Uslaner argues that economic and legal inequality and low levels of generalized trust fuel corruption.

Corruption flouts rules of fairness and gives some people advantages that others don't have. Corruption is persistent; there is little evidence that countries can escape the curse of corruption easily - or at all. Instead of focusing on institutional reform, Uslaner suggests that the roots of corruption lie in economic and legal inequality and low levels of generalized trust and poor policy choices. Economic inequality provides a fertile breeding ground for corruption and, in turn, it leads to further inequalities. Just as corruption is persistent, inequality and trust do not change much over time in my cross-national aggregate analyses. Uslaner argues that high inequality leads to low trust and high corruption, and then to more inequality, an inequality trap and identifies direct linkages between inequality and trust in surveys of the mass public and elites in transition countries.

1. Corruption: the basic story
2. Corruption and the inequality trap
3. Corruption, inequality, and trust: the linkages across nations
4. Transition and the road to the inequality trap
5. The rocky road to transition: the case of Romania
6. Half empty or almost full? Mass and elite perceptions of corruption in Estonia, Slovakia, and Romania
7. The easy and hard cases: Africa and Singapore and Hong Kong
8. Corruption isn't inevitable, but
9. Conclusions.