Approaches to and Results of Corruption Research on the Netherlands, 1650-1950

Referent/in: Pieter Wagenaar

Little research has been conducted in developing theoretical models for studying the shifting definitions of corruption over time. In our research on corruption in the Netherlands 1650-1950 we focus on one issue: how are values established as moral groundings for administrative behaviour, and how do these change? The presupposition here is that the exercise of public power needs to be morally justified, that it requires a more or less coherent set of legitimating values. A problem with studying such value frameworks is that they remain largely outside the realm of public debate. But the unacceptable is often publicly articulated, particularly at specific junctures in time, moments of ‘crisis’ when the debate becomes explicit as to which values are regarded as relevant to the behaviour of public officials within asymmetric power relationships. This is certainly the case in respect to debates over corruption, which in such moments of ‘crisis’ take on a symbolic value in defining the public good. The American political scientist Michael Johnston has defined corruption as: ‘the abuse, according to the legal or social standards constituting a society’s system of public order, of a public role or resource for private benefit.’ Thus he invites us to investigate how the content of notions of ‘abuse’, ‘public role’ and ‘private benefit’ in specific places and times is contested, because it is precisely during such conflicts that such concepts acquire their meaning. When we look at corruption scandals from this angle, we can provide an answer to the questions regarding which values defined administrative behaviour, how such views were argued and debated, and how they changed over time.