¹Georgetown University

^*I would like to thank John Bailey, George Carey, Stuart Gilman, Robert Purdy, Stephanie Purdy, Rouven Steeves, and the anonymous reviewers at Polity for their comments and support at various stages in writing this essay.

Abstract

Recent literature dealing with problems of corruption has done much to advance our understanding of how to approach many of the practical issues of combating it. However, this scholarship normally engages in a self-conscious move away from dealing with questions of morality. This essay argues that an explicit invocation of moral language may in some cases aid anticorruption efforts. Edmund Burke's long effort to bring Warren Hastings to justice and expose the corrupt activities of the British East India Company provides one example of how this might be accomplished in a manner somewhat different from the normal mode of prosecuting offenders, and Burke's example suggests that a kind of moral demonstration might prove more effective in mobilizing civil society to combat corruption.