Resumen de Conceptions of Corruption, Its Causes, and Its Cure
This is a very brisk walk through a topic that should be taken slowly and treated in depth, but inevitably therefore at much greater length. Not the least of the reasons for engaging with it so briefly is that the institutions, if not always the practice, of Britain, the US, and other liberal democracies today reflect efforts to rein in corruption that began in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, but which drew on very ancient arguments about the individual and institutional failings that rot individual character and bring about the downfall of states by weakening their ability to resist foreign attack, or by turning accountable republican government into some form of tyranny. On the view advanced here, transparency is certainly needed to suppress corruption; accountability is impossible if those who stand in temptation's way don't have to produce accurate and complete accounts, don't run the risk of facing public hearings on the accuracy of their accounts, aren't properly audited, and so on
