ABSTRACT
This chapter summarizes the results of research on corrupt exchanges, the actors involved in them, and the resources they used, singling out the dynamics of political corruption. It describes an emergent normative system. If new norms facilitate the intensification of corrupt exchanges, the diffusion of corruption interacts with the presence, in the political system, of other "pathologies." The chapter describes that corruption, misadministration, clientelism, and organized crime establish vicious circles in which each phenomenon creates the preconditions for the diffusion of the others. However, this dynamic may be at least interrupted, if not reversed, as happened in the Italian case at the beginning of the decade. Although the problem is far from being solved, a reflection on the breakdown of the corrupt system in Italy may help in the search for strategies to curb corruption and improve the functioning of democracy.
