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Robert Manchin:
ASSESSMENT OF THE STATUS OF CORRUPTION:
Discovering a hidden society phenomenon
5th European Conference of Specialized Services in the
Fight against Corruption Istanbul
15-17th November
2000
Developing an operational definition of corruption
Corruption or 'level of corruption' is widely used in public
discourse and usually hold a twofold common-sense meaning.
On one hand it stands for those illegal practices
in which
citizens or organizations bribe officials in charge for awarding
permissions
contracts
or to escape punishment or fines for
offenses they committed. Simpler: to obtain privileges against
law or against the rules of some bureaucracy. This is the
narrow definition of corruption. Many scholars argue
however
that corruption is a broader phenomenon
or rather
a hardly
definable set of phenomena
including achieving several advances
through personal networking; paying gratitude money or giving
gifts for usual services
what are already reimbursed from
customers' or state resources. Viewed most broadly
corruption
is the misuse of office for unofficial ends (Klitgaard
1998).
Usually the first
narrow definition of corruption is primarily
considered as 'dangerous'
illegal
immoral
and furthermore:
totally illegitimate in today's developed or transforming
societies (and economies). However
researches indicate that
the narrowly defined corruption closely correlate with the
level of the broader phenomena of 'corruptive activities'
or deeds
which are just morally corrupt (Johnston
1994).
Therefore previous researches suggest measuring both types
of corruption to get a reliable and useful resource in estimating
actual level of corruption in a specific country
even across
counties.
But there is another problem with the broad definition; it's
largely dependent of culture
historic age
actual social
climate
and social groups
which activities can be perceived
as corruptive. Whereas the narrow definition can usually be
read from the more or less uniform laws throughout the countries
the definition
and even more the structure - the patterns
- of those what we call corruptive activities
are deviating
in a wide and rather undiscovered range (Heidenheimer
1989).
Heidenheimer has outlined "shades" of corruption
ranging
from white through gray to black
depending upon patterns
of elite and mass opinion in several kinds of communities.
The definition
The Latin verb "corrumpere" means: to break something. The
question to be answered is what is "broken" by the act of
corruption.
The obvious answer is that the Law is broken; or that a legal
rule is broken; a duty is broken; a moral norm is broken.
But it is important to add that communities and human personalities
may also be broken by the practice of corruption. Communities
are disintegrated by corruption because it undermines predictability
and accountability
it reduces social transparency and erodes
social trust. And the integrity of the human personality is
broken because corruption involves lying
dissimulation
and
living according to two (contradictory) sets of standards.
Social disintegration and the loss of personal integrity may
be the greatest long-term damage done by corruption.
Favorable conditions
There are historical contexts and socio-political formations
which are particularly favorable for the generation of widespread
corruption. Here are some of them:
- Rigid authoritarian systems that have entered their declining
period. (East European state socialist systems in the 1980s
for instance.)
- The period of "original accumulation" and "wild capitalism"
in which a great quantity of public goods and services are
being privatized. (Central European new market economies
in the 1990s).
- A ruling elite and the body of public servants who do
not feel solidarity with their societies (colonial bourgeoisies
and bureaucracies
for instance).
- The leaders of a bankrupt country who rob their country
before the final collapse. (Some of the East European countries
in the 1990s.)
- Societies in a period of transition
when the old rules
of the game
- do not function any more and the new rules have not yet
- crystallized and have not been interiorized by the populace.
- New market economies in which the idea
the ideology
the myth
- of an absolutely free market is so strong that any kind
of social
- control is thought and labeled anachronistic
crypto-socialist
- (Central European countries in the 1990s).
- A "hybrid society" in which several "organizing principles"
work side by side.
In this last category
a characteristic case is a post-colonial
society as described by Heidenheimer. In this society the
traditional principle of reciprocity and that of tribal redistribution
interacts and clashes with the principle of market exchange
and the system of redistribution on the nation state level.
One of Heidenheimer's examples is a tribal chief who has been
nominated a minister in the colonial/national government.
To appoint the members of his tribe to all possible public
positions is a duty and an act of decency for him in his capacity
as the chief of the tribe. But the same is an act of corruption
on his part as a minister who should appoint public servants
according to merit and not according the tribal loyalties.
Societies in transition are more or less "hybridized": heterogeneous
institutions
regulations and "organizing principles" work
side by side and their interaction is not yet clearly regulated.
This leads to a confusion in which corruption may flourish.
One never knows exactly what is legal and what is not
what
is an act of corruption and what is not
offenders cannot
be punished because there are loopholes everywhere
etc.
As an example
let me show the variety of organizing principles
that were at work in Hungary between 1920 and 2000. (See
table)
I would like to emphasize the inherent paradox of all attempts
for measuring corruption. If research want to measure corruption
it has the assumption that there is a finite number of different
corruptive activities what research can 'count'. Interesting
point what Johnston draw attention to
is - like in chaotic
processes in natural science (see Gleick
1987) - the closer
look we take on these activities the more complex these things
appear to be
and one-by-one definitive categorization is
impossible
simply because of the infinite complexity of the
cases under investigation.
Still
corruption is measured and will continue to be measured
increasingly
moreover
these measurement do not lack at least
common sense validity and reliability
so these abstract heuristic
problems must be solved if possible
or - for the rest - temporarily
swept away by researchers who are investigating this issue
from a quantitative approach. The main consequence
however
is that the exact volume of the corruption cannot be measured
in any society
due to infinity of definitions and secrecy
problems.
How to define corruption?
Let us cite here the typology of corruption according to
Heidenheimer. He isolated three ideal-types of corruption
in his cited work (Heidenheimer
1989)
these types are:
- public office-centered
- market-centered
and
- public interest-centered
types of corruption. In the followings we try to illustrate
these three types of corruption with the help of classical
authors of corruption-literature.
Public Office-centered corruption: "[Corruption is]
behavior which deviates from the formal duties of a public
role because of private-regarding (close family
personal
private clique) pecuniary or status gains; or violates rules
against the exercise of certain types of private-regarding
influence." (Nye
1967)
Market-centered corruption: "A corrupt civil servant
[or business administrator - added by Gallup] regards his
(public) office as a [separate] business
the income of which
he will … seek to maximize. The office then becomes a "maximizing
unit". The size of his income depends … upon the market situation
and his talents for finding the point maximal gain on the
public's [or clients'] demand curve." (van Klaveren
1957)
Public Interest-centered corruption: "The pattern
of corruption can be said to exist whenever a powerholder
who is charged with doing certain things
i.e.
who is responsible
functionary or officeholder
is by monetary or other rewards
not legally provided for
induced to take actions which favor
whoever provides the rewards and thereby does damage to the
public and its interests." (Friedrich
1966)
Added to these merely theoretic and loose definitions
researcher
needs little input information to make her studies more effective.
In each country there are areas
where traditional corruption
is more widespread and areas
where it is virtually unpresent.
Though
the measurement of the narrowly defined corruption
has relatively long tradition and international researches
provide sufficient basis to prepare comparative measurement
of the level of these activities. The issue gets even more
complicated as we try to capture various corruptive activities.
What exactly are these? In this area a series of qualitative
or pilot research needs to be carried out in order to map
the structure of behaviors
practices and activities
which
make a society to think that 'corruption is there'.
How to measure the 'level of corruption'?
There are three widely used 'scientific' methods in the field
of corruption evaluation. We use quote-marks to remind us
that
for the above listed reasons
there is a consensus that
real volume of corruption cannot be measured or calculated.
However
there are approaches
which indicate the spread of
corruption in societies
these methods are:
- Measuring general or target-group perception concerning
corruption
- Measuring incidences of corruptive activities (not
necessarily actual corruption
but attempts or expectancy)
- also referred as proxy method
- Using expert estimates about the level of corruption
(e.g. CPI of Transparency International)
All three methods hold value in achieving our goal: that
is to estimate the spread and map the structure of corruption.
General perception can be
and is regularly used as
a sensitive core indicator of the feeling the 'lack of justice'
in public transactions. This type of measure is less stabile
over time; it's sensitively reflecting the level how corruption
is displayed in media. Corruption perception in this sense
is an indirect measure related to actual level of corruption
highly depending on how much space corruption actually has
in media agenda. In normal case the relative weight of corruption
issues appearing on media must be closely related to what
happens in real life; if there are more corruption cases in
the country there are more scandals appearing on TV screens
as well. (See more about the dynamics of scandals in Markovits
& Silberstein
1988).
Few scholars argue that for the above detailed reasons 'scandals'
are more legitimate measures than behavioral
incidence-based
measures. And this is just because local media is less biased
- if free
we'd add - in determining what is corruption and
what is not
than researchers
frequently coming from other
countries
introducing their - characteristically Western
- bias in the incidence measurement (what incidences we measure?).
The famous Bulgarian initiative
Coalition 2000 is explicitly
using large-scale media monitoring - parallel to surveys -
to track trends in corruption in their country. We need to
add here
that in Gallup Pilot Survey we experienced a serious
agenda-setting problem in incidence measurement.
On the other hand
the incidence-based approach is
more independent from media agenda
general sense of the society
or even questionnaire editing. With asking the ones who potentially
bribe and those whom bribes are offered
researcher might
get a good feedback how frequent is corruption in different
types of transactions. Using direct and indirect incidence
or proxy measures (one regarding the respondent
and one regarding
'others')
the measures will provide a sufficient basis to
decide in which areas corruption is more frequent than in
others. The usage of indirect measures we found extraordinary
important in case of the business pilot study
where the -
usually senior official - respondents were very reluctant
to answer the direct questions asking about bribery and other
forms of corruption the organization was involved.
By incidence measurement we also get a more reliable and
stabile cross-country comparison in certain widely measured
areas
and finally we provide the basis for the longitudinal
analysis
which we see more important than cross-country comparisons.
The cross-country analyses in terms of general corruption
practices have serious validity problems. Using perception
methods
actual events surrounding the data collection can
significantly influence the results we get. In proxy measures
we cannot control the 'shame-bias' and the 'routine-bias'
that is
we will never know the exact ratio between actual
corruption attempts and the reported number. Although
we
have a good reason being suspicious
whether the likelihood
of reporting the offer of a gift is the same in Denmark and
in Russia; furthermore
we can't even decide where is this
likelihood higher. By 'routine-bias' we mean that - in this
example - the Russian official may not even recognize and
remember that she was approached - and even so: how many times
- by someone with the intent of bribery
which is probably
less peculiar experience compared Denmark
where we can be
pretty sure that an official will remember each bribery attempt
from the last five years. The best cross-validity we can hypothesize
is between several waves of the same research in the same
country.
In the most cited and probably respected cross-country comparison
of Transparency International was primarily based on expert
evaluation. Now they are trying to transform the computation
of CPIs
as a common index derived from different general
polls and expert interviews. As Endre Sik pointed out (Sik
1999)
expert evaluations are 'severely biased' for many reasons
accounted primarily to the nature of the group of international
business experts involved in TI evaluations. According to
Sik
this group is a) fairly closed (the cross-validity of
separate experts' evaluations are not the consequence of their
similar reflection of the same truth
much more the common
stereotypes
developed on social events they jointly attend
or other sources of personal networking)
b) the group is
not accustomed to the local customs and language (they tend
to oversee the ways
how issues are settled locally and tend
to use bribery to solve problems fast)
and c) they are businessman.
In this last respect
we just want to remind the Reader to
the famous dictum of Harvard Business School Professor Theodore
Levitt
saying "business is war
to be fought gallantly
daringly
and above all
not morally" (quoted in Driscoll & Hoffmann
1997). In other words
businessmen are more prone to corruption
than 'normal' citizens
just by the very difference of their
professional ethics and the 'ethics in their veins'.
For Gallup
being an organization established for measuring
social phenomena
of course the first two methods seem the
most appropriate to implement in corruption measurement. With
combining the perception and incidence methods (see e.g. Lancaster
and Montinola
1997) convincingly reliable results and spread-estimations
can be achieved. The first attempt for this combination taught
us valuable lessons about differences between the perception-
and incidence-based approaches. This - of course - does not
mean that Gallup would not pay attention to several 'expert-'
or better
participant groups
but for estimation purposes
we prefer the quantitative way for the qualitative one.
Organizing Principles in Hungary 1920-2000
1920 - 1945
- Market mechanisms
- National economic policy ("planning"
control
intervention
- allocation of resources
etc.)
- Late-feudal oligarchic and clientelistic networks
- Central redistribution run by the nation state
1960 - 1989
- The principle of centralized political (re)distribution
(political goals)
- The principle of centralized economic (re)distribution
(to further economic development and safeguard equilibrium)
- The principle of centralized social (re)distribution (equality
social security
etc.)
- The principle of oligarchic (re)distribution (oligarchic
interests)
- The principle of clientelistic (re)distribution (the interests
of patrons and clients)
- The principle of (re)distribution on the "administrative
market"; "bargaining society" (the interests of the institutional
players of the economy and politics)
- The principle of market economy (business interests)
- The practice of informal/popular exchange; the "second
economy"
- ("grassroots interests")
1989 - 2000
- The principle of market competition
- National economic policy ("planning"
control
intervention
allocation of resources
etc.)
- The principle of centralized social (re)distribution
As it can bee seen
before World War Two distribution was
based on a combination of market mechanism
national economic
policy
centralized social redistribution
and late-feudal
oligarchic and clientelistic networks.
When the communists came to power
they forced a system of
political distribution on the country. I.e. distribution was
governed mainly by political interests: goods
services
privileges
exemptions
etc. were distributed with the intention to reinforce
the political power of the communist elite. But gradually
other organizing principles started to work as well
so much
so
that in late Kadarism (the 1980s) there was already a
chaotic interaction of a great number of heterogeneous economic
and social mechanisms
and this chaos was
understandably
a hotbed of corruption.
Since 1989
East Central European societies are not more
hybrid
than Western democracies (which all have several
distributive-redistributive systems)
the difference being
only that in them the interaction of these various systems
is still less formalized
less transparent
less controlled.
In other words
the rules of the game by which one could
judge various behaviors and acts are not established yet.
Without such a set of rules the moral and social control that
could curb corruption has no solid foundation.
Who corrupts whom?
There are relatively simple one-way acts of corruption. This
is the case when somebody corrupts a public servant. But most
of the cases can be best described as two-way transactions.
Participants are both corrupters and corrupted. Take for instance
the case of a routine business/politics corruption. On the
one hand
a businessman bribes a politician or a public servant
to break the rules of the social distribution of public goods
in his (the businessman's) favor. But in the very same transaction
a politician or a public servant corrupts the businessman
into breaking the rules of fair market competition by granting
him advantages over his competitors. Both actors break their
own system of norms which - as politicians
public servants
or businessmen - they have accepted and to which they publicly
adhere.
The "second economy" that emerged in the 1960s and 1970s
in Hungary was full of these I-let-you-corrupt-me-and-you-let-me-corrupt-you
transactions. People corrupted the apparatchiks into shutting
their eyes to the expansion of the second economy
while apparatchiks
corrupted people into renouncing their rights of free citizens.
Both sides profited from this mutual breaking of the rules:
the apparatchiks got gifts
bribes
and a subservient population
and people got an opportunity to develop their small-scale
businesses and to achieve a higher standard of living.
As a case of a three-way corruption
let me give an anecdotical
example again from Hungary in the 1970s. I call it "The case
of the bartender".
In a factory cafeteria it is forbidden to sell alcoholic
beverages to the workers and employees. Nevertheless
the
bartender sells alcoholic drinks but she reports the names
of her buyers to the manager of the factory. In return
the
manager closes his eyes on her selling alcoholic beverages
in the cafeteria.
In this case
first
people corrupt the bartender by tipping
her and prompting her in this way to break the rules of the
canteen. Second
the bartender corrupts the manager into allowing
her to break the rules of the canteen
by supplying him valuable
information on her clients. And third
the manager corrupts
the bartender into breaking the rules of civil decency and
social loyalty by allowing her to accept the tips of the customers.
Corrupting a society
A whole society may be corrupted. People may be bought by
those in power (political
business) to renounce an important
public good in their possession: their right to vote
to choose
their leaders
to control those whom they have elected to
public offices
their right to freedom of consciousness and
information
etc.
They may be bought - and this was the case in Hungary between
1965 and 1988 - by offering them desirable bonuses: by relenting
the political and ideological pressure
by letting them find
loopholes in the system and build up their small family businesses
by letting them build holiday cottages
to travel abroad
etc.
This was balancing on the razor's edge between corruption
and extortion. If people had not accepted the deal
they would
have been forced to passivity and obedience. But corrupting
and being corrupted seemed to be a much better bargain for
both sides. And in the short term it certainly was a better
solution. Both sides profited from this deal more than they
would have profited from the use of force on the one hand
and passive obedience and resentment
on the other.
Dangers
Much has been written about the damage corruption may do
to societies. It undermines social trust and the rule of law;
it erodes public morality and people's sense of justice; it
obstructs the working of the market and distorts the legitimate
systems of distribution; it reduces civic responsibility;
etc.
It is a dangerous
self-multiplying social-economic-political-cultural
mechanism.
A social trap
Corruption works like a social trap or the mechanism of the
tragedy of the commons
. People enter the game of breaking
the rules of their community in order to privately profit
from it. But as more and more people "desert" the community
less and less will be the profit of each of them. After a
certain point
everybody will get in a worse position than
he or she was originally
but the costs of jumping out of
the game and returning to the rules of the community are so
high that the process can hardly be stopped. In the same way
corruption is tempting because it promises each candidate
a special advantage over the other members of the community.
But the more people enter the game
everybody's profit will
diminish and finally everybody will pay more for the same
goods or services than they originally paid. Let alone the
fact that the corruption of the social institutions will cause
further
perhaps even more serious
damage.
The fact
or myth of "positive" corruption
There are situation in which corruption plays
or seems to
play
a positive role and this makes it even more dangerous.
I have already mentioned the example of rigid state socialist
system. The existence of loopholes (and the corrupt practices
related to them) lent a certain flexibility to these economies
and rendered them - in a certain respect -- more efficient.
Or
in the last ten years
in Hungary
for instance
the profit
of corrupt officials from the process of privatization may
have amounted to billions of Forints (and that of their clients
to tens or hundreds of billions of Forints). But rapid privatization
may have been in the interest of the country and
in this
case
one could argue that the price paid in the form of corruption
may have been not too high.
As a matter of fact
nobody has seriously studied these cases.
Nobody has drawn the balance sheet of gains and losses generated
by the "second economy" in the 1970s and 1980s
or those of
the successful but corrupt privatization process in the 1990s.
One thing is certain: the fact that corruption may surround
itself with the aura of social profit and respectability confuses
people and makes corruption even more dangerous.
Games of corruption
Corruption has got a certain appeal for people because it
may be perceived as a game. Tax burdens are so heavy
red
tape is so annoying that even decent citizens may be tempted
to outwit the bureaucrats and find some more or less innocent
loopholes in the system. In this game of tag there are even
some rules as to how to break the rules. Like a game
corruption
is free and voluntary
there is no coercion in it (as for
instance in extortion
or robbery). As in play
there is a
certain risk and excitement in corruption. There is also pretense
and acting a role: when
for instance
you bribe somebody
you both pretend not to notice the transaction; you play the
role of being decent citizens.
The "neurosis" of corruption
Strangely enough
even the fight against corruption may generate
corruption. Let Hungary be again my example. The media deal
with cases of corruption - superficially
but - on a daily
basis. Grassroots communication is also full of rumors about
corruption. So much so
that people are saturated with news
and rumors of corruption and have the feeling that they live
in a thoroughly rotten and corrupt country. This is seriously
counter-productive.
- The belief in the overall presence of the monster of corruption
may become a self-fulfilling prophecy.
- The myth
and fear
of the universality of corruption
may further undermine social trust in public institutions
and ultimately may obstruct the functioning of democracy.
- The myth of "all the world is corrupt" may serve as an
alibi for people to be
or become
corrupt. The devil's
argument: "If everybody is corrupt
why should I be honest?"
- Suffering from the "neurosis of corruption" people lose
their hope that corruption may be restricted and controlled
and
as a consequence
they are less willing
and able
to fight against corruption.
- Focussing obsessively on corruption may become a kind
of overkill that
instead of destroying
nurtures its target.
In this atmosphere
a kind of general social complicity may
evolve where everybody forgives everybody for what they reluctantly
all do. As a character in a famous Hungarian play formulated
it in the mid-1970s: "I excuse them for excusing me for
excusing them..." and so on ad infinitum.
There is an interesting discrepancy between the general and
concrete assessment of corruption in our societies.
In measuring public attitudes toward corruption
in general
the perception people have is that corruption is very high
in the various public institutions. But if you ask those people
who personally got in touch with these institutions
their
experience of corruption is - in the majority of cases --
much lower. In developing action oriented measurement systems
the perception based survey instrument might be usable as
a general tool of awareness-raising. However
in order to
support concrete programs
one needs to go beyond that
using
various tools that help the organizations assessing their
progress.
The Apppendix
of my paper that is consisting sample empirical research results
from various surveys conducted in Eastern Europe in the course
of 2000
provide illustration for the elements of such an
action-oriented approach.
The perception-based survey questions are augmented with
follow-up incidence measurements that allow for size-estimates
and for the tracking of corruption-related phenomena at various
levels of society and organizations.
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