Political Corruption in America: An Encyclopedia of Scandals, Power, and Greed

Corruption has been a social concern for thousands of years, but how is it measured or defined? Acts of bribery were recognized by Dante and Shakespeare. The U.S. Constitution identifies bribery as one of the explicitly named crimes that could lead to the impeachment of the president. The United States today is not an especially corrupt nation, according to Transparency International’s 2023 Corruption Perceptions Index. This encyclopedia, however, is a useful tool for the study of the causes, consequences, and scope of corruption in American public affairs. This new edition updates the work previously published in 2017. Among the new entries is one for Scott Pruitt, the former attorney general of Oklahoma and a previous administrator of the United States Environmental Protection Agency who resigned under criticism over his spending habits and conflicts of interest. A total of 370 biographies have been updated with references to other texts for further reading. The “Publisher’s Note” identifies 30 new entries in this fourth edition, the additional primary sources used for full-text articles, and the supporting features of appendixes, a chronology of events, and a bibliography. Useful tools include a detailed subject index and a table of contents.