3 - Public Officials, Private Interests, and Sustainable Democracy: When Politics and Corruption Meet

What links various levels and types of corruption on the one hand and political pathologies on the other? Table 1 offers a tentative attemptbased on my own and others read- ing of press reports and the scholarly literature on corruption over the yearsto distinguish between cases in which corruption has led to systemic political change (such as the breakdown of the political pro- cess or fundamenta. [...] The need, then and now, is to enhance political competition to even out the imbalance of economic and political opportunities while protecting the autonomy of representatives and decision makers. [...] Clarifying issues of property and ownership, protecting against political and bureaucratic exploitation of economic enterprises and market activities, and reaffirming principles of legality can strengthen the boundaries between public and private interests, individual and collective rights, and politics and administra- tion, thus helping to limit elite exploitation and strengthen countervailing po. [...] The former entails a real commitment from both citizens and elites to the value and necessity of the statenot as a coercive force, and certainly not as a resource to be plundered, but rather as a guarantor of important processes and rights whose rules must be taken seriously. [...] In this discussion, I have tried to place such changes and contrasts in the context of an argument about the nature and significance of sustainable democracy, anticorruption reforms, and the positive relationships between the two.