Why do citizens continue to place their trust in politicians suspected or convicted of abuse of office? This is the question posed by Pierre Lascoumes. The generic term "corruption" is generally used to designate such deviant, even transgressive behavior. The relative tolerance they enjoy raises many questions. It's an enigma of democracies, but one that isn't the subject of much debate or political science analysis. Issues considered marginal are generally quickly dismissed. Such behavior is hastily condemned on the surface, and quickly explained away as a lack of information, self-interested cynicism or the passivity of the voters concerned. Real" politics would be elsewhere, and atypical situations wouldn't merit much attention. There would be nothing to learn from it. More often than not, the quick denunciation of practices deemed scandalous (the candidacy considered illegitimate as much as its popular support) takes the place of reflection.
Pierre Lascoumes' reflections highlight two phenomena. Firstly, the level of ambiguity among citizens in the judgments they make about political activities. They see them as standardized by a set of principles and rules, and at the same time highly porous to abuses of power and vested interests. Then, whatever the context and social milieu, we observe a vast repertoire of justifications and excuses that neutralize transgressive political behavior and strive to make deviant (even delinquent) political behavior acceptable, but also the support that citizens continue to give it.
Pierre Lascoumes is Director of Research at the CNRS (Centre for European Studies, Sciences-Po). His books include Le capitalisme clandestin, l'illusoire régulation des places offshore (with Thierry Godefroy; La Découverte, 2004) and Les sentinelles de l'antiblanchiment, les banques et la lutte contre l'argent sale (with G. Favarel and T. Godefroy; La Découverte, 2009).
