Abstract

What forms of corruption matter politically and how exactly are they wrong? This paper presents a deontological account of the wrongness of the corruption of public officials and institutional practices as an instance of relational injustice. We have politically relevant forms of wrongful corruption when a public official abuses her entrusted public power for the pursuit of an agenda whose rationale may not be publicly vindicated as a reason for public action in keeping with the terms of that power's mandate. This form of corruption is wrong in the sense of being unjust because it alters surreptitiously the logic of mutual accountability that ought to govern political relations in a rights-based system.