When sociologist Donald T Campbell came up with his eponymous law, one wonders if he expected it to be of theoretical or practical use. Campbell’s Law states that, “the more any quantitative social indicator is used for social decision-making, the more subject it will be to corruption pressures and the more apt it will be to distort and corrupt the social processes it is intended to monitor.” Originally intended to measure crime rates and other social phenomena it has been adapted to use in corruption studies. Tony Blair as Prime Minister of Great Britain is exemplified as a textbook case of Campbell’s Law. (more…)
