Corruption

THE GREEK PHILOSOPHER Plato (427–347 B.C.E.) believed that democracies were the “fairest” and “most beautiful” of all forms of constitutional government. However, as discussed at length in his classic work, The Republic, Plato also believed that a government ruled by the people would ultimately break down, because jealousy over one another's respective functions within the society, and improper decision making by an uneducated public would yield chaos, subsequently giving way to a desire for order and stability achievable only through despotism. Similarly, the Roman historian Polybius (c. 200–118 B.C.E.) noted that the “… desire for luxury, bribery for the sake of political power, and the substitution of eagerness for wealth …” in lieu of wise governance, results in corruption. For our purposes, corruption can be defined as wrongfully using one's influence to procure some benefit for oneself or another person.

Both Plato and Polybius saw corruption as inevitable in nearly every form of constitutional system. Polybius produced a number of important writings pertaining to mixed constitutional forms of governance in an effort to curtail corruption. In fact, history scholar Marshall Davies Lloyd, in his article, “Polybius and the Founding Fathers: the Separation of Powers,” goes so far as to attribute America's system of checks and balances (that is, executive, legislative, and judicial branches) to Polybius' works. Yet Plato and Polybius also espouse a certain order to life, and corruption is merely an accepted part of it.

The beliefs of these ancient Greek and Roman scholars are comparable to the values shared in many other cultures. For example, bribery has long been accepted in India as a way of life. In April 2002, a law enforcement officer in Punjab sought to secure a government position for his daughter—hoping that placing her in this job would give him access to increased levels of graft. He attempted to coax the officials who recorded the entrance exam scores into raising her final grade by providing them with a $100,000 bribe.

Unfortunately (for the police officer and his daughter), he attempted to pay the exam administrators with counterfeit currency and was subsequently arrested. Another example is Mexico, where the public frequently provides government officials with mordida—which literally translates into English as “the bite,” but more accurately refers to a bribe.

Even within the United States, the “honest graft” era of Boss Tweed and Tammany Hall, in which $75 to $200 million was swindled from New York City between 1865 and 1871, or the mayoralty of Boston's James Michael Curley, who was able to build a 17-room home complete with a mahogany stairway and crystal chandelier on a small public servant's salary, are spoken of to this day with a form of renegade reverence.