Corruption is arguably one of the most ominous threats to the democratic public order. Recent work in normative political theory (Ceva & Ferretti 2021) has characterized corruption as an internal enemy of public institutions in the form of a deficit of office accountability. The core of corruption is, in this view, about officeholders’ exercise of the public power entrusted to their institutional roles incoherently with their power mandate.

To address this question, the study of corruption in the field of political theory must move from its core to its margins. The project explores corruption at the margins of democracies by looking at the forms this institutional dysfunction takes in hybrid regimes. It also studies the manifestations of corruption at the margins of the public sector by looking at the dysfunctions of non-profit organizations and business corporations. In so doing, the project aims at testing whether the idea of a deficit of office accountability can seize the special character of corruption across a large spectrum of institutional set ups and uses of power of office.

This inquiry has also far-reaching methodological implications. The project employs a mixed theoretical and empirical methodology to enhance the awareness of the limits of analytical and normative methodologies when approaching nonideal matters in political theory. It thus re-draw disciplinary boundaries by fostering cross-cultural and transdisciplinary dialogue through the launch of a new Research Center for Corruption Studies at the University of Geneva.