The Rationalization of Political Corruption
16 Pages Posted: 29 Jun 2011
Date Written: March 23, 2011
Abstract
We examine whether and how public sector officials who commit acts of corruption rationalize their behavior as a psychological defense mechanism. We created a database of corrupt officials who had been accused of corrupt acts, supplemented with several in-depth interviews, and found that corrupt officials do rationalize corruption in ways broadly similar to patterns found among corrupt private-sector actors. The evidence we have gathered so far is insufficient to show how this rationalization occurs, but we conclude noting some potential lines of future research.
Keywords: corruption, psychology, rationalization
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