Three types of bribery, occurring both at the national and international level, have different operational codes. Transaction bribes (payments routinely and usually impersonally made to a public official to secure or accelerate the performance of his prescribed function) are not easily controllable for possible criminalization purposes; they seem to have minimal effect on the workings of the system, and their degree of unlawfulness is low. Variance bribes (illicit payments to secure the suspension or nonapplication of a norm in cases where its application would otherwise be appropriate) align formal law with effective power. However, the gravity of this type of illegal act is sometimes mitigated by the argument that in many commercial sectors, overcomplicated and often contradictory public regulations become a general form of shakedown. A second type of variance bribe involves an unlawful transformation or change, rather than merely a suspension, of existing community norms. Under certain circumstances, variance bribe systems become institutionalized, generating new systems. The outright purchase, the third type of bribery, purchases not a service but a servant: the briber acquires a secret employee who remains in place in an organization to which he appears to pay full loyalty, while actually promoting the briber's conflicting interests. Espionage (at the international level) and machine politics, including patronage (at the national level) are examples of this type of bribery, which are most likely to be deemed unlawful, and which undermine a system by penetration and infiltration. Sixty-three extensive endnotes, some containing one or more bibliographic references, are appended.