Corruption Inequality and the Rule of Law

Corruption flouts rules of fairness and gives some people advantages that others dont have. Corruption is persistent; there is little evidence that countries can escape the curse of corruption easilyor at all. Instead of focusing on institutional reform Uslaner suggests that the roots of corruption lie in economic and legal inequality and low levels of generalized trust (which are not readily changed) and poor policy choices (which may be more likely to change). Economic inequality provides a fertile breeding ground for corruptionand in turn it leads to further inequalities. Just as corruption is persistent inequality and trust do not change much over time in my cross-national aggregate analyses. Uslaner argues that high inequality leads to low trust and high corruption and then to more inequalityan inequality trap and identifies direct linkages between inequality and trust in surveys of the mass public and elites in transition countries. Eric M. Uslaner is Professor of Government and Politics at the University of MarylandCollege Park where he has taught since 1975. He has written seven books including The Moral Foundations of Trust (Cambridge University Press 2002) and The Decline of Comity in Congress (University of Michigan Press 1993). In 1981-82 he was Fulbright Professor of American Studies and Political Science at the Hebrew University Jerusalem Israel and in 2005 he was a Fulbright Senior Specialist Lecturer at Novosibirsk State Technical University Novosibirsk Siberia Russia. In 2006 he was appointed the first Senior Research Fellow at the Center for American Law and Political Science at the Southwest University of Political Science and Law Chongqing China.