Understanding Political Corruption

1. How Power Corrupts the Good

How Power Corrupts Leaders
Psychology Today, 8/8/09

Yet, leaders can delude themselves that they are working for the greater good (using socialized power), but engage in behavior that is morally wrong. A sense of power can cause a leader to engage in what leadership ethicist, Terry Price, calls "exception making" - believing that the rules that govern what is right and what is wrong does not apply to the powerful leader "for other people, this would be wrong, but because I have the best interests of my followers at heart, it's ok for me to...." During Watergate, the argument was made that President Nixon could not have acted illegally because "the President is above the law."

Leaders can also become "intoxicated" by power - engaging in wrong behavior simply because they can and they can get away with it (and followers are willing to collude and make such exceptions "It's okay because he/she is the leader").

2. Relevant Quotes

"Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men." - Lord Acton, Phrases.uk

“Politicians are a set of men who have interests aside from the interests of the people and who, to say the most of them, are, taken as a mass, at least one long step removed from honest men.” – Abraham Lincoln, LouDobbs.com