Institutional Corruption: From Purpose to Function

In "Institutional Corruption: A Fiduciary Theory," Marie Newhouse argues that the distinctive value of the IC concept attaches only to a proper subset of the uses that we now find in the literature, and that many of these uses are not about institutional corruption (IC) at all. She suggests that we limit IC talk to analyses of fiduciary relationships, and use other concepts and approaches to examine institutional failures that do not involve fiduciary duties. This plea for theoretical parsimony is valuable in its execution and laudable in its intent, but it needlessly sets aside common intuitions about what "institutional corruption" is, and it needlessly constrains the scope of the theoretical and political work that IC analyses can do. I will argue that a small refinement in IC theory — focusing not just on institutional purposes but also on social functions — will allow us to save these intuitions while also clarifying the political stakes of anti-corruption work.