The forthcoming article “What political theory can learn from conceptual engineering: The case of “corruption”” by Emanuela Ceva and Patrizia Pedrini is summarized by the author(s) below.
When people hear “corruption,” they picture bribes or embezzlement. But many practices that impair institutional functioning—clientelism, nepotism, or the tight coupling of politics to private money—do not reduce to simple trades of favors for cash.
Conceptual engineering offers a way to capture and assess this broader reality by deliberately refining the concepts we use. Instead of treating corruption merely as “the use of entrusted power for private gain,” recent studies in political theory have re-engineered the concept as a deficit of office accountability. In this view, officeholders exercise power under a mandate—judges to deliver impartial justice, ministers to serve the public, regulators to ensure fair competition. Corruption arises when the use of that power can no longer be justified with reference to the mandate. Relevant instances may include the misbehavior of some “bad apple,” such as a mayor appointing a cousin to a public post, as well as the ill-design of an entire system, like in the case of campaign-finance arrangements that bind elected officials to major donors. Across such instances corruption occurs as a break in the accountability chain that should link officeholders to their mandates—even without personal enrichment.
The accountability lens thus unifies individual wrongdoing and structural flaws. Nevertheless, its reach is not assumed. Mandates and accountability practices may vary across institutional settings. In authoritarian polities, offices are often personalized and counter-powers weak; in private organizations (corporations, NGOs, sport federations), mandates are defined by institutional purposes that are not public in the democratic sense. To make the characterization of corruption relevant for such plural and complex contexts, engineering the concept of corruption further can help through iterative specification. This means addressing research efforts to build on the core idea (deficit of office accountability), but tailor it to the institutional context rather than exporting a one-size-fits-all definition.
This matters analytically, normatively, and empirically. Analytically, it helps explain cases that standard definitions miss—for example, favoritism in public appointments or procurement inside an NGO where no bribe is paid, yet the use of institutional power cannot be vindicated by that power mandate. Normatively, it shifts anticorruption policy from a focus on criminal sanctions to strengthening accountability practices: mutual supervision among officeholders, deliberative engagement with decision-rationales, protection of whistleblowers, and enhanced responsibility for lobbying and financing. Finally, empirically, it suggests that corruption indicators need to catch up. Measures centered on visible abuses (e.g., bribery perceptions) risk understating corruption where the primary problem is systemic accountability failure. More informative metrics would track the quality of accountability practices themselves.
While conceptual engineering alone cannot settle the debate, it bears a significant promise to reframe it around office accountability and carve out the space for the concrete methodological contribution that political theory can give to corruption studies and beyond.
About the Author(s): Emanuela Ceva is a Professor of Political Theory in the Department of Political Science and International Relations at the University of Geneva and Patrizia Pedrini is a Senior Researcher at the University of Geneva. Their research “What political theory can learn from conceptual engineering: The case of “corruption”” is now available in Early View and will appear in a forthcoming issue of the American Journal of Political Science.
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