Sociology of corruption

What is it about?

We conduct a review of literature on corruption in the developed world and make several recommendations for advancing the area of sociological enquiry into corruption where theories advancing ideas about power differentials, particularistic loyalties, and collective properties such as culture or trust might be helpful. We suggest a more disaggregated approach to corruption, distinguishing, for example, between bribery by smaller enterprises and by multinationals etc. We also argue that there needs to be a clearer understanding of exactly what it is about high GDP, or a long history of democracy, or a high proportion of Protestants in the population, that might curb corruption (or particular types of corruption). We should focus more on the specificity of the correlation than on its size. Methodologically, there needs to be much more attention to issues such as data quality, validity, and equivalence of meaning.

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