School of Business

Corruption as a political control device: Enforceable vulnerability and coalition breakdown

Document Type

Article

Abstract

This paper develops a political economy model in which corruption enhances political control by generating enforceable vulnerability. We conceptualize corruption as a “hostage technology”: by allowing officials to accumulate incriminating evidence, the ruler ensures that elites remain strategically fragmented and vulnerable to selective punishment. We formalize this mechanism through a coordination game of political challenge and derive a risk-dominance threshold for coalition formation. A central theoretical result is the non-monotone effectiveness of enforcement: while moderate enforcement deters political challenges, excessively strong enforcement can paradoxically undermine political control by eliminating the very leverage — incriminating evidence — needed to discipline elites. The model yields sharp comparative statics linking tolerated corruption, enforcement capacity, monitoring technology, and political threat, providing a unified theoretical explanation for the coexistence of systemic corruption and durable political stability. © 2026 Elsevier B.V. All rights are reserved, including those for text and data mining, AI training, and similar technologies.

Publication Title

Economics Letters

Publication Date

8-2026

Volume

267

ISSN

0165-1765

DOI

10.1016/j.econlet.2026.113073

Keywords

coalition formation, corruption, D73, H11, P16, political control, risk dominance, selective enforcement

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