Mediated Corruption: The Case of the Keating Five

Abstract

The Keating Five case exemplifies a form of a political corruption that is increasingly common in contemporary politics but frequently neglected in contemporary political science. I focus on this form by developing a concept of mediated corruption, which links the acts of individual officials to effects on the democratic process. Unlike conventional corruption, mediated corruption does not require that the public official act with a corrupt motive or that either public officials or citizens receive improper benefits. The concept of mediated corruption provides not only a more coherent account of the case of the Keating Five but also a more fruitful way of reuniting the concepts of systematic corruption in traditional political theory with the concepts of individual corruption in contemporary social science.