Today, we begin an eight-part series that seeks to explain how corruption works and what can be done about it.
Most people can recognize it, but the definition is elusive.
That's because corruption takes many forms. At a petty level, it makes life unpleasant or difficult for small businessmen or others trying to obtain services from government bureaucrats. At a grander level, it can involve a country losing hundreds of millions of dollars through the looting of its resources or by tax evasion. The kinds of corruption we will deal with in this series would be recognized by most people as something distasteful and harmful to their societies and their countries. In some extreme cases, government becomes so criminalized that it becomes indistinguishable from organized crime.