Understanding Corruption Generically
Submitted to
: Modelling of Economies in Transition (MODEST) 2008 Workshop (at PolishOperational and Systems Research Society), September 19
th
-20
th
, 2008, Warsaw
Published in
: Owsinski, J.W., Nahorski, Z., Szapiro, T., (eds), Badania operacyjne i systemowe:decyzje, gospodarka, kapita ludzki i jako. Series: Badania Systemowe, volume 64. Published bythe Systems Research Institute, Polish Academy of Sciences, Warsaw 2008Maurice Yollesprof.m.yolles@gmail.comCentre for the Creation of Coherent Change and Knowledge
Abstract
There appears to be a significant awareness that dealing with corruption is essential for the healthof socials no matter what their political, social or economic nature. This paper uses the paradigmof knowledge cybernetics to develop a generic theory of corruption that stems from theconnection between ideology and ethics. It shows that political, economic and social dimensionsof activity can all contribute to processes of corruption when a complexity of ideological/ethicalinterconnections becomes pathological - i.e., when the connections become severed corruptionsets in. The ultimate need is to create a typology that relates the failure in some connections andthe nature of the corruption that arises. This could in turn lead to a better understanding of therise of certain forms of corruption and a better recognition of how to deal with them.
Keywords:
Corruption, social pathology, knowledge cybernetics, ideology, ethics, pathologies.
Introduction
Transparency International undertakes corruption surveys in an attempt to determine the degreeof perceived corruption that various nation states have In general in the 2007 evaluation of corruption the traditional Western countries score relatively well (e,g., Denmark=9.4, UK=8.4)on a score of (0,1), Asian (e.g., China=3.5, Thailand=3.3) and then African (e.g., Central AfricanRepublic=2.0, Congo, Democratic Republic=1.9) countries tend to score relatively poorly. Theworst countries tend to be ones that have gone through major turmoil or are despotic (e.g.,Iraq=1.5, Myanmar=1.4). The EECC countries in transition, having recently come out of a greatdeal of turmoil, tend to score relatively poorly. This for instance Slovenia=6.6, Estonia=6.5,Czech Republic=5.2, Hungary=5.3, Poland=4.2, Bulgaria=4.1, Romania=3.7, Georgia=3.4,Bosnia and Herzegovina=3.3, Montenegro=3.3, Ukraine=2.7, and Russia=2.3, Uzbekistan=1.7.While these indices are indicative of what may be seen as particular categories of normativeperception of corruption (because of the way that they are measured), it does dive the question:what is the cause of corruption, and how does it develop?According to Pope (2000), the founder of Transparency International, corruption poses a threatnot only to the environment, human rights, democratic institutions and fundamental rights andfreedoms, but it is also detrimental to development and to the alleviation of poverty.
Corruption is often seen as the bane of modern highly aspiring societies, contributing to themaintenance of social ills and deprivations, and endangering their viability in a complex world.Highly developed socials normally operate with regulatory processes that contribute to themaintenance of social order. Regulations generate regularized processes normally manifested asstructured rules that, in a social having a legislative system are represented as rules of law. It isthe adhesion to these rules that enables cultural standards to be manifested and social standardsto be upheld. However, it is not only the creation of regulation alone that is essential for socialsto operate in ways that are not classed as corrupt. A purpose of this paper will be to identify thefactors that may be engaged in this process.An obverse of corruption is social responsibility since those who are knowingly corrupt aresocially irresponsible. Moreover there is also likely to be a connection between socialirresponsibility and sociopathic behaviour (Yolles, 2008).Transparency International (IT, 2008), in its exploration of corruption, uses a democratic nationstate frame of reference. While participative democracies can provide a standard for opennessand transparency within the social, political and economic processes, there are very few of theseand they tend not to be very old. For instance the UK only achieved the status of a participativedemocracy when it gave women the vote in 1948. Even where participative democracies do existthere may be a limitation on the degree of participation that they encourage (e.g., the infrequentuse referenda for substantive decision issues), or a restriction on the degree of openness andtransparency (e.g., because of idiosyncratic notions of security or public safety).The democratic nation state frame of reference of TI is also limiting because socials existsbeyond the nation state. For instance corporate organisations operate as nation state microcosms,tend not to be democratic in nature, and also often experience corruption. Having said this,modern organisational theory tells us that in healthy corporate organisations requireaccountability, openness and transparency (e.g., Böhm, 2006; Ackerman, 2005; Nevis et al.,1995).TI defines corruption as the misuse of entrusted power for private gain. Seeing corruption interms of power is useful, but it does not necessarily mean only political power. It could, forinstance, mean economic power. The nature of the power that can drive corruption is anotherthing that we shall briefly consider in due course.For TI this misuse of power may occur
according to rule
and
against the rule
, and theseconstitute different sides of the corruption process. In
according to rule
corruption, facilitationpayments occur, where a bribe is paid to receive preferential treatment for something that therecipient is required to do by law. In
against the rule
a bribe is paid to obtain services that thebribe recipient is prohibited from obtaining. A counter to such bribery is transparency, wherethose affected by administrative decisions, business transactions or charitable work can know notonly what is happening around them, their operational data, but also the mechanisms andprocesses that fall into play to drive them. In transparent environments administrators,bureaucrats, managers and trustees each act visibly, predictably and understandably. In openenvironments their purposes and discussions about them are open to public scrutiny.
TI considers that four dimensions of corruption need to be addressed, political, economic, social,and environmental. However, three of these dimensions can also act as drives for corruption, andwe can adapt TI’s propositions with our own observations to understand this:1. Political corruption is relative to the political regime that holds power. It challenges thestructural/legislative rules, institutional and role legitimacy, and sacrifices accountability.While democratic political regimes are often of interest within discussions of corruption, itcan also occur in authoritarian regimes that maintain social standards. Problems can arise inidentifying the rise in corruption with poor governance, where the rules may vary accordingto circumstance rather than domain of application, where institutional and role legitimacy isarbitrary, and where accountability is subjective and relative to members of the executive.2. Economic corruption challenges the accumulation of public wealth, and may be responsiblefor redirecting scarce resources to illegitimate engagements at the expense of legitimate onesthat service infrastructural requirements.3. Social corruption ultimately drives the direction that the agent takes in interacting with itsenvironment. However, there are consequences for corruption that occur when trust in thestructures and processes associated with a political system are undermined. TI notes thatcorruption is responsible for frustration, general apathy, disillusionment, and a weak civilsociety (through which social participation rather than political power drives decisions). As aresult, an unscrupulous or sociopathic executive can convert collective social resources andpersonal assets. When cultural norms support this type of behaviour, bribery becomesnormative.4. A consequence of corruption is often environmental degradation. Specifically TI is interestedin the natural environment within this context, but generically an environment may bebroader than this. Following the need to create generic theory, and to better understand whatis meant by an environment more broadly, it is useful to adopt systems theory to provide anexplanation. A social may be seen to exist as a system when it maintains a boundary thatenables one to distinguish between parts that are richly interacting (and inside the system)and parts that are poorly interacting (and outside the system). The assembly of richlyinteracting parts together defines structure and contributes to process. It is when a structure isidentified as being composed of a set of richly interacting parts that it is possible to identifyboth a system and its environment.It is tempting to see corruption in terms of a moral imperative, but there is usually more to it than just this. For instance Goorha (2000) tells us that anti-corruption not only has a moral imperative,but also an economic one. Corruption has been generally vilified because it is indicative of governance that is failing to perform its chief function of limiting transaction costs, and indeedthere is a direct relationship between corruption and transaction costs (Murphy et al., 1993). Thisrelationship tells us that low transaction costs encourage economic growth through institutionsbeing able to exploit opportunities by engaging in economic exchange and transformation of resources (Goorha, 2000).Following notions held in the World Bank (e.g., Ackerman, 2005; Anderson and Grey, 2006),corruption is constituted as behaviour (on the part of officials in both the public and privatesectors) in which people improperly (and in the context of the State, sometimes unlawfully)
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Understanding Corruption Generically
There appears to be a significant awareness that dealing with corruption is essential for the health of socials no matter what their political, social or economic nature. This paper uses the paradigm of knowledge cybernetics to…
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