Corruption and fast change

SummaryThe article elucidates conceptual issues that arise for the study of corruption when several coexisting, contradictory norms for allocating different modes of transactions across society exist. One important reason for their coexistence is fast change of the institutional rules that allocates transactions across transactional modes. Two cases are explored and studied: (1) transition from a family-based to a modern normative grid and (2) transition from a socialist to a market-based economy. Corruption is regarded as illegitimate intrusions of market or family modes of transaction into political or bureaucratic fields.