Peter DeLeon - Thinking About Political Corruption

First published 1993 by M.E. Sharpe

Published 2015 by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017, USA

Copyright 1993 Taylor & Francis. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

Notices
No responsibility is assumed by the publisher for any injury and/or damage to persons or property as a matter of products liability, negligence or otherwise, or from any use of operation of any methods, products, instructions or ideas contained in the material herein.

Practitioners and researchers must always rely on their own experience and knowledge in evaluating and using any information, methods, compounds, or experiments described herein. In using such information or methods they should be mindful of their own safety and the safety of others, including parties for whom they have a professional responsibility.

Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

deLeon, Peter.
Thinking about political corruption / Peter deLeon.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-87332-838-8.ISBN 0-87332-839-6 (pbk.)
1. Political corruptionUnited States.
2. Political corruptionUnited StatesCase studies.
I. Title.
JK2249.D45 1993
364.13230973dc20
93-4026
CIP
ISBN 13: 9780873328395 (pbk)
ISBN 13: 9780873328388 (hbk)

In 1986, when I was doing research for a book that was to become Advice and Consent (1989), I was intrigued by the lack of analysis in the literature on Watergate relating the scandal to American politics. There was more journalism, histories, and personal tellings of Watergate than one could shake a stick atwhich were all well and goodbut nothing that examined how Watergate, as an instance of political corruption, affected the American political system. However disparate these authors training and purpose, they all seemingly reached the same conclusions: that, in President Gerald Fords words, the long nightmare of Watergate was behind us and there was little reason for generalization. My disappointing survey, which I now sheepishly admit was probably incomplete,a led me to wonder why this (at least to me) obvious gap existed in the literature. It led me to pose broader questions about political corruption and about why there was so little work examining its generic effect on the United States. Which led to the present book.

This book has been a more difficult book to write than I had anticipated. I now have a very intimate appreciation of why the analysis of political corruption is an underattended subject. The subject matter is truly fascinatingthe literal stuff of political dramabut the actors, their motives, and scenarios are so varied that to weave them together in a coherent pattern required more work than I had ever imagined in the naive days when I proposed the book to a publisher. I am grateful for having written this book; I have learned more than I had bargained for, always a good feeling. Still, I confess that at times I felt as if the book were somehow taking over and writing itself. Perhaps the key lesson could be to respect the market signals: when there appears to be an obvious interest matched by an equally obvious gap, it is circumspect to wonder why.

Writing this book was difficult in another sense. It is important for the reader to know my personal sentiments on the subject of political corruption. I am not a neutral observer. Reading volumes about various incidents of public corruption, watching individuals with motives and standards far removed from mine commit what I consider deliberate violence to the public order, tended to raise my blood pressure. Marginalia in my source books testify that I did not take the culprits actions lightly or from an academics detached perspective. However, then to sit back, softly contemplate and analyze corruption from a dispassionate perspective required a very different, more tolerant perspective; to treat these cases as mere illustrations of a larger theme rather than verse for the pulpit was often a difficult struggle. I trust that for the most part, my analytic angel has held the field; if readers should occasionally sense my emotive angel snatching a phrase or two (maybe a page), I hope they will appreciate that even the best analysis should reflect the authors values.

Let me offer a very quick Baedeker for the reader. I am, by profession, an academic. ), and can do so without fear of missing the books main themes.

* * *

There is one aspect of this book that appears at first glance to be highly partisan in naturethe five cases of political corruption reviewed below all occurred during the Republican administration of President Ronald Reagan. The readily drawn conclusionthat this is a Democrats-inspired, hatchet-job book, written to denigrate President Reagan and vilify the Republican Partysimply is not true. My selection of cases is strictly an artifact of the study. For relevancys sake, I wanted recent examples of corruption at the federal level of government. It just so happens that the American voters have sent Republicans to the White House for the last twelve years. We will discuss and again reject this interpretation at greater length in the Conclusion of the book. Until then, I must ask the readers indulgence that this book has no hidden agenda to tar the Republican Party and its presidents with the pitch of political corruption.

_______________

Given the immense library on Watergate, I suspect it approaches the infinite monkeys on infinite typewriters syndrome, e.g., there might be an article somewhere relating Watergate and Hamlet, or Gemstone and Wilkie Collins Moonstone (1868), etc.

As I confessed in the Preface, this book has had a longer gestation than any diligent author should wish to admit. As a consequence, the book has a lengthy lineage. My colleagues at Columbia University, especially Alfred Stepan (former dean of the School of International and Public Affairs), initially assured me that what I was looking for was right around the next library carrel; that they were mistaken does not diminish their encouragement. More substantively, Professor Susan Rose-Ackerman (then at Columbias Law School and now at Yale University), who had provided an economists view of corruption in her Corruption: A Study in Political Corruption (1978), kindly shared her more recent thoughts on the subject.

Michael Johnston (Colgate University), whose Political Corruption and Public Policy in America (1982) served in many ways as a model, was equally generous with his time and insights. Indeed, an initial inkling of this books argument was published in a Johnston-edited journal, Corruption & Reform