graft definition us history

graft definition us history

The Importance of Understanding Graft in U.S. History

1. Introduction to Graft in U.S. History

A joint approach seeks to unite the rapidity with which the U.S. built state institutions with the discovery of the consistency of its government policies, particularly toward emigration. It incorporates the new power itself into its analyses. Moreover, there were some limits to this power. It was not only that the citizenry consented to the new government by the current mode of state or regime formation to some extent, retrospectively, even as inconsistent enforcement led to open rebellion, but contemporary willingness to serve in government officials unable to pay salaries suggests an unequal share of the same existing citizens whose powers of violent resistance appeared in the ensuing 1794 Whiskey Rebellion.

How can we understand the United States if we overlook the central role that political corruption, defined as politically relevant transgressive private gain, played in its earliest developments? Therefore, it is central to recognize the ways that graft structured political power in the United States at its very beginning while we also note the large historical changes that took place as the United States expanded, developed its constitution, and removed the constraining institutions from its takeover strategies. Such changes created as well as solved increasingly powerful problems of state formation, making the U.S. case particularly instructive.

2. Historical Examples of Graft in U.S. Politics

I also believe that an understanding of graft is essential – not supplemental, but essential – to understanding zones of action, and thus the high public and scholarly interest in political machines and in political bosses. With knowledge of graft, we can begin to assess how politicians of those eras – the grassroots and ward leaders – fulfilled their most basic, central, and generic function, representation. Finally, by learning of graft throughout modern U.S. history, we can begin to jettison histories characterized by effort to chart contour merits and progressive development, supported by the cumulative influence of European precedents in the fields of urban politics and of political theory in particular.

Until recently, historians largely neglected one of the central features of political corruption in the U.S. – graft. Graft has long been an essential part of the fabric of American politics and government, serving as a tool in the consolidation of regional and local power by influential Americans. Although some political bosses are familiar figures and have been variously treated by political scientists and historians, how many of us recognize the names of such influential party leaders as Matthew Quay or Alonzo Bicker, or can pin down the specifics of their activities? When we contemplate the standard rejection by presidential scholars of the possibility that some U.S. chief executives were corrupt, that in actuality they were unique in reciprocating the trust placed in them, and when we recall the arguable grooming for their high office that some received through their earlier support of the growth of the party into which some even led a naturalized voter, can we remain unperplexed? Presumably not; no field suffered from discomfort about coming to terms with the past.

3. Impacts of Graft on Society and Democracy

Governments based on graft are harmful because both a measure of social cohesion and rules of fair play are necessary for the workings of a democratic system. Cultural, political, and sociological explanations for the fragility of stable democracy and state building often emphasize the lack of a unifying identity. This is particularly acute in countries struggling to establish democratic systems and the rule of law. The concept of a government acting on behalf of the citizens rests on a belief that no one enjoys special privileges creating a conflict. “Even Athens, the cradle of democratic values, tolerated leaders who served personal interests at the expense of public ones. Such “unhealthy ambitious leaders,” according to Aristotle, could be in the form of a greedy oligarchal predominant Senate, with individual leaders using state resources for personal wealth.” Similarly, executives used state assets and powers to reward their supporters or corruptors.

First, graft damages society by sowing discord, breeding mistrust, and undermining the legitimacy of the government. This has not changed over time. The writer De Witt Talmage suggested that, during the 19th century, “when the stomach of a nation gets sour, about ten per cent of the people become swindlers.” Graft is the result of criminals in powerful positions gaining wealth by taking it from civilians. The government gains money from taxes, and the bureaucrats are responsible for using that money to better the society through positive reforms, laws, public projects, and welfare programs. But by employing graft, powerful bureaucrats can manipulate the government funds of which they are in charge, and instead divert and steal them to make themselves wealthy. Specifically, corruption offers two related political advantages: state control by the elites and the absence of organized societal opposition.

4. Efforts to Combat Graft and Promote Transparency

Our analysis identifies efforts to both build localized opportunity for Americans and reduce the prevalence of corporate graft across society in American history. These moments sustain reform objectively when there is a change in the American political class. The decline in rent is reinforced by a replacement of an American elite that is less able to capture these corporate rents that are so critical in the Republican-Democratic model.

What motivates efforts to combat graft and promote transparency? What accounts for the great moments of reform in the nation’s history? We present a theory that attempts to outline the features of the environment that lead to the voluntary reduction of graft and growth in economic opportunities. Our theory argues that reforms are favored when they promise a greater flow of rents and when the benefits of those rents are shared more broadly across society. Renewed rent declines when the ability of elite groups to capture these rents is eroded and the opportunities for the rest of society increase.

During the Reform Era and the Gilded Age, Americans took strong legislative action to promote transparency by requiring congressmen to list the sources of their income, shareholder meetings, and government contracts. Americans also encouraged presidential candidates to reveal what they fundraise and publicized town names and donors of presidential races. These measures may have helped to reduce the rent-seeking and increased the effectiveness of Congress initiated by corporate donors.

Transparency is a fundamental tenet of modern governance. We take for granted the premise that deliberations in Congress are public and that citizens have a right to know what candidates spend to get elected. Transparency promotes democratic accountability by allowing oversight of government officials. However, just twenty-five years ago, there was no complete list of what members of Congress owned or owed, and a person who sat in a legislative hearing would not know the name of the lobbyists who pushed behind the scenes.

5. Conclusion: Lessons Learned and Future Implications

Policies that work against graft work against those things that give graft integrity; they work against opportunities and need. A society that wishes to lessen graft, or at least protect itself from the worst of graft, must create an environment that either disallows individuals from dishonest behavior or create ways to lessen opportunities and need. The United States is a country that has spent much of its life creating mechanisms, often drawing from its negative experience with early colonial terms of trade graft and also with socialism, welfare states and complete free markets, to solve other pestilences, to lessen the impact of those weaknesses. Such graft-creating features, whether, they be the desire for gain, the opportunities to achieve it, the enhancers that can make it easy to achieve, or the inequality that can make illicit gain attractive, in part, drive and define America.

The United States has had a long history with graft, from its colonial and pre-federal beginnings to the present. The country has been well served by individuals and institutions that have sought to lessen its pain and deleterious effects. Successful flanking of the problem, however, must be cognizant of its many sides. Graft, in its many forms, must not only be ferreted out and condemned, it must be understood for what it is and for the real reasons it presents itself. The history presented here deserves a continuous and embedded role in the education of Americans about the American way of life and America’s way of being governed. It also presents powerful lessons from history, namely, one can find graft in many forms, can be both old and new, it emerges in many scenarios and in varying strengths, it becomes stronger with epochal change and it must be met head-on with policies, attitude and public policy action that take account of its many origins and forms.