sean scully has written a post about what he calls the four kinds of political corruption and gives examples of each.
"I have a theory of political corruption, which is somewhat simplistic but it does work generally. It seems to me that there are four kinds of corruption (Using this in a broad sense, to include anything that is a serious perversion of the political process, whether for explicit personal enrichment or not, although all four do contain elements of self-gratification):
First is the old-fashion "make me rich" stuff - run of the mill money deals like...second is what I would call "public good" corruption...Then there is this interesting fourth type, represented by Abramoff, Norquist, Karl Rove and some others, who have..."
