Curbing Corruption

Practical Strategies for Sustainable Change

Bertram I. Spector

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781000510706
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Political Corruption & Misconduct
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Many anti-corruption efforts have had only a minimal effect on curbing the problem of corruption. This book explains why that is, and shows readers what works in the real world in the fight against corruption, and why.

Counter-corruption initiatives often focus on the legal, institutional, and contextual factors that facilitate corrupt behavior, but these have had only nominal impacts, because most of these reforms can be circumvented by government officials, powerful citizens, and business people who are relentless in their quest for self-interest. This book argues that instead, we should target the key individual and group drivers of corrupt behavior and, through them, promote sustainable behavioral change. Drawing on over 25 years of practical experience planning, designing, and implementing anti-corruption programs in over 40 countries, as well as a wealth of insights from social psychological, ethical, and negotiation research, this book identifies innovative tools that target these core human motivators of corruption, with descriptions of pilot tests that show how they can work in practice.

Anti-corruption is again becoming a priority issue, prompted by the emergence of more authoritarian regimes, and the public scrutiny of government responses to the COVID-19 pandemic. Straddling theory and practice, this book is the perfect guide to what works and what doesn't, and will be valuable for policymakers, NGOs, development practitioners, and corruption studies students and researchers.

1 Since the dawn of humankind

DOI: 10.4324/9781003241119-1

I was driving to the office on a weekend after returning from a three-week assignment overseas where I provided technical support to a donor-funded anti-corruption project. There was little traffic on the parkway and my mind began reliving highlights of the advocacy training for civil society organizations that I had conducted and next steps for the project, and less so to the pressure of my foot on the car’s gas pedal. A siren and flashing lights behind my car immediately brought me back to reality, and I slowed down, pulled over to the shoulder of the road and awaited the policeman. I was traveling 12 miles over the speed limit, he said. He also commented on my bright red car, saying that I probably liked to drive fast in this sporty looking car! (It was only a Volvo.)

The policeman went back to his vehicle, did some checking, and came back to my car to talk. He handed me a speeding ticket and then alerted me to two ways I could handle the fine. My mind immediately rushed back to my recent anti-corruption project and how traffic police typically deal with citizens in other countries. I remembered being in a car in Vladivostok, Russia not long before, traveling to a meeting with an official of the local prosecutor’s office, and we were pulled over by a traffic policeman. We did not appear to be doing anything wrong. But before the policeman could say anything, the official in the car flashed his government ID and the policeman waved us on.

Having been pulled over on the parkway now, I was sure about the two options that I would be presented with: (1) pay a bribe to the policeman right now and it will all go away or (2) pay the ticket, which would cost more than the bribe. I was wrong. The policeman did offer me two options: the first was that I could pay the ticket by sending a check through the mail and the second was that I could appeal the fine by going to traffic court. Was I relieved! But I knew that most of the people I know in other countries where I worked on anti-corruption programs would not have been so lucky.

The way this anecdote would have played out in many other countries is an example of petty corruption – low-level exploitation of ordinary citizens by low- to mid-level civil servants who use their positions of power and authority for their own self-interest rather than the people’s interest. Growing up and living their lives in countries where corruption is an integral part of the national culture, many civil servants approach their jobs as a means to benefit themselves, their friends, and their families, rather than ensuring quality services to the public they are meant to serve. Many times, corrupt practices are used by civil servants just to provide themselves with a living wage. In some situations, they ask citizens for bribes to get what they are otherwise entitled to for free, while enriching themselves. In other cases, they steal government funds directly, approve government contracts for friends or relatives from whom they receive monetary kickbacks, or develop legislation or regulations with hidden loopholes that allow them to profit. The latter cases can easily up the ante to grand corruption levels, where larger sums of money and influence pass hands from government coffers to private bank accounts.

Corruption can be defined as the abuse of entrusted power for private gain.¹ At its heart, corruption depends on those government officials – public servants – who are willing to take advantage of their position and authority to do what is good for them, their family, and their friends, at the expense of the rest of the population. It draws upon a deep self-interested instinct in humans to benefit themselves. Citizens who do not hold government office can also participate in corruption for their own benefit. They can initiate an offer to those in office – a bribe or kickback, for example – for making a decision that favors the engaged citizen at the expense of others, for instance, money or gifts to the public official in exchange for a lucrative government contract or speedy admission to a university for their children. What is always missing is an understanding of the impacts of these special actions and empathy for those that do not benefit – or suffer – from the corrupt act. If special advantage is given to the official or the complicit citizen, others in the community will likely be the losers. The government budget will be plundered, government programs will have less funds to deliver services, and the quality of those services will be diminished. Public servants will not be acting to serve the public as a whole, but a smaller and engaged corrupt community instead, and the general public will suffer the consequences.

Corrupt officials believe they can act as they do because of insufficient accountability mechanisms and inadequate oversight of their decisions. Laws may be on the books that outlaw corruption, but neither law enforcement nor auditors nor parliament nor citizens conduct adequate monitoring of their actions to detect or prosecute them for corruption. Corrupt officials invariably believe that they can stay below the radar and not get caught, even in the face of examples of others who have been called out, prosecuted, and convicted. They believe they are smarter than others and can commit the crime without the punishment. In fact, they often believe they are not doing anything illegal. They are doing what everyone does: they are doing what’s needed to benefit themselves and those close to them.

But we cannot always blame government officials alone for corruption. Corruption is almost always a two-way street. There are the government officials who abuse their authority and initiate the corrupt action, but there must also be others who agree to participate and pay the price so that they can get the services they need. These victims of corruption may not like the transaction, but they go along with it to get the services. Any time there is an opportunity for a face-to-face interaction between government officials and citizens, there is an opportunity for a corrupt transaction. The transaction is most likely to be initiated by the officials in their role as the authority providing the services sought. But it can just as easily be initiated by the citizen who knows how the game is played and can try to set the price paid to get the services needed. Those who cannot pay the price suffer.

Many people in many countries live their lives either employing corruption themselves or being surrounded by corruption. In everyday life, corruption can happen when you need to access health care or enroll your children in school – which are supposed to be provided to citizens for free or for a set price. But you are asked to pay extra or provide a gift to receive it; otherwise the service is not provided or is delayed. Or you are a businessperson and need a license or a citizen seeking to renew a driver’s permit; again, you are confronted with the quid pro quo of paying an extra fee or not getting what you are entitled to. Worse yet, you are a taxpayer and have heard that the city is building a new school in your district or purchasing life-saving medicines for your local hospital. Sounds good, but school construction is never completed and only expired drugs are available to the public because hefty kickbacks had to be paid to certain city officials by the vendors to win the public procurements.

These episodes of corrupt transactions have been an integral part of human existence since the beginning of social interactions. Ancient Greek and Roman literature describe the role of corruption in everyday life and the Old Testament includes proscriptions against corruption. Bribery, corruption’s principal manifestation, is as old as recorded history and is mentioned in Psalm of David 15 as one of those basic volitional actions that will prevent one from “dwelling upon Thy holy mountain.” Those in a position of power or authority feel they are entitled to benefit themselves, their families, and their friends, regardless of how their actions impact others. It is a part of human nature. Moreover, culture and tradition often serve to deeply embed these behaviors as being acceptable from generation to generation. Even when nations enact laws that criminalize corrupt transactions, these activities still endure. Corruption is not only pervasive and widespread but very resistant to change. Overall, success stories are few and far between. Corruption is a hard nut to crack.

This book is not so much about describing corruption and its impacts on governance, the economy and the lives of everyday citizens. That’s been analyzed in many other research efforts.² Instead, this book examines why reform efforts that have been tried to reduce corruption over the past 6,000 years – since the dawn of civilization – have had minimal effects on eradicating this “plague,” and what new paths policymakers may want to try that could yield better outcomes to make corruption fail. Corruption is a deeply engrained human instinct, and to reduce or eliminate it, we have to delve deeper into the basic human motivation to find out what reforms might result in its demise – or close to it. First, let’s take a bird’s-eye view of the problem.

Corruption and development

Corruption is a worldwide phenomenon, largely prevalent and unchecked in countries undergoing transitions, modernization, and development.³ But that does not stop corruption scandals in highly developed countries from being reported on almost a daily basis. Certainly, one cannot be attentive to current events today without being inundated by the many reports of corruption in both the developing and developed worlds.

Evidence of corruption has exploded in relation to government responses to the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 and 2021: public procurements of COVID-19 relief items and vaccines have been riddled with fraud, many purchases have gone missing after being purchased, high-level government officials have jumped the queue to get their vaccinations quickly, transparency regulations have been eased in public contracting for pharmaceuticals, and lack of public trust in government due to embedded corruption has resulted in vaccine hesitancy among the population, among many others.⁴

In 2016, the leaked documents, known as the Panama Papers, revealed extensive fraud, corruption, money laundering, and tax evasion by public officials and wealthy individuals from hundreds of countries going back to the 1970s. The great damage and loss of life in major earthquakes in Turkey in 1999 and India in 2001 have been attributed not so much to acts of God, but to pervasive corruption; it is common practice in these countries for government inspectors to turn a blind eye to building code violations in return for bribes from construction firms. In Salt Lake City, a big scandal revealed how bribery and gifts were intimately involved in the selection of sites for the 2000 Olympic Games. In Brussels, department heads in the European Commission had to resign in 1999 due to allegations of fraud and corruption.

In Ukraine, surveys conducted prior to the Orange Revolution found that 35% of companies pay bribes frequently, an average of 6.5% of annual corporate revenue is paid in bribes as unofficial taxes, and over 30% of households claim that they are confronted by some form of corruption every year.⁵ While corruption remains a real and constant phenomenon that plagues all countries, the difference between developing and developed countries is in the extent to which institutions and processes have been implemented to keep opportunities for corruption checked and under control, and predictable punishment meted out, when corruption is exposed.

The bribery transaction has two basic variants – the demand and the offer. It can be initiated by officials who use their position to extort payments and favors from citizens who are eligible to obtain services for no extra fee whatsoever. Alternatively, it can be offered by citizens who seek special dispensation or service by paying off or providing a gift or favor to an official who is otherwise entrusted with upholding the law. Whether or not the quid pro quo, in fact, occurs after the corrupt transaction is initiated depends upon the ethics, desperation, desire for gratification, and fear of punishment by both sides in the transaction.

What makes corruption so prevalent in development situations? Corruption is more than just a function of personal greed or cultural predisposition.⁶ It tends to prevail where the rule of law is not clearly elaborated and public officials have wide authority to act; under these circumstances, officials can make decisions that benefit themselves with impunity, free from the risk of certain detection. Corruption thrives when officials are not held accountable and there is minimal transparency in the decision process. Weak and ill-conceived incentives also make societies vulnerable to corruption – when civil servants are not paid a living wage, when there are few rewards for good performance, and when there is little fear of punishment for wrongdoing. Countries with weak institutions that are over-politicized and cannot enforce their decisions are also prone to corrupt practices. When there is a lack of political will and commitment to make reforms among society’s leadership, corruption prospers. An underdeveloped civil society also contributes to corruption, because this is the sector of society that typically serves as the external watchdog of government operations and decisions; without their active role in pressuring officials, government can often proceed unchecked. Finally, in developing countries where citizen loyalties to the state are still in a formative stage and may be more strongly focused on personal, tribal, or clan relationships, corruption in the state can grow because accountability is not enforced.

Wide discretion, limited accountability, and limited transparency in government decision-making open the doors to bribery transactions.⁷ Wide discretion provides government officials with the opportunity to interpret laws, regulations, and processes, and makes negotiation concerning how they are implemented possible. Limited accountability provides government officials with practically free agency; they can negotiate on terms that will yield personal benefit with little risk that they will be caught and punished for overstepping the public trust. Limited transparency offers both the public official as well as their negotiating partner the relative secrecy that is required to conduct their extra-legal transaction. The opposite of each of these conditions that make bribery negotiations possible can be rectified by the effective rule of law. In such situations, what is expected of public officials is clearly prescribed, their ability to interpret is circumscribed, and government decision-making is predictable to all parties and open to inspection by all. These are circumstances that reduce the opportunity for negotiation and hence for bribery.

What makes corruption so counterproductive to development? First, it impairs the possibilities for economic growth.⁸ Corruption scares off private investment from domestic and foreign sources that fear the risks, unknown costs, and harassment involved in highly corrupt systems. Corruption also encourages the growth of a shadow economy, where taxes and fees are not paid to the state but rather as unofficial payments to corrupt bureaucrats. Second, corrup...