An Intellectual History of Political Corruption [Paperback]

Few concepts have witnessed a more dramatic resurgence of interest in recent years than corruption. This book provides a compelling historical and conceptual analysis of corruption which demonstrates a persistent oscillation between restrictive 'public office' and expansive 'degenerative' connotations of corruption from classical Antiquity to 1800.Introduction 1. Conceptions of Political Corruption in Antiquity 2. Patronage, Politics and Perishability in Early Medieval Political Thought 3. From Baratteria to Broglio: The Perils of Public Office in Medieval and Renaissance Political Thought 4. Affection, Interest and Office in Early Modernity 5. Ideological Change in Eighteenth Century Britain 6. The Historical Vicissitudes of Corruption Conclusion

Bruce Buchan and Lisa Hill's An Intellectual History of Political Corruption marks an important step in the contextualization of the problem of corruption in public affairs as a recurrent and pronounced issue over centuries of Western thought. The project undertaken by the authors is innovative not only for its solid historical scholarship, but also for its relevance to contemporary historical concerns. They illustrate brilliantly why the study of the history of ideas remains a necessary component of any full understanding of contemporary politics.

Cary J. Nederman, Department of Political Science,Texas A&M University, USA

Buchan and Hill provide a compelling account of the changing understanding of political corruption from the ancient world until the end of the 18th century. It addresses a major gap in the literature on corruption that tends to be both resolutely ahistorical and centred on liberal democratic states; and it does so with great clarity and considerable erudition. It should help us to develop a deeper understanding of what we now take to be central to political corruption, and to seeing how and why we have come to see things in this way.

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