In a survey of 70K people in 69 countries, it identified corruption as the world’s no. 1 problem.
In its traditional sense, corruption refers to moral impurity; the word itself derives from the Latin for “to spoil, pollute, abuse, or destroy,” depending on the context.
The term “private gain” is also far from straightforward. There is universal agreement that a state functionary who accepts bribes for personal enrichment is being corrupt. But what about office-holders of political parties who accept questionable donations for their organization, but how appear to derive no immediate personal benefit? This is a less clear-cut example than the first, and is subject to different opinions.
An example of a cultural interpretation of differing approaches to corruption is that what was earlier described as “economic” or “modern” corruption has been called “Western” corruption, whereas “social” or “traditional” corruption has been labelled “Asiatic.”
Again, surveys reveal that many citizen do consider a given activity corrupt, and do not condone it; but they feel helpless to challenge their elites, who maintain that it is part of their culture purely in order to justify their own questionable behavior. The second — even more persuasive — counter-argument is that there is plenty of “traditional” corruption in the West, and no shortage of “modern” corruption in Asia.
The four terms examined are the Russian concept of blat, the Chinese concept of guanxi, the originally American concept of networking, and the British concept of the “old school tie.”
Whereas many would reject the notion that networking has anything in common with corruption, the British concept of the “old school tie” is widely criticized. People who may not even have met nevertheless privilege each other on the basis of having attended an elite group of schools in the UK. Of the four types of informal relationships considered here, the “old school tie” is the most exclusionary; if I did not attend one of the elite schools as a child, there is no way I can ever break into the insider group.
The main one is that the legislative situation varies. This can be because legislators have been advised by different specialists. In more open and democratic societies, legislation may be the result of compromise between different groups both within and beyond parliament — and the particular permutation of diverse interests is unique to each society. This explanation is less likely to apply in authoritarian systems. But such systems are typically more corrupt than more democratic ones, and ruling elites often choose either to have no explicit anti-corruption legislation — and hence no legal definition — or else deliberately vague laws; they want to preserve their privileged positions, and prefer not to introduce laws that could be used to undermine these.
A fifth distinction is between petty (or low level) and grand (high level or elite) corruption. The former applies to the kinds of corruption the ordinary citizen is likely to encounter in their everyday lives — while driving, or applying for a permit to extend their house, for example. Grand corruption refers to corruption at the elite level, such as politicians adopting legislation that favors a group that has bribed them, or a minister giving the go-ahead for a major development against the recommendations of her advisers and even the regulations — again in return for a bribe.
One of the trickiest issues in determining whether or not a given act constitutes corruption is how to distinguish a gift from a bribe. In many Asian cultures, not only is a gift not seen as a bribe, but it can be insulting to decline it, or to treat it as essentially a bribe. This is an example of cultural difference; not only elites, but also most citizens in most Asian states believe that it is polite and required to show hospitality by giving a visitor a gift.
In most cases, if I am dissatisfied with the goods or services of one private company, I can switch my custom to another; market economy is based on competition. But the state has a virtual monopoly; if I do not trust the judiciary or police, for instance, I cannot turn elsewhere for law enforcement. Moreover, in cases of disagreement, the state should be an arbiter — a referee — between individuals and organizations; the business sector does not perform the same role. These are two good reasons why it makes sense to distinguish the state from the private sector.
The gap between elites and the public is often wider than necessary because corrupt officials are perceived to be creaming off a country’s wealth at the expense of ordinary citizens (i.e. a vertical divide). At the same time, corruption can increase divisions between citizen themselves (horizontal divide), as those unwilling or unable to pay bribes to obtain what they need become resentful of those who can and do.
Officials themselves can feel more insecure because of corruption. If the political elite decides to clamp down heavily on corruption, even honest officials my be concerned that actions not currently seen as corrupt may in the future be classified as such, with the concomitant penalties; this can lead them to hesitate in fulfilling their normal and proper duties, or even to refuse altogether to perform them. In an ideal rule-of-law state, in which no legislation is ever retrospective, this problem would not arise; but few states nowadays, even in the West, adhere strictly to the notion of no retroactive laws.
Several states, most transition ones, have in recent years introduced flat-rate income and corporate tax system, often precisely to reduce the risk of lost state revenue. The rationale is that progressive tax systems involve more discretionary decision-making by tax officials, and hence provide more corruption opportunities, than flat-rate systems; both individuals and companies can declare lower income in progressive tax systems than they actually receive, so as to be taxed in a lower tax bracket (i.e. a form of tax evasion). Unfortunately, flat-rate systems are not watertight either, since individuals and firms can still collude with corrupt officials to report less taxable income than they should, thus depriving the state of legitimate revenue.
A factor with potentially serious negative economic ramification for the development and well-being of a country is that social corruption (nepotism, cronyism, etc.) can discourage honest, well-qualified people, who become frustrated at not securing good positions or being promoted. Some simply stop working hard and using their initiative, while others emigrate to a less corrupt and more meritocracy country. Corruption can thus encourage a brain drain, depriving society of the the people best suited to run the country and its economy. This phenomenon, sometimes called human capital flight, has been a particularly acute problem for countries such as Iran.
Corruption can negatively affect political systems (e.g. democracies or autocracies) and regimes (the team running the system) in numerous ways. For example, it can unfairly increase the power and influence of individual legislators willing to privilege whoever is prepared to pay them bribes or enhance their prospects in future elections. The latter is seen around the world in the form of pork-barrelling, whereby legislators inappropriately allocate or promise funds to particular constituencies as to increase voter support.
Too much corruption and its reporting can result in people losing faith in the market, democracy, and the rule of law. While this tends to be more destabilizing in transition states, the point applies even to developed Western states. In January 2013, the Secretary General of the Council of Europe argued that “Corruption is the biggest single threat to democracy in Europe today. More and more people on our continent are losing faith in the rule of law.”
Like so many other aspects of corruption, this danger is nothing new; in East Asia’s traditional concept of the “mandate of heaven,” the people had the right to remove an emperor who was inept, tyrannical, or corrupt.
In the 1960s, several American and British academics argued that we should move away from moralizing approaches toward corruption and instead consider it in rational, functional terms (i.e. the function it performs). This approach is sometimes called revisionism in corruption studies. They argued — each in his own way and to differing degrees — that developing states could sometimes benefit from corruption, since it could “grease the cogs” or be a “tonic” rather than being “sand in the cogs” or “toxic.” They maintained that if a state was weak and in various ways dysfunctional, corruption could assist in getting necessary things done.
Some argued that many citizens will support corrupt politicians if the state is weak and those politicians can deliver what the citizens want. Such an argument can even apply to strong states. People would prefer corrupt candidate with a reputation for getting things done than for a “squeaky clean” but ineffectual one.
Perception is a form of reality anyway. If potential investors in a country decide not to invest there because of high perceived levels of corruption, the perceptions are impacting upon actions, and are thus a form of reality; as is evident from the centuries-old debate between idealist and materialist philosophers, we live in a world of images as well as substance, and there is no single reality.
The GCB experiential question can potentially tell us much about petty corruption, but is of little use in considering grand corruption, since most citizens rarely if ever come into contact with high-level officials, such as politicians. This is a significant limitation of most experiential surveys, given that elite corruption is usually far more damaging than petty corruption.
We cannot fully explain human activity in terms of either individual freedom of choice and actions (agency) or of everything being determined by the world we inhabit (structure). Rather, people exercise choice and make decisions partly on the basis of their own free will, and partly within the context in which they live. This notion of interactivity underlies the present analysis, albeit usually implicitly.
Fukuyama referred to our basic need for thymos — an idea he adapted from Hegel — which is an ancient Greek word referring tot he human desire for recognition. Similarly, single Phil Collins refers to the street kid who carries a gun because, without it, no one respects him. If corruption (e.g. accepting bribes) means increased spending power and the social cachet that accompanies this, or gives an individual a feeling of power over others (e.g. through exercising patronage), then it can be interpreted partly in terms of thymos.
In seeking to explain why some people become involved in organized crime, they coined the term “sucker mentality,” meaning in part that if a person is treated by the dominant value system as an outsider, then he or she would be foolish to live by the system’s values.
This basically contends that once a state or society labels someone a criminal (or shamed them), they are likely to remain one unless steps are taken to redress this. The argument is that it is better not to treat a first-time offender, at least for less serious misconduct, a criminal if crime rates are not to increase; reintegration is better than alienation. This argument can be modified and applied in the corruption context.
According to this argument, in cultures in which loyalty to one’s relatives (familism) and friends generally takes precedence over loyalty to the state, certain forms of corruption, particularly social ones, are more prevalent than in less family-oriented cultures.
Since colonial administrations generally lacked the capacity to collect taxes themselves, they relied on local tax collectors, who often took bribes from members of the local population instead of collecting the appropriate taxes; by the time the colonial power withdrew from the colony, this practice had become well-entrenched, and continued into the post-colonial era. Another perspective on the impact of colonialism is that, since the state authorities were for long seen by the local population as externally imposed and hence illegitimate, both citizens and some local officials had no qualms about cheating the state; again, this attitude often carries over into the post-colonial setting.
One legacy many imperial powers left former colonies is the legal system. These are often classified in a simple binary way as common law and civil law systems. The former, based on legal precedent, is typical of Anglophone countries, whereas the latter, based on a written code, is dominant in continental Europe. It has been suggested that there is typically less corruption in countries with a common law system than in those with civil law systems. This is because the judiciary in the former tends to be more independent of the political elite, rendering them less prone to engage in social corruption such as patronage. It is also because the judicial system is less transparent in civil law systems, partly because the role of the general public — which an act as a control on potentially corruptible judges — is reduced, given the rarity of trial by jury.
Another reason why citizens in the USSR and other Communist societies developed sophisticated ways of circumventing the system was that it was such a closed one. In line with Lenin’s view of Communist parties as comprising the politically most aware (the “vanguard” of society), they were in theory highly selective in their admissions; yet securing advancement in the system almost always necessitated joining the Party. Hence, many people were prepared to cultivate overly cosy ties to others they believed could help their careers.
Some commentators have justifiably highlighted the fact that corrupt officials tend to be treated much more leniently than “regular” criminals, and have related this to the types of labels we attach to different crimes. Thus organized crime is generally seen as typical of the “underworld,” whereas white-collar crime in a broad sense, including many forms of corruption, is treated as “upperworld” crime.
“Open Government” comprises 4 variables that most rule-of-law specialists would see as key components of it: that laws are publicized and accessible; laws are stable; citizens have the right to petition government and participation; and official information is available upon request.
Corruption is what social scientists called a “wicked” problem, meaning that is is so complex that it can only ever be partly solved; it can be controlled, but never completely eradicated. The state has a key role to play in managing this wicked problem, using “stick”, “carrot”, “administrative and technical,” and “other” methods.
Although the explanation for weak and ambiguous laws sometimes relates to the newness of a system — it takes time to devise and then refine laws — another factor is that parliamentarians often have a vested interest in not passing tough, unambiguous legislation; their own shady dealings could be brought to light and punished.
In the 1st century AD, the Roman historian Tacitus wrote that “The more corrupt the state, the more numerous its laws.”
For their own safety, such witnesses are often given new identities and transferred to new locations. Unfortunately, this can have disastrous effects on their own lives, since they are often moved away from family and friends to a strange environment in which they have to live a lie. In short, this form of incentive might help with law enforcement, but can have serious negative effects on those who assist the authorities.
One way to counter this is to introduce open on-line tendering, thus rendering the whole procurement process far more transparent. Unfortunately, many governments, let alone private manufacturers of defense equipment, prefer opacity about defence expenditure, allegedly in the interests of national security.
The more effective one is where governments raise public awareness of what corruption is, that it is unacceptable, and what role citizens can play in combating it. Conversely, campaigns in which governments declare their intention to clamp down on corrupt officials are typically either limited in the effectiveness or counter-productive. All too often, this second type results in the “crying wolf” syndrome: citizens are so familiar with “new” campaigns that, like so many previous ones, are supposed to target high-level corruption but deliver very little, that they will not believe politicians who claim their campaign is different from earlier ones.
It suggests that female officers are much less likely to form corrupt networks than are male officers; if this applies elsewhere, it could help to explain why corruption levels are apparently lower where there is a higher percentage of female officers.
A fourth radical approach is based on the maxim “if you can’t beat them, join them.” During the 1990s, there was a problem of corruption in the Romanian military, whereby officers enrolling conscripts would offer sign “unfit for military service” statements in return for bribes. Rather than attempt to address this problem through greater control, the government adopted a lateral approach, making it legal for those who did not want to engage in military service to buy themselves out. This meant that most of the money now went to the state.
A final radical approach is to grant an amnesty for those accused or suspected of corruption. A government can declare it will not examine cases that have already occurred, but will clamp down heavily from the beginning of the following year. This method should only be considered in extreme cases, when corruption is so widespread that it would be unrealistic to expect a new administration to be any less corrupt than the one it is replacing. Such an approach has the distinct drawback that many members of the general public will initially be incensed that corrupt officials are being pardoned, which in turn undermines the state’s legitimacy. But if positive results become obvious fairly quickly, then many citizens will see this approach as the lesser of two evils.
Between 2012 and 2014 alone, former PMs in Cameroon, Croatia, Egypt, Israel, Slovenia, Romania, and elsewhere received prison sentences for corruption.
It is described by the UN itself as the world’s first legally binding anti-corruption document, and is seen by some as the “gold standard” of anti-corruption documents, despite containing no actual definition of corruption.
First, some accuse the international anti-corruption movement — or at least part of it — of “cultural imperialism.” There is no question that some aspects of the movement are highly intrusive, and interfere with a country’s sovereignty. But it should be acknowledged that this is often done because of perceived high levels of corruption in that country, about which many of its citizens are angry, but feel helpless to do anything. Surveys reveal that the general public is often grateful to outside agencies for pressuring its elites to become less corrupt, especially if this means that foreign aid will flow to those who most need it.
Moreover, some of the world’s leading trading nations — notably Germany and Japan — have not even ratified UNCAC yet. And just how powerful is UNCAC anyway? In theory, states that have ratified it can be taken to court (the UN’s International Court of Justice) for non-compliance; in practice, the ICJ has essentially no enforcement power.
That they — we — are still searching for ways to control corruption in diverse societies does not mean the movement has failed: after all, a generation ago corruption was not even widely discussed. Today’s heightened awareness, in itself, is a major accomplishment.
Many analysts maintain that the ultimate success or otherwise of anti-corruption measures depends on political will. This point is persuasive as far as it goes, but needs to be unpacked and expanded. For instance, whose will are we talking about? It might seem that the will of the leadership is all-important. But while this is crucial, it is not the only will that matters. A leadership may be genuinely committed to fighting corruption, but nevertheless have insufficient control over its own bureaucracy to turn this commitment into reality.