From Candidate to Criminal: The Contingencies of Corruption in Elected Public Office

Abstract

Political corruption is identified as the behavioral consequence of novel contingencies of reinforcement introduced immediately after a candidate for public office is victorious and assumes the powers of incumbency. An analysis of the contingencies surrounding the transition from candidate to criminal is presented and strategies for overcoming the corrosive effects of postelection reinforcers are offered. Citizen discontent with the institutions of self-government is becoming increasingly voluble. The nation's newspapers present the evidence on a daily basis. One popular viewpoint is that the structure of government is responsible for whatever problems are thought to exist. As a result, we are witness to robust efforts to change the structure of government such as reforming campaign finance, imposing term limits, forming additional political parties, and launching numerous proposals to alter state and federal constitutions. Just as structuralism invariably fails to address problems of function, these structural changes, however palliative, fail to confront the central cause of decline in the system, the behavior of political incumbents. We were warned that the system contained behavioral flaws more than 100 years ago by one of the most brilliant advocates of self-government, John Stuart Mill. In his essay "Representative Government," Mill asked: How can institutions provide a good administration if there exists such indifference to the subject that those who would administer honestly and capably cannot be induced to serve and the duties are left to those who undertake them because they have some private interest to be promoted? Of what avail is the most broadly popular representative system if the electors do not care to choose the best member of parliament, but choose him who will spend the most money to be elected?