When do citizens tolerate corrupt, but competent, politicians? This paper formally establishes conditions under which citizens trade off corruption for competence. First, the regime has to be sufficiently democratic such that a corrupt politician has to be acceptable to a large enough coalition of citizens in order to stay in power. Second, institutions are such that the politician can more easily obtain rents by taking bribes in exchange for spending revenues on public goods, rather than by stealing the revenues outright: the former case can generate more public goods than the latter. Under these two conditions, competence sustains corruption, and vice-versa.

中文翻译：

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能力腐败

公民何时能容忍腐败但能干的政客？本文正式确立了公民为了能力而放弃腐败的条件。首先，政权必须足够民主，这样腐败的政客必须为足够大的公民联盟所接受，才能继续掌权。其次，制度使得政客可以更容易地通过收受贿赂来换取将收入用于公共物品的支出，而不是直接窃取收入：前者比后者可以产生更多的公共物品。在这两种情况下，能力维持腐败，反之亦然。