Corruption: An Umbrella Concept

Abstract

Research surrounding corruption has grown exponentially in the past decade, during which various concepts have been drawn into the corruption realm; whereby independent concepts now share space with corruption. This paper attempts to recast the concept of corruption as an umbrella concept in order to highlight the family resemblance that exists between corruption and respective concepts such as clientelism, patronage, patrimonialism and state capture. This effectively shows the connections between the related concepts and corruption within academic research. It enhances corruption to a category that can fit many cases reasonably well, but as Wittgenstein points out “on close examination it can become clear that for most cases the fit is not perfect.” This particular approach results in expounding each of the side-lying concepts as concepts in their own right, simultaneously elaborating on the space shared by the related concept and corruption – this not only clarifies a set of commonalities, that are analytically important (Collier and Mahon 1993), but effectively explains the survival of the implicit understanding of these concepts as corruption thus far.