ABSTRACT
A generation ago, many discussions of corruption began with the observation that serious research on the topic was scarce. And so it had been for some time: after having a definite place in discussions of development, modernisation and political stability during the 1950s and 1960s, and anchored by an influential discussion by Samuel Huntington (1968: 59–71), Arnold Heidenheimer’s (1970) first research anthology and James Scott’s landmark book (1972), academic research on corruption went into eclipse during the mid-1970s. Possible reasons are numerous: the end of the Vietnam War era and, with it, the notion that the democratic world could and should ‘modernise’ poorer societies, may have diverted interest from optimistic grand theories of development. The Watergate scandal, high-level extortion in Japan and, somewhat later, a variety of scandals in Germany, among other cases, showed that serious corruption could occur in those democracies, but often in forms that did not fit the theories then in hand. Politics researchers in Europe and elsewhere did continue some work, opening up a lead over their American counterparts that in many respects they still possess. In general, however, political scientists studying corruption faced stiff headwinds.1
