For the Good of the Prince: Government and Corruption in Germany During the Eighteenth Century
Robert Bernsee

In: The War Within:Private Interests and the Fiscal State in Early-Modern Europe
Joël Félix, Anne Dubet (eds.)
Palgrave, ISBN 9783319980492
pp 257-280

Abstract

In eighteenth-century Germany, corruption, defined as harming the common good by self-interested actions, was understood quite differently from today. The princely servant had to be loyal to the prince or otherwise he was deemed to have acted in a corrupt manner. Simply using administrative resources for one’s own purposes, was not generally seen as a corrupt practice. As long as his actions did not harm the honour of the ruling family or cause unrest among the subjects, they were viewed as being in accordance with this concept of common good. In the late eighteenth century a new understanding of the common good eventually appeared in political discourse. Its proponents now classified the administrative system of the ancien régime as entirely corrupt und demanded bureaucratic reforms.

https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-319-98050-8_11