From Republicanism to Liberalism: Corruption and Empire in Enlightenment Political Thought
Debates about the relationship between empire and corruption were prominent in eighteenth century British political thought. Some of these debates were framed within classical Republican or Civic Humanist discourses, of which Charles-Louis Montesquieu and Adam Ferguson were emblematic exemplars. Within the terms of this discourse, corruption represented a collective moral failure, and was closely connected to a supposed cycle of imperial greatness and decline. Yet, similar fears of empire motivated the articulation of more modern, proto-liberal notions of corruption as forms of activity that blurred the boundaries between private interests and public responsibilities. In his analysis of the economic distortions and trading monopolies caused by empire (especially the East India Company), Adam Smith articulated and pioneered this proto-liberal concept of corruption. Between Smith’s proto-liberal and Montesquieu/Ferguson’s Republican concepts of corruption, however, stood the work of Edmund Burke. Motivated in part by concerns about empire, Burke shared Smith’s strong opposition to the EIC, an organisation he considered to be corrupt and corrupting. Emerging from his work, then, was an understanding of corruption that shared the Republican emphasis on moral decay, but also anticipated a proto-liberal concern with keeping distinct the boundaries between public (political) and private (economic) activity. In the work of these four thinkers corruption thus emerges as a central concept in the transition from Republican to Liberal political thought in the late eighteenth century.
Whither the State? Corruption, Institutions and State-Building in South Africa
In South Africa, the relationship between class formation and the post-Apartheid State is proving valuable in the study of the performance of public-sector organisations, the study of the political elite and service delivery protests. In these cases, the focus is on struggles over who can get hold of the instruments and resources of the state and use them for their own purposes. Such an analysis proceeds too quickly in South Africa. The difficulty lies not with the idea of class formation or with the notion of political society; it lies with the understanding of the state. The state is conceived as if it were a formed entity, an object that is either captured or that works efficiently. This paper focuses on the state itself. It considers how talking and acting on corruption invoke mutually exclusive conceptions about the state, such that the ‘struggle against corruption’ is also a political struggle about the form of the state.
Woodrow Wilson: The Essential Political Writings
Chapter 1 Preface Chapter 2 Introduction to Wilson's Political Thought Part 3 Progress and the Organic State Chapter 4 The State (chapters 1, 2, 13, 16) Chapter 5 "Christ's Army" Chapter 6 "Christian Progress" Part 7 Political Liberty and the Scope and Ends of Government Chapter 8 "Socialism and Democracy" Chapter 9 "A Calendar of Great Americans" Chapter 10 "Address on Thomas Jefferson" Chapter 11 "The Authors and Signers of the Declaration of Independence" Chapter 12 The New Freedom (chapters 1, 2) Part 13 Institutional Reform Chapter 14 "Cabinet Government in the United States" Chapter 15 Congressional Government (chapter 2 & conclusion) Chapter 16 Constitutional Government in the United States (chapters 3, 8) Chapter 17 "Wanted - A Party" Part 18 Political and Administrative Leadership Chapter 19 "Leaders of Men" Chapter 20 "The Study of Administration" Part 21 Foreign Policy Chapter 22 "War Message to Congress" Chapter 23 "Fourteen Points" Part 24 Appendix A. Chronology of Wilson's Academic Work and Other Selected Events Part 25 Appendix B. Selected Bibliography