ABSTRACT
This chapter seeks to provide a preliminary design, to set the agenda for a major collaborative political science project to study the level and scope of political corruption in the United States. Reference is not to a formal collaboration, but to one in which different colleagues independently contribute both to the project’s overarching design and the building blocks that the design calls for. This involves suggesting revisions and additions to the design, carrying out some of the research it calls for, and sharing one’s findings with both political scientists and the public. Such collaboration is needed due to the magnitude of the subject, the limited (albeit growing) amount of available research on the subject, and the inherent difficulties in studying behavior that is concealed by those who engage in it. The social significance of the subject is self-evident, especially if one holds, as I do, that political corruption in the United States is much more prevalent, consequential, and resistant to correction than is often assumed.
