Anti-corruption law expert Matthew Stephenson explains the history of corruption in the United States.
A s a young industrial power, the United States suffered from levels of political corruption commonly associated today with impoverished nations in the developing world. This is among the findings of a new working paper co-written by Harvard Law School Professor Matthew Stephenson ’03 and California State Supreme Court Justice and Stanford Professor Mariano-Florentino Cuellar tentatively titled “Taming Systemic Corruption: The American Experience and its Implications for Contemporary Debates,” which chronicles the history of corruption in the United States between 1865 and 1941.
Stephenson has explored corruption in other countries for many years. Six years ago, he launched “The Global Anticorruption Blog,” which is devoted to promoting analysis and discussion of the problem of corruption around the world. In 2017, he organized a conference at HLS on populist plutocrats to stimulate more systematic and rigorous research on this political phenomenon.
In an interview with Harvard Law Today, Stephenson explained why corruption flourished in the U.S. for so long, how it was largely vanquished by reformers, and why we should be worried about its return.
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