Lucio Picci has written a subtle and wide-ranging critique of a half-century of social science research on corruption. To him, the importance given to the topic, sadly, belies the paucity of successful anti-corruption initiatives, echoing the persistence of greed and self-dealing in political life. Framing his topic broadly, Picci, nevertheless, focuses on Russia, Brazil, and the United States to illustrate the forms that corruption and self-dealing take and the difficulty of stable and effective reform.

The first part of the book lays the groundwork—pointing out the difficulty of defining corruption and of measuring it. Here, my early work, especially Corruption: A Study in Political Economy (1978), enters his picture to illustrate the impact of economic analysis on a field that had mostly emphasized political, historical, and sociological factors. The analysis of corruption by political economists has been largely reformist, positing an honest principal who seeks to organize the work of agents so that they deliver public services without incentives to take bribes from the firms and individuals with whom they deal. Although sometimes considering the role of anti-bribery laws directly, this political-economy-oriented view emphasizes the redesign of public programs to improve performance (e.g., Pranab Bardhan, “Corruption and Development: A Review of the Issues,” Journal of Economic Literature, 1997; Benjamin Olkin & Rohini Pande, “Corruption in Developing Countries,” Annual Review of Economics, 2012).

That perspective takes as given the public-service goals justifying government programs. Clearly, this is a limited view of the ways in which the public sector can fail to provide competent and responsible government. It misses cases where the state is permeated by self-dealing to such an extent that there are few realistic constraints on the behavior of public officials beyond their individual moral compunctions (for examples that incorporate that broader perspective see Alina Mungiu-Pippidi, 2015. The Quest for Good Governance: How Societies Develop Control of Corruption, 2015, and Bo Rothstein, Controlling Corruption: The Social Contract Approach, 2021).

Furthermore, anti-bribery laws may be used to trap and neutralize political opponents. All three of Picci’s cases illustrate alternative versions of this concern. As he sees it, Russia today is a state where the basic structure of the state is supported by corrupt arrangements between powerful public and private actors so that the distinction between the two is blurred. Because the formal institutions of the state function for the benefit of a corrupt elite, there is no powerful constituency for reform, and partial efforts might undermine a fragile equilibrium. Brazil has a government structure that benefits the elite but with more space for programs directed at the poor and those from indigenous communities. However, the structure of the Brazilian state is linked to its recent authoritarian past. The constitution limits the power of the president, producing many personalistic political parties so that the incumbent president must strike deals to get things done. One option is to pay off party leaders to get their support, encouraging the administration to collect payoffs from contractors that can be illicitly passed on to party leaders. The US is presented as a case where “legal corruption” is a major problem because wealthy elites have access to political power through legal campaign contributions and other forms of favoritism. Hence, reform in all three cases is a low-probability event because both public and private actors can maintain or enhance a favorable status quo.

I accept Picci’s assessment of these cases but notice that, like the political-economic strand of research introduced earlier, he recognizes that structural conditions are a partial explanation for the reality that he observes. To oversimplify a complex reality, in Russia, fundamental problems arose from the “shock therapy” of the transition from socialism based on overly optimistic predictions about the results of the dramatic shift to a free market and an underfunded state. Similarly, as noted earlier, the democratic transition, although broadly successful, built-in structural flaws that could be exploited for private gain. In the US, several features contribute to the outsized role of private wealth in American politics: the federal courts’ broad understanding of the Constitution’s free speech protections and legislators’ unwillingness to regulate money in politics. However, as Picci observes, the total amount of money spent on US elections is not large in relation to the size of the economy. I agree with his emphasis on the other ways in which private wealth influences government actions, from lobbying activity to the revolving door.

My main critique of this insightful and important book is its acceptance of the rhetoric of “legal corruption.” As Picci documents, private wealth influences public power in every polity. A democracy that is both competent and accountable to its citizens must counteract institutional frameworks that undermine both of those pillars of “good government.” However, I doubt that the best way to advance this debate is to label all such frameworks “corrupt.” It is too easy to affix that label indiscriminately to all kinds of self-seeking behavior. Furthering one’s self-interest is not inherently evil. But, as Picci emphasizes, there are many ways in which self-interest undermines responsible government.

However, I do not find it constructive to call deviations from an ideal of “good government” corrupt. Rather, one can point to behavior and institutional arrangements that work against legitimate government action, and then consider whether they should be treated as punishable corrupt offenses under the law or understood as basic structural failures that require reform but not necessarily a legal crackdown. In the latter cases, it won’t help much to prosecute people under anti-corruption laws. Instead of using the label “legal corruption” for a wide range of governmental and private sector failures, it seems better to me to consider them under the heading of political reform that seeks to enlist citizens and organized groups to participate in a reform agenda—not to point fingers at the “corrupt” but rather to seek change through argument and the analysis of data. Of course, I realize that “corruption” is a loaded term designed to encourage citizens to support systemic reform, but as Picci’s cases illustrate, failure is pervasive. Thus, my own candidate for a title would be: Rethinking State Reform: The Limits of the Anti-Corruption Agenda.

Nevertheless, Picci and I are on the same page in underemphasizing anti-corruption campaigns that focus on law enforcement. We agree on the value of advocating for structural changes consistent with democratic involvement and technocratic competence. Consider the dramatic failures of the law enforcement model in Italy and Brazil along with the successes of a wealthy elite in the US even though anti-corruption laws constrain outright bribes and kickbacks. The situation outlined by Picci indicates to me that the task for scholars of modern government worldwide is not to be drawn into vexed debates over definitions of corruption—legal or illegal—but, instead, to build on the insights and empirical evidence of Picci and others to produce deeper understandings of citizens of modern states that co-exist with wealthy and powerful firms, charities, and individuals able to operate cross-nationally to serve their own interests. As Picci points out, there are distinct limits to reforms imposed from outside by international bodies; yet that is not to say that insights for improvement cannot come from outside a given society. The fields of comparative politics and political economy are full of valuable efforts to compare both successes and failures and to ask what might work well or poorly under what conditions.