts. If once we step outside the
circle of legality, however, we find extremely confused, conflict-
ing and even unfair states of moral opinion regarding corrup-
March, ipop
[Number I](ViewImageLocal?handle=hein.journals/pclscceqry24&div=1&collection=&method=preview&ext=.png&size=3)
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