“Corruption” is a very open concept. In my book A Republic No More: Big Government and the Rise of American Political Corruption, I define it as the maldistribution of federal resources, which narrows it to the national government and focuses on dollars and cents. This is not a comprehensive account of corruption, but it does speak to a unique aspect of the subject. I am going to stick to that definition here, but for the purposes of this essay amplify it a bit. Corruption is the maldistribution of federal resources to vested interests. These are groups or factions that can make some compelling political claim to federal benefits without having a very good civic republican claim. A republic is supposed to operate on behalf of the people at large, and because of their political connections, these vested interests are able to draw resources from the government even though the people at large do not benefit, or are even harmed.
My starting point is the Federalist papers. Written primarily by Alexander Hamilton and James Madison, their purpose was to persuade the delegates of the New York ratifying convention to support the Constitution. These essays have been studied as a blueprint for how the new government was to function. And it is often assumed that there is a political theory that unifies these essays.
To a large extent this is true. Madison and Hamilton both agreed on the basic principles of the Declaration of Independence. Both were
