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It is difficult to define corruption on the basis of a specific set of actions and the intent to defraud. It exists in the context of a relationship that always involves at least three actors (the primary perpetrator, the agent, and the victim), and in democratic societies it has two distinct meanings. First there is the sense of corruption as a misuse of public authority for private ends; then there is corruption in the moral and quasi-biological sense, as a sickness that causes the degeneration and progressive decomposition of an originally-healthy organism. It is therefore both a crime and an illness of the body politic, a contagious disease of politics. If corruption occurs within the triadic relationship between the State, its agents and the public, the question of what acts constitute corruption and what acts are perceived as such depends on the form of the State. If we have become much less intolerant of the various forms of corruption in recent times, this is because the form of our States and even the premises underlying their legitimacy have changed. Since 1990, the form of the State in liberal democracies has been undergoing a process of transformation, from the nation-state to the market-state. In all likelihood, there is just as much corruption in the market-state as in the nation-state, but it presents itself differently. What is now condemned is no longer the breach of State interests, but the scandal of preferential treatment.