Almost daily, there is a corruption scandal connected to the American federal government that, in past eras, would have consumed months of headlines, Congressional hearings, court cases, and perhaps necessitated new legislation to redress some of the holes in the American corruption net and rebuild its citizens' confidence in the American experiment.

Amid these federal scandals, however, it is easy to forget how James Madison, in Federalist 51, emphasized the importance of states as critical loci of governance, too. While federal legislation like the so-called Big Beautiful Bill and federal agents like those of ICE may garner headlines, most Americans' interactions with their government are at the state and local level. It is state and local police patrolling their highways and neighborhoods, running the Department of Motor Vehicles, registering businesses, administering unemployment and welfare benefits, and educating their children.

Oguzhan Dincer and Michael Johnston's book Corruption in America: A Fifty Ring Circus is thus a valuable resource. Dincer and Johnston have long been recognized as leading scholars in the field of corruption studies, with Johnston's “syndromes of corruption” still one of the leading tools for diagnosing corruption, even after more than twenty years since publication.

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