Introduction: the many dimensions of corruption
Corruption is often thought of as a closed-ended material exchange – usually, bribery –
between party A and party B. Similarly, its consequences are frequently compared to ideal
situations: a free and efficient market and a transparent, well-managed state. Useful
simplifications of those sorts have helped us settle old debates about the claimed
“functionality” of corruption and illuminated its broad-based but serious costs. But where government, business, and personal relationships overlap – which is to say, in all real
societies – exchanges can have multiple dimensions and meanings, and ideal processes are
unlikely to be real possibilities. Similarly, when dealings are repeated and cumulative,
outcomes of one deal affect expectations for the next, and exchanges are shaped in both
process and significance by customs and complex social relationships. What can such
factors tell us about corrupt processes and their broader implications? What does such an
analysis tell us about culture, broadly defined, as a variable in the study of corruption?