The “new” concept of “Strategic corruption” – old wine in new wineskins?

In recent years, the professional literature and discourse have been almost flooded with a new concept in the phenomenology of corruption, namely “strategic corruption’” This article will take a critical look at the origins of this term, its applicability, its inherent ambiguity, and also the ways in which it has been – by now proven - exploited and (geo)politically “corrupted”, i.e. instrumentalized. Last but not least, an attempt is also being made - despite the author’s general scepticism that still surrounds the concept - to offer a definition that better encapsulates the concept and to outline various vectors of its potential manifestations. In my analysis and presentation – and, to some extent, in my line of reasoning – I have critically drawn, among others, in particular on five papers, which can be found in the box below.