Mediated Corruption: The Case of the Keating Five

1993 ◽  
Vol 87 (2) ◽  
pp. 369-381 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dennis F. Thompson
Keyword(s):  
Social Science ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
Political Science ◽  
Political Corruption ◽  
Public Official ◽  
Democratic Process ◽  
Public Officials ◽  
The Public ◽  
Contemporary Politics

The Keating Five case exemplifies a form of a political corruption that is increasingly common in contemporary politics but frequently neglected in contemporary political science. I focus on this form by developing a concept of mediated corruption, which links the acts of individual officials to effects on the democratic process. Unlike conventional corruption, mediated corruption does not require that the public official act with a corrupt motive or that either public officials or citizens receive improper benefits. The concept of mediated corruption provides not only a more coherent account of the case of the Keating Five but also a more fruitful way of reuniting the concepts of systematic corruption in traditional political theory with the concepts of individual corruption in contemporary social science.

Offensive Political Theory

2010 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 465-486 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew Rehfeld
Keyword(s):  
Social Science ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
Political Science ◽  
Music Theory ◽  
Central Question ◽  
Defensive Responses ◽  
The Status ◽  
Social Scientific

Penn State's decision to eliminate political theory set off existential angst about the status of political theory in the discipline. The organized, defensive responses to that decision failed to answer the central question it posed: Is “political theory” social science, and if not, why does it belong? I argue that social scientific political theory is political science and its many strains—conceptual, normative, and explanatory—belong in the discipline on their own terms. Humanistic research, like dermatology or music theory, is not political science and as such it should find another home. By explaining why (and what kinds of) political theory is political science this article may wind up being offensive in both senses of the word. But it is meant to be in service to a more secure, stable, and productive interdisciplinary future for all kinds of political theory going forward.

Elinor Ostrom

2012 ◽  
Vol 31 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 107
Author(s):  
David Goetze
Keyword(s):  
Policy Analysis ◽  
Public Choice ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
Political Science ◽  
American Political Science Association ◽  
Indiana University ◽  
The Public ◽  
Public Choice Society ◽  
American Political Science ◽  
Science Association

On June 12, 2012 Elinor Ostrom died. She was Distinguished Professor, Arthur F. Bentley Professor of Political Science, and founder of the Workshop in Political Theory and Policy Analysis at Indiana University (now renamed in honor of her and her husband Vincent, who also passed away this year). Lin served as the President of the American Political Science Association and the Public Choice Society and was the first woman to be awarded the Nobel Prize for Economics (2009). She was an enthusiastic contributor to APLS Annual Meetings—she organized panels, served as a plenary speaker at our 2006 meeting on the IU campus, and gave the keynote address at the 2010 meeting in Bloomington.

Freedom of Speech for Public Officials vs. the Political Parties' Right to Equal Opportunity: The German Constitutional Court's Recent Rulings Involving the NPD and the AfD

2017 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 189-212
Author(s):  
Thomas Kliegel
Keyword(s):  
Political Parties ◽  
Equal Opportunity ◽  
Freedom Of Speech ◽  
Fundamental Rights ◽  
Public Official ◽  
Public Officials ◽  
The Public ◽  
Election Process ◽  
Political Function ◽  
The Right

Public Officials are bound by the fundamental rights when they are acting in their political function. Acting as such they cannot, in general, claim the freedom of speech for themselves as normal citizens do. If they give statements regarding other political parties they have to abide by the principle of neutrality. Statements that could be understood as negative will be — especially if they are made during the election process — a violation of the right of political parties to equal opportunity, which is an indispensable element of the free and open process of forming popular opinion. The delineation of whether a public official is appearing as such, as a “party politician” or “private individual” can, however, be difficult and it is the obligation of the public official to leave no doubt about the role he is exercising. Different from any other public official the Federal President needs not comply with the principle of neutrality. He has a broad margin of assessment and only transgresses his legal boundaries if he violates the integrative task of his office in an arbitrary manner.

scholarly journals MAPPING POLITICAL THEORY USING BIBLIOMETRIC ANALYSIS

2021 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 163
Author(s):  
Muhammad Syaifuddin ◽  
Suswanta Suswanta ◽  
Misran Misran ◽  
Syamsul Bahri Abd. Rasyid
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Social Science ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
Political Science ◽  
Bibliometric Analysis ◽  
Subsequent Research ◽  
Science Theory ◽  
Science And Politics ◽  
Scopus Database

Politics is a discipline of science that is part of social science. What distinguishes political science from other social sciences is the object studied. The development of research on the theory of political science and politics becomes a question in this paper. Topic mapping and topic classification based on keywords, countries, and themes discussed were the main focus of this research, including visual density based on keywords, showing the level of saturation political science theory. In this study, the data used were data that had been downloaded from the Scopus database with several limitations to limit and be more specific to the results of the discussion. After the documents to be reviewed and analyzed are bibliographical using the VOSViewer and NVivo 12 Plus software, the data is exported .CSV and .RIS formats. This study aims to provide insights into subsequent research on the theory of political science

scholarly journals Entre políticos y criminales: corrupción política en Colombia 2013-2018

2020 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 215-234
Author(s):  
Pedro Piedrahita Bustamante ◽  
Ana Lucía Ponce
Keyword(s):  
Methodological Approach ◽  
Political Corruption ◽  
Economic Benefits ◽  
The State ◽  
Public Officials ◽  
Public Power ◽  
Transnational Organized Crime ◽  
The Public ◽  
General Welfare ◽  
Relationship Of

Corruption is a crime that generates political hardships, particularly to the construction of the State and democracy. The latter, since it restricts the ability of institutions to promote the general welfare through the creation of secret powers that hinder the idea of democracy as a public power that performs before the public. Thus, political corruption creates a secret power, controlled by public officials and professional politicians who favor diverse criminal networks associated with other crimes; affecting like this the institutions and the principle of publicity in democracy. The objective of the research is to analyze political corruption in Colombia between 2013 and 2018 from the perspective of Transnational Organized Crime (TOC). For this purpose, to address political corruption as a transnational crime, it is necessary to overcome the phenomenon of the narcotization of crime and recognize that political corruption is also a relevant crime; which functions in a network and is associated with other criminal dynamics to seek economic benefits for the State or to affect it. The methodological approach was qualitative and, the phenomenological-hermeneutical method was used in the analysis of historical information collected since the 16th century that served as a context to establish the relationship of corruption with other crimes in the country and the different cases of corruption analyzed in the period of study. Only those cases that fit the analysis of transnational corruption, because of links to other networks are considered. It is evident that between 2013 and 2018 there were cases of political corruption with criminal links associated with drug trafficking, money laundering, and prostitution, among others. However, several of these facts do not seem to have the same informational relevance as typical cases of bribery, illegal campaign financing, or contracting cartels. This is understood as an opportunity to continue deepening these types of investigations.

Making the Criminal Justice System Accountable

1972 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 15-22 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marvin E. Wolfgang
Keyword(s):  
Criminal Justice ◽  
Criminal Justice System ◽  
Justice System ◽  
Democratic Process ◽  
Public Officials ◽  
Public Display ◽  
The Public

All parts of the criminal justice system should be accountable to the public at large, to the victim, and to the offender. More over, each subpart of the system should be accountable to the immediately preceding subpart. The democratic process requires public officials and organizations to be on public display.

Political corruption, individual behaviour and the quality of institutions

2017 ◽  
Vol 17 (2) ◽  
pp. 216-231 ◽  
Author(s):  
Emanuela Ceva ◽  
Maria Paola Ferretti
Keyword(s):  
Liberal Democracy ◽  
Civil Disobedience ◽  
Political Corruption ◽  
Public Order ◽  
Public Justification ◽  
Public Officials ◽  
The Public ◽  
Personal Morality ◽  
The Individual

Is the corrupt behaviour of public officials a politically relevant kind of wrong only when it causes the malfunctioning of institutions? We challenge recent institutionalist approaches to political corruption by showing a sense in which the individual corrupt behaviour of certain public officials is wrong not only as a breach of personal morality but in inherently politically salient terms. To show this sense, we focus on a specific instance of individual corrupt behaviour on the part of public officials entrusted with the power to implement public rules in a liberal democracy. Although not necessarily unlawful, their behaviour is politically wrong qua corrupt when it contradicts surreptitiously the requirement of public justification that undergirds the public order. Then, we distinguish this form of corruption as surreptitious action from such unlawful but publicly justifiable kinds of political misbehaviour as civil disobedience.

Operative Doctrines of Representation

1963 ◽  
Vol 57 (3) ◽  
pp. 604-618 ◽  
Author(s):  
Charles E. Gilbert
Keyword(s):  
Political Science ◽  
Public Interest ◽  
Public Officials ◽  
The Public ◽  
Empirical Inquiry ◽  
And Control ◽  
American Political Science ◽  
Empirical Approaches ◽  
American Thought

The main point of this article is to identify some traditions of American thought that figure in analysis of the distinctively democratic aspects of government. The discussion is centered on doctrines of “representation.” While that term has a generally understood meaning, its application in specific contexts depends upon values and expectations closely related to other largely procedural aspects of politics; and together these perspectives figure in appraisals and decisions of policy.The “distinctively democratic aspects of government” have broadly to do, I think, with relations between public officials and the population. These can be conceptualized and described in terms of institutions, influence, identification, or exchange, and are so treated in various positive or empirical approaches. At the points where normative critique and empirical description join, the literature of American political science seems to have converged on several broad concerns that tend to organize and orient discussion—e.g., representation, responsibility, rationality, and lately, the “public interest,” of which “representation” surely has the clearest empirical reference. These are overlapping or intersecting concerns. They emphasize different aspects of government and different blends of calculation and control (or intellectual versus institutional elements); but they do not refer to distinct phenomena, and they relate to common normative traditions. Such terms are often, I think, of dubious utility because they tend to obscure the more detailed values at stake in action or discussion and perhaps thereby to discourage more pointed empirical inquiry relevant to those values. However that may be, the interrelatedness of these concerns and the broad relevance of “representation” can be briefly indicated.

scholarly journals Conflict of Interest in the Administrative Contracts in Albania

2016 ◽  
Vol 12 (34) ◽  
pp. 182
Author(s):  
Adriatik Llalla ◽  
Fjorida Ballauri
Keyword(s):  
Public Service ◽  
Conflict Of Interest ◽  
Public Official ◽  
Public Officials ◽  
The Public ◽  
Private Interests ◽  
Political Interests ◽  
Domestic Legislation ◽  
Personal Interests ◽  
Public Decision

In Albania the issue of conflict of interest is present at today’s public debate, as in many other countries. Due to this phenomenon, public funds, state property, public service, etc., are at risk at any time, and therefore there is obligation of the state to establish the appropriate legal instruments to prevent such situations. In principle, while exercising official duties and functions, the elected person or the public official should not be influenced by personal interests. In this sense, through actions, inactions or decisions, they cannot gain benefits or advantages for themselves, their family members, relatives or other persons, in case they share economic or political interests with them. In Albania, the domestic legislation provides restrictions and prohibitions for several private interests of the officials exercising public functions, depending on their functions, responsibilities and competencies in public decision-making. Also, the law provides specific prohibitions and restrictions in cases of entering into administrative contracts, considering a contract as a special public decision, which is vulnerable to be damaged by the action of officials’ private interests. This paper aims to make an analysis of the legislation in terms of restrictions of private interests of public officials to prevent specific cases of conflict of interest while concluding administrative contracts. Also, the paper leads to conclusions on how conflict of interest is related to other criminal offences like abuse of office, corruption or violation of equality of participants in public tenders or auctions etc.

Blackout in the Name of Sunshine

2015 ◽  
pp. 2219-2232
Author(s):  
William R. Sherman
Keyword(s):  
Social Networks ◽  
Social Network ◽  
Local Governments ◽  
Open Government ◽  
Public Official ◽  
Public Officials ◽  
The Public ◽  
Public Square ◽  
New Public ◽  
Open Meeting

Local governments, and particularly local public officials, have adopted online social networking tools en masse in an effort to communicate with constituents. As this chapter shows, the resulting information flow consists of communication from the public official to constituents, from constituents to the public official, and among constituents, but in the context of the public official's social network. This environment constitutes a “civic social network,” which operates as the new public square. Many local governments, however, are attempting to bar officials' use of civic social networks because they risk violation of open government laws, such as open meeting and open records laws. This effort to stifle valuable civic communication harms norms of transparency and accountability – the very values that open government laws should promote. These laws should be revised or reinterpreted to allow civic social networks to fulfill their promise as the new public square.

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