Nationwide study of relations between public institutions and their clients

The Hungarian Gallup Institute was commissioned by the United Nations to conduct an articulated investigation of corruption during the year 2000. Five phases were completed up to the Autumn of 2000 including a survey conducted among the general public from the whole of the Hungary in April 2000. The data collected during personal interviews with a representative sample of people aged over 18 (N 1839).

In this study Gallup assessed certain public institutions from the client's or consumer's point of view in addition to the recording the perceptions of the population at large. The Gallup approach presupposes that these public institutions as state-owned service-providing companies can be judged by consumers in the same way as service-providing companies operating in the private sector can. Our study focussed on the willingness of employees to be corrupted both according to public perception and as revealed by specific cases and we took care to investigate not only the whole public sector but also individual public institutions.

The interviewees judged 26 public institutions in terms of the susceptibility of their employees to corruption using a five-point scale where "1" means that there is hardly any likelyhood of having to pay money in return for services and 5 means that it is highly probable that a gratuity will be required. see figures!

In Hungary today well over half the population believe that if they want proper service in a health care institution they will probably have to pay a gratuity.

Of the institutions listed the largest part of the population thinks that hospital employees are the most likely to receive gratuities above all physicians (according to 77% of the population) followed by the paramedical staff (62%). Next come general practitioners with adult patients (59%) and specialised children's doctors (58%). There is a national consensus about hospital physicians but other health care workers receive varying judgements: Budapest residents are far more likely to believe that nurses general practitioners and children's doctors receive gratuities than people living in other parts of the country.

Judgments about police corruption vary widely depending on which branch of the police force is examined. Traffic policemen are considered far more corrupt than officers whose contact with the public takes place inside police stations.

More than half of Budapest residents assume that traffic policemen accept bribes when they are on duty while "only" one-third of the provincial population thinks so.

In general people under the age of 30 are far more inclined than other groups to believe that all state employees especially traffic policemen and customs and excise officers are corrupt. Over half (55%) of people in the younger age groups think than traffic policemen accept bribes but less than one third (29%) of the over-50 age group thinks so.

The population considers the traffic police and the Customs and Excise Authority the most corrupt (28-28%) of the various state institutions and bodies which have dealings with individual members of the public. A third of Budapest residents and a quarter of provincial residents assume that traffic police officers will accept bribes. In the case of the Customs and Excise Authority the situation is the opposite: they are considered more corrupt in provincial Hungary than in the capital.

A fifth of the population believes that Ministry officials officers in other branches of the police and members of the Market Supervision Authority have to be bribed to ensure that affairs are handled "properly".

Local Authorities are considered the least corrupt among institutions: depending on which department they are asked about 6-13% of respondents think that municipal employees are corrupt. Municipal technical departments are considered to be the most corrupt and education departments the least.

Far more Budapest (20%) than provincial residents (7%) consider municipal housing departments (formerly known as "IKV" or Real Estate Management Body) to be corrupt.

Public perceptions of the incidence of corruption in public institutions
"How typical is it to give a gratuity or tip to the employees of the following institutions?"
The columns on the right of the table represent segments of the population according to residence. Each number shows the percentage of that segment which answered "typical" or highly typical for the category in the left-hand column.

Apart from measuring public perceptions and beliefs it is of key importance to establish how much actual contact these organisations have with individual members of the public. The study showed that the highest number of respondents or their immediate relatives visit health care institutions and hospitals during a one-year period (62% and 34% of the population respectively). One fifth of the population had official contacts with the Inland Revenue Office and somewhat fewer with the Social Security and Land Registry Offices (16-16%) in 1999. The most frequently visited branch of the Local Authority was the customer service department with its continual routine public tasks (15%) and the social and welfare departments offering support and assistance (14%). Other municipal departments had significantly fewer contacts with the public.

A relatively high number of people (11%).had official contacts with the police during the past year.

Every tenth adult visited a bank credit department in 1999 while rather fewer visited the National Health Insurance Fund (8%) or a public notary (8%).

Less than 5% of the population visited other institutions in 1999 - the Courts the Public Grounds Supervision Authority the National Public Health and Medical Officer Service the Traffic Supervision Authority the Customs and Excise Authority the Ministries the Court of Registration the Consumer Protection Supervision Authority and the Market Supervision Authority.

These figures indicate that the population's opinion about health care is generally based on personal experience since members of about two-thirds of households visited health care institutions during the preceding year. The number of people who had personal contact with the police (11%) also suggests that many respondents have first-hand experience of police activities and are not only influenced by the media in their perceptions.

In the case of other institutions public beliefs about corruption - for example in the Customs and Excise Authority Ministries and the various supervisory authorities - are based on relatively few personal experiences. This means that the public image of these institutions can be highly influenced in both a positive and negative way by effective public relations and by the media.

We presume that a non-transparent system of unwritten rules over-complicated proceedings and unclear competencies enable the employees of public institutions to gain "autonomy" to judge cases on an individual basis and to exercise excessive power in decision-making which can lead to minor abuses (favoritism) or to real corruption in more severe cases.

This is why we consider it important that the operations of state agencies which do not function on market principles but which serve the population and enjoy public financing should nonetheless be judged according to market-related qualitative criteria by individual consumers.

Those who were actually in contact with these institutions in 1999 said that the ones they consulted about the most complicated issues were the Consumer Protection Supervision Authority Courts hospitals technical departments of local authorities the Traffic Supervision Authority the Market Supervision Authority credit departments of banks education departments of municipalities the Police and the Customs and Excise Authority.

In our opinion people contacted the Public Grounds Supervision Authority Ministries municipal customer service departments public notaries the National Health Care Insurance Fund the social and welfare and property departments of municipalities and the traffic police authorities about the least complicated issues.

In the opinion of consumers the highest quality service - in terms of administration speed training and efficiency - was provided by public notaries municipal customer service departments health care institutions (excluding hospitals) social and welfare departments and education departments of municipalities the National Health Care Insurance Fund and the State Public Health and Medical Officer Service.

In 1999 clients were least satisfied with services provided by municipal housing departments the Public Grounds Supervision Authority Courts the Police the Market Supervision Authority and the Consumer Protection Supervision Authority.

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People actually involved in official contacts with institutions found civil servants far less likely to accept bribes than would be suggested by the opinions of the public at large.

The proportion of people expecting a gratuity in return for services is the highest in health care institutions (see below for the actual sums given as gratuities in health care).

In other institutions relatively fewer people felt that they were expected to give tips. The behavior of employees of the Traffic Supervision Authority the Public Grounds Supervision Authority the National Public Health and Medical Officer Service the traffic police the Customs and Excise Authority the Consumer Protection Supervision Authority Ministries municipal housing departments and the Market Supervision Authority indicated the greatest willingness to be corrupted (according to 7-12% of consumers). see figures!

Driving offences and traffic contraventions constitute one of the key sources and areas of "street corruption" in Hungary. The way in which such offences are dealt with is difficult to monitor the conversation has no witnesses and the relevant documents can be manipulated freely by the officers involved. Thus the survey of the general population included questions about whether the respondents or their close relatives had been stopped by the police because of a driving-related offence and how the occasion ended.

12% of respondents were stopped by policemen because of a driving-related offence in 1999. 41% of these cases ended in a rather peculiar way: 27% did not have to pay a fine although they had committed the offence while 14% paid but did not receive a ticket or receipt. see figure!

Budapest residents are far ahead of provincial residents in terms both of traffic offences and of cases involving suspicious behaviour: 18% of them violated traffic rules and over one fifth (22%) of them bribed the police officer on duty instead of paying a fine - in other words they payed the fine on the spot without being given a receipt. see figure!

If we extrapolated from these representative sample ratios to the actual population we could conclude that nationwide there were a total of about 61 000 cases of traffic police officers accepting bribes in 1999.

This estimate is if anything rather conservative because it does not include repeated occasions within the same family and it ignores the fact that some sort of corruption must have taken place in many of the cases where a driver committed an offence but left the scene without making any kind of payment.

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In our opinion health care represents a unique field with respect to corruption and solving the problem of tipping or gratuity-giving is far more than a mere penal issue - although when taken to excess the custom can lead to genuine crimes.

Nearly 80% of the population thinks that receiving gratuities is a characteristic of hospital doctors. According to nearly two-thirds of the sample gratuities are typically given to other health care workers hospital nurses general practitioners and children's doctors. see figure!

Only 18% of people who gave gratuities did not feel that they were expected to do so. In other words more than 80% of gratuity-payers in the sample felt that they would not receive proper treatment unless they paid.

Members of one third (34%) of households made use of hospital services in 1999. 40% of the households concerned gave an average of 1914 Hungarian forints to the hospital staff and 52% gave an average of 8845 forints to doctors. As mentioned before a somewhat lower proportion mentioned in both cases that they were expected to pay a gratuity. see figure!

Members of 62% of households went for specialized health care consultations. 13% of these households gave an average of 1164 forints to the hospital staff 26% gave on average 2683 forints to doctors. Thus the estimated total of gratuities paid in 1999 comes to at least 9 333 billion forints not including sums given to family GPs multiple occurrences within the same family and cases outside the immediate household (for example when a gratuity is given to the doctor who treats a grandmother living alone). see figure!

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In order to understand the phenomenon of active and passive corruption and to explore real-life situations we must also understand the general moral attitudes of society.

The acceptance of a gratuity in return for performing an obligation is something that has never been accepted by the vast majority of society. At the same time it is interesting to note that 29% of the population still seem to be tolerant about this passive form of corruption. It seems to make little difference whether we ask state employees or people working in the private sector. The value systems of civil servants do not appear to differ much from those of groups working in other sectors: the former do not display moral attitudes which differ significantly from the general norm even in situations when they are acting in their official capacity. In our opinion there is no point in focussing separately on the moral behavior of civil servants / public officials as distinct social groups because the common moral capital of the whole of society affects the behaviour of public sector workers as much as it affects anybody else.

Cases considered as "corruption"

Generally it can be said that social attitudes towards corruption are highly differentiated. Virtually the whole of society agrees that the dishonest management of affairs in politics and business should be considered as corruption. However a large part of the population is not nearly so convinced about "everyday" corruption: about civil servants favouring family members about the "promotional" activities that the market sector directs towards civil servants about giving gratuities to doctors or tipping people.

(Gallup Hungary October 2000)

Updated: 2001-06-06 12:59
© Hungarian Gallup Institute The Gallup Organization