For progressive public administration, democratic accountability depends on limiting corruption and the waste and incompetence that are held to go with it. The assumption is that politicians are inherently venal, using their public office wherever possible to enrich themselves, their friends and relations, and that reliance on private-sector contracting for public services inevitably leads to high-cost low-quality products, either because of corrupt influence on the contract-awarding process of because the public contract market will come to be controlled by organized crime, or both. Whether these assumptions can be safely dispensed with in the wealthy OECD countries of today is a matter for debate.