Notes

• [1]
  Originally, these were vigilant citizens who denounced, under protection, problems or dysfunctions which occurred in the city. As such, they fulfilled the role of a Public Ministry in a justice system that had none. However, the institution eventually backfired and, for some, denunciation became a source of income and the object of extensive and varied individual and political manipulation. The sycophant became the archetype of the informer or slanderer with perverse intentions.
• [2]
  Beyond the hero’s ambitiousness and the press’s collusion with financial and political powers, Bel-Ami transposed to Morocco “the Tunisian affair,” which had set the stage for massive market speculation. The book portrays the government and parliament as completely instrumentalized by a war between banks. L’Argent is the eighteenth volume of the Rougon-Macquart series based on the story of the failure of the “universal bank.” It presents the life and death struggle of two bankers (Saccard and Gundermann) against a backdrop of constant political manipulation. In the same vein: Anatole France, L’Île des pingouins (1908).
• [3]
  He gives the notion a broad definition: “Corruption: to sell one’s duties or one’s convictions,” but the examples he gives are essentially political (Charles V, the Irish parliament, 488–489) or concern the Catholic church (486).
• [4]
  “Under the modern highly complex circumstances of public life with its innumerable subterranean forces of the money economy that extend in all directions, the bribery of officials has much more detrimental effects” (Simmel [1900] 2004, 391).
• [5]
  SOFRES has asked the same question for twenty-seven years: “Would you say that, in general, elected representatives and political leaders tend to be honest or corrupt?” The highest level of response was reached in the fall of 2013, during the Woerth-Bettencourt affair.
• [6]
  See the presentation at the end of the introduction.
• [7]
  Contrary to popular belief, this did not mean that anything and everything was allowed. The penal code provided for a series of offenses regarding the breach of public integrity (bk. 4, sect. 3, articles 432-10 to 432-17) including bribery and accepting bribes, influence peddling, illegal taking of interest, embezzlement of public funds, etc.
• [8]
  Commission for the Financial Transparency of Political Life (Commission pour la transparence financière de la vie politique, or CTFVP, 1988), National Commission for Campaign Accounts and Political Funding (Commission nationale des comptes de campagne et des financements politiques, or CNCCFP, 1990), Central Agency for the Prevention of Corruption (Service central de prévention de la corruption, or SCPC, 1993).
• [9]
  Here, we purposely do not include the many studies on the forms of political corruption, the factors which encourage it, and their development (Bayley 1966; Heidenheimer 1989; Neild 2002; Lambsdorff 2007). We also disregard research that addresses corruption in terms of the exchange of services, favors, and patronage, since the financial dimension is not a central focus (Padioleau 1975; Médard 1976; Briquet and Sawicki 1998).
• [10]
  The distinction was developed by Aristotle, who opposed activities related to the oikos (for meeting human needs) and chrematistic activities (unnatural, focused on the accumulation of wealth and based on mercantile exchange). See the general introduction to this issue.
• [11]
  The question was: “I am going to read you a list of words. For each word, tell me if, in your opinion, it represents something very positive, quite positive, quite negative, or very negative.” Successively: money, work, equality, ambition, freedom of expression, state, solidarity, economic liberalism, honesty, authority, business. In general, “do not know” responses accounted for only 0.1% to 0.8%, indicating that this set of questions was no problem for respondents. Only the terms “economic liberalism” and “tolerance” garnered a larger share of “do not know” responses (6% and 3% respectively).
• [12]
  Survey conducted in twenty-eight European countries, of 40,773 people, of whom 1,484 were French.
• [13]
  Giving less emphasis to money and material possession is: a good thing, 65.4%; a bad thing, 13.7%; indifferent, 20.9%.
• [14]
  At the same level as Belgium (65.8%) and Bulgaria (65.5%).
• [15]
  This made it possible to establish, with Guy Michelat, a Loevinger-type attitude scale from these three variables.
• [16]
  The question was: “Do you think it is acceptable to make a lot of money by…” (followed by a list of ways). The possible responses were: perfectly acceptable, quite acceptable, quite unacceptable, perfectly unacceptable.
• [17]
  This result may seem counterintuitive (a functionalist conception of deviance links social integration-- access to legitimate opportunities--and compliance), but it concords with a recent psychosociology study that shows, on an empirical basis, a correlation between higher social status and a capacity to break the rules. The authors interpret this as a “more favorable perception of greed” in the upper classes (Piff et al., 2012).
• [18]
  The general results of the study are – Trust: has increased, 3%; has stayed the same, 42%; has decreased, 55%, DNK 1% – Respectability of holding office: Yes, 67%; No, 30%; DNK 3% – Politics as a profession: rather a good thing, 47%; rather a bad thing, 48%; DNK, 5%.
• [19]
  The chi-square tests were significant.
• [20]
  Overpaid, 50%; Fairly well paid, 29%; Paid just as they should be, 14%; Underpaid, 1%, DNK 6%.
• [21]
  Here we used two questions from the survey. The first has been asked in the same way for over twenty years, which makes comparison possible: “Would you say that in general, French elected representatives and political leaders tend to be honest or corrupt?” Overall result of the 2008 survey: honest, 35%; corrupt, 60%, DNK, 5%. The second is “Do you think that in France: there is more corruption than before; there is as much as before but it is more widely spoken of; there is less?” Overall result: more corruption than before, 33%; as much as before but it is more widely spoken of, 62%; there is less, 4%; DNK, 1%.
• [22]
  Political recommendation to get a place in a child care center, using political connections to get a municipal job, joining a political party to obtain social housing, acceptance of a large gift from a client.
• [23]
  For a presentation of the specific ACM method used, see Appendix 2.
• [24]
  Appendix 3 details the 10 active questions of the specific MCA and specifies the labels of the response modalities used in Figure 9.
• [25]
  Modified rate (Benzécri 1992).
• [26]
  Bottom of Figure 9, p. 251.
• [27]
  In France, this position is often associated with a favorable attitude towards the far right (Mayer 2002b).
• [28]
  Black diamonds: modalities of the active variables that contribute to the factorial design, white squares: additional modalities. Appendix 3 shows the precise meaning of the modalities of the active variables (caption).
• [29]
  For further statistical indications, refer to Henry Rouanet and Brigitte Le Roux, Analyse des données multidimensionnelles: Statistique en sciences humaines (Paris: Dunod, 1993); Brigitte Le Roux and Henry Rouanet, “L’analyse multidimensionnelle des données structurées,” Mathématiques et Sciences Humaines 85 (1984): 5–18. For an empirical example, refer to Jean Chiche, Brigitte Le Roux, Pascal Perrineau, and Henry Rouanet, “L’espace politique des électeurs français à la fin des années 1990: Nouveaux et anciens clivages, hétérogénéité des électorats,” Revue Française de Science Politique 50, no. 3 (2000): 463–487.
• [30]
  Here “individual” is used in the statistical sense of the term.