This book is full of insights about corruption, especially for historians of political thought, but also for political scientists, policy makers, and normative political theorists. “Corruption is always the reverse side of the tapestry that is the good regime,” Robert Alan Sparling notes, but there are “very different notions of the healthy polity or the officeholder of integrity” (pp. 187, 190). Sparling draws valuable contemporary insights through careful selection of historical figures whose ideas of corruption differ from ours.

The book explores “seven important and distinct modes in which the concept [of corruption] has been deployed since the Renaissance: leadership ethics, republicanism, the politics of transparency, nostalgic denigrations of the bureaucratic state, liberal moderation, revolutionary purism, and the ethics of bureaucratic office” (p. xiii). These themes are broached through specific authors. Some—Machiavelli, Bolingbroke, Montesquieu, and Weber—are well known in corruption circles. Others—Erasmus, Robespierre, and Kant—are usually ignored by corruption scholars. One—Etienne de La Boétie, writing in the mid-sixteenth century—is barely known today. Yet La Boétie has wonderful insights about corruption as the atomization of society, such that “there is no longer a public good to speak of” (emphasis in original; p. 83), and I found the chapter on this largely forgotten figure the most incisive in the book. Overall, the book will help not only corruption scholars but also anyone interested in the authors whom Sparling discusses.

Sparling’s breadth, including his grasp of different literatures, is impressive. However, perhaps he could have highlighted gender more. For example, corruption was historically seen in gendered terms: it was the opposite of virtue (the quality of a man), with corruption making men “effeminate.” Sparling could have addressed this point in La Boétie’s discussion of “effeminate” rulers (p. 76). He could also have given race more attention when exploring Kantian purity (pp. 154–65). For Kant, only white Europeans had the capacity for self-perfection; Kant’s uncorrupted humanity would therefore be white. A small overstatement is that Hobbesian citizens are caricatured as untrusting strangers driven by egoism and fear (pp. 81, 83, 156, 197; compare Sharon Lloyd, Ideals as Interests in Hobbes’s Leviathan: The Power of Mind over Matter, 1992, pp. 6–47). Nor did Hobbes think that “one can only legislate deeds, not thoughts” (pp. 91, 161): Hobbes wrote at length about shaping attitudes; for example, in the Leviathan, chap. 30, paras. 2–14). But these are minor criticisms.

Two issues central to understanding corruption also deserve more attention in the book. Consider the standard definition of corruption today: “misuse of public office for private gain.” “Office” comes from officiis (duties), and historically, “misuse of public office” effectively meant “neglect of public duty” (Adrian Blau, “Cognitive Corruption and Deliberative Democracy,” Social Philosophy and Policy 35(2), 2018). Sparling juxtaposes office and duties without apparently spotting the connection (p. 187), and his Weberian dichotomy between “officeholders and the public” (p. 189) sidesteps the fact that historically the latter were often included among the former, because citizens had public duties.

The second definitional issue involves the public/private dichotomy. I am unsure whether Sparling overinterprets Machiavelli here. Like most scholars, Sparling reads Machiavellian corruption as involving “the subordination of the public good to private interests” (p. 45). How does this reading relate to factions, which Machiavelli saw as corrupt? According to Sparling, what is corrupt here is that citizens become dependent on the leader of the faction (p. 56). I like this reading, but it does not explain why, as Machiavelli surely knew, most people maintained their allegiance to a faction (like the Guelfs or Ghibellines) even when its leader changed. I suspect that Machiavelli’s real concern is simply that cities are corrupted when people pursue nonpublic goods; that is, goods below the level of the city, including themselves, friends, families, and factions. This is why corruption should arguably be defined not in terms of private gain but of nonpublic gain (Blau, “Cognitive Corruption,” pp. 206, 216).

These too are minor criticisms, however, and in general the historical focus of Sparling’s book is a great success. There are insights on most pages, including a powerful critique of Quentin Skinner’s genealogy of the state (pp. 6–8).

I turn finally to the contemporary insights of Sparling’s historical analysis. Drawing contemporary insights is often difficult, and many attempts fail. Yet Sparling scores numerous successes. Chapter 1 is particularly strong and should be required reading for all corruption scholars, empirical or theoretical. Empirical corruption scholars will learn much from this discussion. Consider Sparling’s criticism of Robert Klitgaard’s famous formula: Corruption = Monopoly + Discretion – Accountability. By ignoring virtue, this formula suggests that, without surveillance and threat, corruption will be rampant (pp. 21–22). Yet people often act uncorruptly when there are no incentives to do so. I have read Klitgaard’s formula many times but never spotted this error. Sparling could go for the jugular here, giving examples of empirical studies that overlook this point. That said, some empirical studies do not (e.g., Alina Mungiu-Pippidi, “Seven Steps to Control of Corruption: The Road Map,” Daedalus 147(3), 2018).

Indeed, fleshing out such references would strengthen Sparling’s contemporary insights by showing which scholars do or do not make the mistakes he criticizes. Consider the fascinating chapter on Erasmus, where Sparling emphasizes a key idea: “soulcraft”—shaping political virtue (pp. 20–43). Sparling notes Erasmus’s pessimism about whether an uncorrupt prince could remove corruption, because “the very system that he is attempting to purify is inherently corrupting.” For Erasmus, power corrupts “not primarily because the unaccountable take advantage of their situation, but because radical political inequality raises rulers too high for their own moral cultivation” (pp. 40–41). This is true, as also discussed by Ricardo Blaug (How Power Corrupts: Cognition and Democracy in Organisations, 2010), but when Sparling criticizes anticorruption policies that only address leadership (p. 42), his claim would benefit from examples of policies that make this error; presumably some do not.

Likewise, La Boétie’s insights about material inequality fostering corruption lead Sparling to conclude that this topic needs more attention (p. 97). Examples would help here, not least because some studies include inequality as a cause of corruption (e.g., Eric Uslaner, Corruption, Inequality, and the Rule of Law, 2008). Meanwhile, when Sparling infers that people who say “sunlight is the best disinfectant” mean that “corruption can be cured by exposing it” (p. 72; emphasis added), I wonder if any empirical scholars or policy makers are this naive.

Ultimately, drawing contemporary insights is partly about showing for whom insights are relevant. Sparling’s valuable book would benefit from more detail here, whether by giving references at key points, expanding each chapter’s short concluding section, adding a longer final chapter, or writing a separate article building on the book in the future.

Each chapter is a good length— mostly 20–25 pages. There are some fine jokes (especially about how civil servants, to paraphrase Diderot, can separate themselves from themselves, on p. 172). Sparling’s incisive and insightful tone made the book a pleasure to read. The book deserves to be studied widely, and I hope a future article by the author expanding on the contemporary importance of his historical analysis will further highlight its value.