Studying Corruption: An Interdisciplinary Problem

In this chapter I emphasize the usefulness of sociological and criminological theoretical approaches to help explain corruption. This chapter therefore draws on the sociology/criminology literature, placing corruption into a social and political context which highlights the complex nature of what ‘corruption’ is or how it is defined and viewed depending on the academic discipline. In attempting to define any concept, act or term and articulate it in such a way that it is understood, particularly for those unfamiliar with the field of study, is a difficult task. This is particularly so with corruption (Heywood 2015). Any definition, as noted by Philp (2015), can have two elements: it can articulate the import and use of a word, and it can act as a tool to help explain its meaning; the social sciences are primarily concerned with the latter. Understood as a tool, a definition aims to identify a set of criteria that suggests necessary and sufficient conditions for an act to occur. These criteria, however, differ depending on the focus of the discipline and also the theoretical approach.