Political Corruption in New York City

This research examines political corruption in New York City. The initial discussion in this examination describes the practice of political corruption in New York City, while the second evaluates the practice in the context of value perceptions. The concluding discussion presents findings, and offers recommendations for preventive action.

Political corruption in New York City is a topic of broad scope, because, fairly or unfairly, the city's political environment has been synonymous with corruption since the days of "Boss" Tweed in the mid1800s (Gustaitis, 1988). Almost a centuryandahalf later, in 1990, a massive political fraud investigation is probing the operation of the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development during the Reagan presidency (Shenon, 1990). While the contemporary federal probe does not involve New York City directly, much of the suspicious activity involved New York City projects, New York City contractors, financiers, and promoters, and New York City political figures.

As a means of limiting the scope of this research to manageable proportions, the examination of corruption in New York

City is limited to that which occurred during the mayoral reign of Ed Koch, who, somewhat ironically, entered office as a reformer (Rose, 1989). This limitation is not intended to indicate that Ed Koch was guilty of corruption, or that corruption during his stint a

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ent perspective. Rokeach, & BallRokeach (1989) reported what they described as a disturbing shift in American values in the 1980s away from equality, and toward racist and illiberal values. In fact, 8core values may not have changed either during the 1980s, or in the preceding decade, when a shift in values toward equality was observed. What in fact may have occurred in each instance was a shift in behavior which reflected the influence of the politicalsocial leadership of the day, with no change in the underlying core value structure. While family, religious, and social factors affect the development and formation of values by individuals, there is also evidence that such development and formation of values occurs in relation to an individual's stage of development (Boom, & Molenaar, 1989). In part, developmental stage influence on value development and formation is agerelated (Boom, & Molenaar, 1989). Generally, traditional (conservative) values tend to decrease with age, while nontraditional (liberal) values tend to strengthen as an individual ages through the midtwenties (Srivastava, & Ramani, 1988). Values and attitudes, together with their structure, lead to or determine social behavior (Meulemann, 1987). Thi

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