The Logic of Corruption. Published by Cambridge University Press, August 2026.

This book draws on seven years of fieldwork in three of India’s major state bureaucracies, and makes three arguments. First, there are causal linkages between the grand corruption of political and bureaucratic elites and the petty corruption of street-level bureaucrats. These linkages are organized around the market for public office, especially the transfers and postings of street-level bureaucrats. Second, grand corruption in the allocation of bureaucratic assignments causes petty corruption to increase above the minimum level that would otherwise exist because of inherent agency problems and imperfect monitoring in large and complex government organizations. This mechanism explains why high levels of petty corruption exist in government bureaucracies. Third, I argue that once grand and petty corruption become linked, street-level bureaucrats share a portion of their rents with elites to maintain their access to lucrative assignments. These mutually reinforcing relationships give rise to a stable equilibrium, explaining why high levels of petty corruption become a persistent feature of government bureaucracies.