Corruption in a Global Context

Restoring Public Trust, Integrity, and Accountability

Melchior Powell, Dina Wafa, Tim A. Mau, Melchior Powell, Dina Wafa, Tim A. Mau

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781000733488
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Política y relaciones internacionales
• Subtopic: Asuntos públicos y administración

This book provides an important survey of the causes and current state of corruption across a range of nations and regions. Delving into the diverse ways in which corruption is being combatted, the book explores and describes efforts to inculcate principles of ethical conduct in citizens, private sector actors and public sector personnel and institutions.

Corruption is a global condition that effects every type of government, at every level, and has bewitched scholars of governance from ancient times to the present day. The book brings together chapters on a range of state and regional corruption experiences, framing them in terms of efforts to enhance ethical conduct and achieve integrity in government practices and operations. In addition, the book addresses and analyses the theoretical and practical bases of ethics that form the background and historical precepts of efforts to create integrity in government practices, and finally assesses recent international efforts to address corruption on an international scale.

This book will be perfect for researchers and upper level students of public administration, comparative government, international development, criminal justice, and corruption.

Part I

Theoretical and historical context

1 Surviving bureaucracy

Patterns of corruption, prospects for reform

Charles Garofalo

1.1 Introduction

Corruption, its causes, and consequences, as well as anti-corruption strategies, have commanded extensive attention in the academic literature. Scholars have examined corruption in its various forms, on all continents, and produced a voluminous body of work. As Monique Nuijten and Gerhard Anders (2007) suggest, corruption is en vogue in academic circles. The popularity of corruption as an academic project, however, does not connote agreement among social scientists as to its nature, process, or geography. Therefore, central to the study of corruption is awareness of its contours and complexity. In this regard, the claim advanced here is that, although proscriptions and penalties attached to corruption are necessary, they are not sufficient to sustain substantive, enduring change. Indeed, in addition to rules and sanctions, a more culturally grounded, contextualized approach to corruption is required. Thus, there is a need for both macro-level and micro-level perspectives and strategies.

However, Adam Graycar (2014) raises a fundamental question, namely “When is it really corruption?” suggesting that we endanger democracy if we confuse corruption with normal decisions and operations. In his view, this is particularly problematic if ideological or partisan opponents attach the corruption label to such decisions and operations. Graycar argues that, in light of corruption’s corrosive effects on good government, opening the debate on its boundaries might lead to greater political understanding, coupled with more political and administrative integrity and less toxicity. This chapter aims to open the debate on corruption’s boundaries by, first, briefly reviewing what might be called external or macro-level corruption; second, moving to a more detailed discussion of internal or organizational and individual micro-level corruption; third, considering prospects for reform; and finally, drawing conclusions for both theory and practice.

Macro-level literature tends to explore such concerns as bribery, violence, tax avoidance, profiteering, and anti-corruption strategies; on the micro level, we address such concerns as degradation and distortion of organizational mission, moral ambiguity, the normalization of corruption in organizations, and the incongruence between espoused and enacted values in public organizations. These concerns may be legitimately labeled as types of corruption if we accept the definition of corruption as a perversion of integrity and Graycar’s claim that the essence of corruption is breaching trust and improperly trading on that entrusted authority. At the micro level, the level on which public administrators operate, our more granular approach to corruption is animated by this question: How much moral clarity, conviction, and consistency can we expect or, indeed, tolerate in government organizations? This question is especially critical when juxtaposed with Mlada Bukovansky’s (2002) argument that “in contemporary scholarly discourse the dominant rationale for the emerging anti-corruption regime has been economical and institutional rather than normative” (p. 18).

1.2 External corruption

A number of scholars, such as Robert Klitgaard (1988), Paolo Mauro (1995), Donatella della Porta (1996), Kimberly Ann Elliott (1997), Susan Rose-Ackerman (1999), Gerald Caiden, O. P. Dwivedi and Joseph Jabbra (2001), Mlada Bukovansky (2002), and Michael Johnston (2014), have treated corruption from various vantage points and with various purposes. This has similarly been the case for an increasing number of global institutions such as the United Nations, the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, and Transparency International. Therefore, we know a great deal about corruption’s economic effects, kleptocracy, the need for civil service reform, corruption in particular countries, and efforts to combat corruption.

Consider, for example, the work of Michael Johnston (2014), a prominent scholar whose contributions encompass both corruption and reform. His reform proposals will be considered later in this chapter; at this point, the focus is on what he terms “contrasting syndromes of corruption.” Johnston argues that corruption differs by location, and he offers four syndromes of corruption around the world: (1) influence markets, (2) elite cartels, (3) oligarchs and clans, and (4) official moguls. In influence markets, private wealth seeks influence over processes and decisions in public institutions by bribery and by channeling funds to and through political figures whose access and connections are for rent. According to Johnston, examples of nations engaged in influence markets include the United States, Japan, and Germany.

With regard to elite cartels, Johnston claims that moderately strong state institutions and colluding political, bureaucratic, business, and military elites maintain high-level networks by sharing corrupt benefits and stave off rising political and economic competition. This arrangement characterizes Botswana, Italy, and South Korea. The third syndrome of corruption – oligarchs and clans – involves a small number of elites supported by personal or family followings pursuing wealth and power in a climate of very weak institutions, rapidly expanding opportunities and pervasive insecurity. When possible, these oligarchs and clans use bribes, connections, and, when necessary, violence. Oligarchs and clans are found in Mexico, the Philippines, and Russia. Finally, official moguls are powerful individuals and small groups, who either dominate undemocratic regimes or enjoy the protection of those who do. They use state and personal power to enrich themselves with impunity, and their primary loyalties and sources of power are personal or political rather than official. These moguls are found, for example, in China, Kenya, and Suharto’s Indonesia.

Johnston calls these four syndromes “ideal types,” acknowledging that corruption is not one thing, and suggests, therefore, that we need to understand the broad and complex patterns and processes associated with each type, as well as the intersecting, interlocking, and international interests and strategies linking them in specific circumstances. In his view, it is misleading to rely on corruption indices to rank entire societies, since corruption is not an aggregate national attribute like the Gross Domestic Product. Instead, it originates in particular relationships in particular situations. Thus, Johnston offers a nuanced macro-level perspective on corruption that provides a segue into a consideration of corruption on the micro level.

1.3 Internal corruption

Corruption on the micro or organizational and individual levels has also received extensive academic treatment (Ashforth & Anand, 2003; Haines, 2004; Kidder, 2005; Tuckness, 2010; Hood, 2011; Zaloznaya, 2014). Much of this literature, however, tends to assume or imply a binary perspective on organizational or personal ethics, in general, and organizational or personal corruption, in particular. In other words, either the individuals within an organization are ethical and incorruptible, or they are not but should be. However, lodged near the surface of this assumption is a vast range of attitudes, preferences, and complexities that belie this binary belief. Public bureaucracies house myriad perspectives, contingencies and opportunities that condition the thinking and action of managers and employees as they try to survive the daily dramaturgy of organizational politics, preferences, and pressures. Thus, this highlights the salience of the animating question noted earlier: How much moral clarity, conviction, and consistency can we expect or, indeed, tolerate in government organizations?

This question is first examined in more detail by framing it in the context of the symbolic interactionist, social intuitionist, and behavioral ethics approaches (Zaloznaya, 2014; Haidt, 2012; Bazerman & Tenbrunsel, 2011). Marina Zaloznaya (2014), for example, argues that the main argument for the interactionist approach to corruption is that “people’s relationships with rules is often determined by the cultural schema, acquired in peer groups, families, organizations and other interactional contexts” (p. 191). We form our beliefs about following the rules through both formal and informal socialization processes, and we then enact them based on perceived cues in various interactional contexts. Furthermore, referring to the work of Robert Jackall, she suggests that individual morality in organizations is transformed into shared meanings that are, in turn, transmitted through informal interactions. But, while Zaloznaya maintains that corruption is the negation of these shared meanings and norms, on the micro level, these shared meanings and norms are, in fact, not only transmitted but also transmuted into operational strategies and tactics designed to ensure individual security and survival within the organization.

Jonathan Haidt’s (2012) social intuitionist approach suggests that emotional reactions precede moral judgments. We make quick, intuitive moral judgments and then provide reasons for them. Therefore, the aim of reasoning is not to guide moral judgment but, instead, to support a moral intuition. Moreover, Haidt, along with others, has come to be known for the six intuitions of moral foundations theory: care/harm, liberty/oppression, fairness/cheating, loyalty/betrayal, authority/subversion, and sanctity/degradation. The focus of these intuitions includes empathy, proportionality, and respect across rank or status.

Based in psychology, behavioral ethics presents a major challenge to traditional rational decision-making models, maintaining that “moral reasoning is rarely the direct cause of moral judgment” (Haidt, 2012, p. 817). Thus, this school of thought focuses on how individuals behave when confronted with moral dilemmas, rather than how ethicists believe they should behave. Organizational culture, for example, can lead individuals to ignore or not even recognize the ethical aspects of their responsibilities and to concentrate on performance goals to the detriment of their own as well as their organization’s integrity. The result of this ethical blindness is institutional corruption, which Bazerman and Tenbrunsel (2011) contend “is a condition that exists when our institutions (governments, corporations, and not-for-profits) formalize a set of policies and practices that weaken the effectiveness of society and the public’s trust in these institutions, even if no law is broken” (p. 144).

When combined, the interactionist, social intuitionist, and behavioral ethics perspectives provide a powerful lens through which internal individual and organizational decisions and actions can be interpreted. These approaches, however, do not supplant philosophical ethics, with its insistence on universal values and principles. Rather, they delineate important and natural emotional dimensions of behavior that figure more directly into the moral ambiguities and perplexities faced by public servants across the planet. Accordingly, to help reify this process, the chapter now considers six specific instances of such ambiguities and perplexities on display at the level of internal corruption: normalization of corruption; fatal choices; making excuses; employee misconduct; ‘gaming’ the system; and the blame game.

1.4 Profiles of internal corruption

In their work on the normalization of corruption in organizations, Blake Ashforth and Vikas Anand (2003) distinguish between corruption on behalf of organizations and corruption against organizations. They focus on the latter category, which includes such acts as theft and nepotism, and which requires cooperation among two or more individuals. Their central concern is the group, whether the workgroup, the department, or the organization as a whole.

Normalization is the process by which corrupt acts become embedded in an organization, internalized by organizational members as permissible or even desirable, and passed on to successive generations of members. According to Ashforth and Anand, there are three stages of normalization: institutionalization, rationalization,and socialization. Institutionalization refers to the enactment of corrupt practices as a matter of routine, often without consciousness of their propriety. Rationalization refers to how organizational members legitimate their corrupt acts to themselves. Socialization refers to the inculcation in organizational newcomers of attitudes and ways to perform and accept corrupt practices. Ethical issues tend to go unperceived altogether, or are reframed as economic, legal or other so-called business issues that allow amoral reasoning. If moral issues are not recognized, then moral decision-making is not possible.

In his work on fatal choices, David Haines (2004) explores the subversion of government’s work from within, the “things that go wrong in the everyday life of public sector organizations, why these problems have the consequences they do, and how to understand the consequences in a way that acknowledges both the moral and practical aspects of governance” (p. 5). Haines’ chief concern is with the erosion of rationality “through predictable human failings that are quite minor” (p. 5). However, while minor, these infractions can be significant, and organizational decisions to overlook them are what he calls “fatal choices” that attenuate an organization’s operations and its capacity to consider future alternatives. With regard to corruption, in particular, Haines argues that as organizations increasingly accept misinformation and incompetence, they become unable to assess themselves or to maintain standards for their conduct and, therefore, they lose their ability to think, owing to the absence of any objective standard of truth. Thus, organizations are corrupted not only in a moral sense but also in a technical sense, as exemplified by such infractions as the abuse of money, twisting personnel policy and faking the numbers.

Our third instance of internal corruption is making excuses, as analyzed by Alex Tuckness (2010). He argues that “everybody does it” is an appeal to consensus, in order to suggest that if everybody does it, an action is not wrong. If we assert that something has always been done in a particular way, we imply that it is beneficial or at least not idiosyncratic, and if the emphasis is on “we,” it is a desire to preserve group identity, not a knowledge claim. According to Tuckness, everybody does it is a shorthand way of referring to one or more of three different arguments: (1) the fact that a practice is widespread is counted as evidence for its desirability; (2) people are said to know of and tacitly consent to the practice; and (3) the claim is about whether it is fair to ask people to fulfill burdensome obligations when others shirk the same obligations with impunity.

In her treatment of employee misconduct, Deborah Kidder (2005) examines trait theory, agency theory, and psychological contracting theory, first, to determine how each might predic...