ABOUT THIS BOOK

Americans often worry about political corruption—not only about specific officials misusing their powers, but also more broadly about political, cultural, moral decay or deterioration. Underneath our talk about corruption lie deeper claims and concerns about how we organize our common life. American Corruption Talk presents a study of corruption and corruption talk that seeks to understand those deeper claims and concerns.

Robert Boatright and Molly Brigid McGrath focus on the role corruption talk plays in American political discourse. They distinguish between two ways people speak about corruption—corruption talk in the style of a purifier, who wishes to expunge the evil forces or drain the swamp, and corruption talk in the style of the mender, who thinks of managing, replacing, or repairing.

American Corruption Talk begins by tracing how the concept of political corruption was developed by philosophers and political thinkers, leading up to its use in the American context, especially in the Progressive Era. It also compares modes of contemporary corruption talk in different areas of public life. In doing so, the authors hope to resolve confusion and partisan disagreements about what corruption is and to discourage the tendency to label actions, events, and ideas that we merely disagree with as corrupt.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY

Robert G. Boatright is Professor of Political Science at Clark University and Director of Research for the National Institute for Civil Discourse at the University of Arizona.

Molly Brigid McGrath is Professor of Philosophy at Assumption University and is the Director of the D’Amour Center for Teaching Excellence.

REVIEWS

“This important work presents evidence that the prevalence of ‘corruption talk’ in America has been increasing steadily over the past few decades, seemingly without any concurrent rise in actual acts of government corruption. The authors pull together comprehensive theoretical conceptualizations of ‘corruption’ as a way to show that mainstream use of the word, in politics, academia, and society alike, is so imprecise that it becomes a catch-all scapegoat for nearly all things disliked about government.”—Political Science Quarterly

“It is perhaps a sign of our era that ‘corruption’ in its popular use has come to serve as a term indicating a sentiment rather than a vehicle for the exchange of precise contents among people. Robert Boatright and Molly McGrath examine the shifts in the meaning of the term as used by past philosophers and its development until it came to exemplify what Goethe had in mind when he warned that ‘when an idea is wanting, a word can be found to take its place.’ American Corruption Talk is not only a fascinating and informative study but a valuable one for our times. It is an important work.”—Jonathan Mendilow, Emeritus Professor of Political Science at Rider University and Chair of the International Political Science Association’s Research Council on Political Finance and Political Corruption (2009–2024)

“In 1621, Francis Bacon was convicted of corruption for soliciting bribes, yet this use of public power for private gain was open and common practice and there was a certain novelty in calling it corrupt. (It probably was seen similarly to a service provider suggesting a tip today.) Boatright and McGrath provide an engaging reconstruction of how our discourse on the topic of corruption came to be where it is today.”—David Schmidtz, Presidential Chair of Moral Science at the Chambers College of Business and Economics at West Virginia University

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Contents

List of Figures and Tables

Acknowledgments

1. Introduction

Part I: The Origins Of American Corruption Talk

2. Types of Corruption and Types of Corruption Talk

3. Corruption Narratives and Motifs: Who or What Tends to Be Corrupted?

4. Montesquieu: A Mender’s Approach to Corruption

5. Rousseau and the Limits of the Purifier’s Approach

6. American Progressive Corruption Talk

Part II: Corruption Talk In Contemporary American Political Discourse

7. Social Scientific Corruption Talk

8. Presidential Corruption Talk

9. Corruption Talk and Political Reform

10. How the American Public Thinks about Corruption

11. A Conclusion of Sorts: Corruption Talk and the Current Political Moment

Notes

References

Index

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