Introduction

Should corruption be facilitated or impeded? At the core of this book is the idea that we should make corruption as arduous as possible. The downside effects should be felt strongly by those willing to take bribes and embezzle public funds. But some theorists were busy arguing in favor of the opposite. They claimed that corruption should be facilitated because otherwise lobbying for preferential treatment would generate wasteful competition. I show that this conclusion is misguided – our effort must be directed toward increasing the transaction costs of corruption.

As we have argued in Chapter 4, some concept of public interest may be at the center of definitions of political corruption. Therefore, welfare economics can be a starting point for analyzing corruption because it allows for a distinction to be made between useful and wasteful political actions. An early approach in this vein has been presented by the traditional rent-seeking theory. This approach considers various forms of seeking preferential treatment in the realm of public decision-making, for example, through competitive lobbying and corruption.