JAH: We will begin with fundamental questions. What is corruption? How have historians defined the term? In what ways do scholars distinguish corrupt and noncorrupt behaviors? How do law, ethics, political theory, or other systems of belief shape our understanding of corruption? What varieties of corruption have been most prevalent in, or have most forcefully shaped, U.S. history?
MARY FRANCES BERRY: Some historians seem to regard misbehavior that causes public controversy and harm to reputation as corruption. But that would mean that Ted Kennedy's 1969 Chappaquiddick “incident” was corruption, as was Richard M. Nixon's claim that the only gift he ever received was his dog Checkers, or Sherman Adams and the Vicuna coat. These, however, were scandals, not corruption. Political corruption requires proof that officials acted illegally either for financial gain or to achieve a policy objective. A link must exist between the gift and the official act. Accepting a bribe would qualify, as would accepting campaign contributions in exchange for voting on an issue or executing a program. A legal definition requires punishable behavior.
At the local and state levels, corruption that has shaped elections consists of trying to “game” the usually rather low turnout rates, either by purging rolls, wrongly labeling people as felons ineligible to vote, or giving money or favors to poor voters in exchange for their vote. As I explain in Five Dollars and a Porkchop Sandwich (2016), in some venues vote buying is an ever-present practice. Candidates distribute small amounts of campaign money to poor people, or do favors for the poor, such as offering money to see a doctor or food at the end of the month or simply a meal at the polls. The corruption lies with the campaign and candidates, not the embattled poor. Vote buying is just another means of voter suppression, and any illegal voter suppression is corruption.
BARBARA HAHN: As Bruce Baker and I argue in The Cotton Kings (2016), corruption is a way of using an institution to effect goals opposite to its purposes. The New York Cotton Exchange was a place for members to trade cotton futures, where cotton prices were determined and where everybody's trades coalesced into predictions about future supply and demand—predictions in the form of prices. In the early twentieth century the exchanges and the prices were corrupted by the introduction of deliberately misleading information, by rather technical maneuvers regarding cotton grading, and by stealing crop information from the U.S. government. In that interesting 1904 case, Edwin S. Holmes Jr, an associate statistician for the U. S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) sold cotton crop information by lowering or raising a window shade in the room in which crop reports were compiled. The next year he fudged USDA crop reports to help the New York brokers keep the prices low. He made a fortune and did not keep it quiet. When his scheme was uncovered, he was fired. The president of the self-regulating exchange claimed to be “shocked” by the “venality in the Department of Agriculture.” No one went to jail; the practices were not outlawed until 2008. But disinformation corrupted the exchange and the commodity prices it existed to set.