Corruption is a form of dishonest or unethical conduct on the part of a person entrusted with a position of authority, often for personal gain. Corruption can include many activities, including bribery and embezzlement, but may also involve legal practices in many countries. Government or "political" corruption occurs when an official or other government employee acts in an official capacity for personal gain.
Stephen D. Morris, professor of politics, writes that political corruption is the illegitimate use of public power to benefit a private interest. Economist Ian Senior
defines corruption as an action to (a) secretly provide (b) a good or service to a third party © so that he or she may influence certain actions that (d) corrupt, a third party, or both (e) in which the corrupt agent has authority. Daniel Kaufmann of the World Bank extends the concept to include "legal corruption" in which power is abused within the limits of the law, since those with power often have the capacity to make laws for their protection. The effect of corruption on infrastructure is to increase costs and construction time, decrease quality and decrease profit.
Corruption can occur at different scales. Corruption ranges from small favors among a small number of people (small corruption), to corruption that affects large-scale government (big corruption) and corruption that prevails so much that it forms part of the daily structure of society, including corruption as one of the symptoms of organized crime.