Considering Corruption’s Curse: Venality across Time and Space

Despite its main title, Mungiu-Pippidi’s The Quest for Good Governance is primarily about the conceptualization, measurement, and reduction of corruption throughout history. Its wealth of provocative heuristic ideas is invaluable for contemporary social science. For readers of this journal, across several disciplines, the book offers an admirable re-thinking of many received notions that have influenced our understanding of how American, European, Asian, and African governments have coped with the realities of corruption, and how corruption continues to distort their various national and/or developmental trajectories.