The agenda of this essay is simple and unoriginal. First, I want to cut down the concept of corruption to a scope that minimizes its gray zones and fuzziness. An (incomplete) list of phenomena somehow neighboring (or perhaps forming subcases of) political corruption reads as follows: fraud, embezzlement, theft, nepotism, cronyism, gifts, tips, donations, clientelism, connections, networks, lobbying, bargaining, mafioso protection rackets, patronage, conflict of interest, kleptocracy.