Political corruption has traditionally been presented as a phenomenon characteristic of developing countries, authoritarian regimes, or societies in which the value system favored tacit patrimony and clientelism. Recently, however, the thesis of an inverse correlation between corruption and economic and political development (and therefore democratic "maturity") has been frequently and convincingly challenged. Countries with a long democratic tradition, such as the United States, Belgium, Britain, and Italy, have all experienced a combination of headline-grabbing scandals and smaller-scale cases of misappropriation.In Corrupt Exchanges, primary research on Italian cases (judicial proceedings, in-depth interviews, parliamentary documents, and press databases), combined with a cross-national comparison based on a secondary analysis of corruption in democratic systems, is used to develop a model to analyze corruption as a network of illegal exchanges. The authors explore in great detail the structure of that network, by examining both the characteristics of the actors who directly engage in the corruption and the resources they exchange. These processes of degeneration have caused a crisis in the dominant paradigm in both academic and political considerations of corruption.The book is organized around the analysis of the resources that are exchanged and of the different actors who take part. Politicians in business, illegal brokers, Mafia members, protected entrepreneurs, and party-appointed bureaucrats exchange resources on the illegal market, altering the institutional system of interactions between the state and the market. In this complex web of exchanges, bonds of trust are established that allow the corrupt exchange to thrive. The book will serve both as a theoretical approach to a political problem of large bearing on democratic institutions and a descriptive warning of a system in peril.

David Talbot graduated with a B.Sc and an M.Sc. from the University of Wales and a Ph.D. from Brunel University for research on gas-metal equilibria. From 1949 to 1966, he was employed at the research laboratories of the British Aluminium Company Ltd., contributing to research promoting the development of manufacturing processes and to customer service. From 1966 to 1994, he taught courses on corrosion and other aspects of chemical metallurgy at Brunel University and maintained an active interest in research and development, mainly in collaboration with manufacturing industries in the United Kingdom and the United States. He was a member of the Institute of Materials and had chartered engineer status; he served as a member of the council of the London Metallurgical Society. Dr. Talbot wrote many papers on chemical aspects of metallurgy, a review on metal-hydrogen systems in International Metallurgical Reviews, and a section on gas-metal systems in Smithells Reference Book.

James Talbot graduated with a B.Sc. ARCS, from Imperial College, London, and received his M.Sc. from Brunel University. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Reading for research on the physical chemistry of aqueous solutions and its application to natural waters. Dr. Talbot worked at the River Laboratory of the Institute of Freshwater Ecology, Dorset, United Kingdom, where he assessed and predicted physical chemical changes occurring in river management, He has written papers on the speciation of solutes in natural waters. From 2000 to 2006, he was a lecturer in materials research chemistry at Cranfield University in the United Kingdom, where he specialized in the physicochemical aspects of corrosion, polymer science, and process science. He is presently a chemist with interests in species specific corrosion mechanisms. Dr. Talbot is a current member of the Structure and Properties of Materials Committee of the Institute of Metals, Minerals and Mining. He has published in the fields of corrosion, polymer chemistry, solution chemistry, and the chemistry of natural waters.