The Structure of Systemic Corruption: What Can We Learn from Local Government?

It turns out we can learn alot about systemic corruption by looking at its manifestation in local governments. In places where corruption is the rule, we argue that local governments are frequently governed by and for entities that do not pursue goals regarding the public interest. And that under certain circumstances, which this book develops along its chapets, local governments could have entered into a stage coined as corruption consolidation (Meza & Pérez-Chiqués, 2021). Corruption consolidation is a specific state of governance where its institutional framework guides peoples’ actions, calculations and expectations. However, a state of corruption consolidation is ruled by informal institutions along and in coexistence with formal ones. People can sometimes act knowing they should not do some things but feeling that they have ‘no other choice’, while some others could act in oblivion of the situation, or unmindful to what is happening. This chapter introduces the reader to the corruption consolidation framework which has been used in many places to understand the structure of systemic corruption. After pointing into the theoretical elements of the framework, the chapter offers an analysis of the findings of the rest of the chapters in the book. The reader will understand each of the four dimensions of the CCF and will offer some theoretical insights on what could be the next steps for research along with policy implications regarding anti corruption policies being implemented under contexts with systemic corruption.