Corruption as Illegitimate Continuation: An Architecture for the Accountability of Power

Corruption as Illegitimate Continuation advances a structural theory of corruption grounded in the governance of semantic transformation. Rather than defining corruption primarily as rule-breaking or private gain, the paper argues that corruption emerges when authority, mandate, or semantic effect persists beyond the conditions under which it was licensed. This framework reframes corruption as a failure of renewal across transformation boundaries. Temporary exceptions normalize, interpretations expand, bureaucratic drift accumulates, and authority launders itself through repetition. Continuation becomes self-authorizing. Drawing on the Governance of Meaning-Producing Systems (GMPS), the paper proposes a constitutional “lighting architecture” that instruments escalation, reinterpretation, exception recurrence, and invariant preservation. It introduces preservation claims, axiological hazard, stake-amplified drift, and the Agent Constitutional Minimum (Ableman Prime Directive) as structural safeguards against illegitimate continuation. The framework applies across institutional governance, bureaucratic systems, decentralized structures, and autonomous AI systems. It does not claim to eliminate corruption. Instead, it constrains silent authority accumulation by requiring detectability, lawful refusal, contestability, and declared invariants at transformation boundaries. Corruption is reframed not as the abuse of power alone, but as the abuse of continuity.