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Dicereport211 Forum2
Dicereport211 Forum2
Dicereport211 Forum2
the implementation of policy carried out by lower- son acting alone with no official-citizen exchange;
level officials or the output side of the equation and “supportive” corruption refers to acts designed
(Bardhan 2006; Scott 1972). Because of their differ- to protect and strengthen existing corruption.
ent functions within the system, these two forms of
corruption also violate different norms. “Bureaucra- A third approach based on characteristics of the
tic corruption” involves the violation of first-order transaction is essentially a typology based on the rel-
norms (the written rules and laws that are the prod- ative size and frequency of the acts. This distinction
uct of politicians’ decision making), whereas “politi- is commonly expressed in terms of “grand” versus
cal corruption” committed by policymakers entails “petty” corruption. At one end, “grand corruption”
the violation of more nebulous second-order norms involves large sums of money and usually less fre-
(the often unwritten guidelines determining how po- quent transactions, while at the other end “petty cor-
liticians should make decisions, such as impartiality ruption” refers to smaller and more routine pay-
and fairness; Warren 2004). ments. This distinction tends to parallel those rooted
in the institutional position of the state official in-
The nature of the transaction volved, with “grand corruption” more likely to occur
among high level government officials who have lim-
A second taxonomic approach differentiates corrup- ited interaction with the public, while “petty corrup-
tion based on certain characteristics of the transac- tion” tends to take place among low-level, bureau-
tion. A number of schemes have been developed cratic workers who regularly interact with the public.
along these lines. One rather simple approach relates
to the direction of corrupt influence. It draws a dis- Systemic framework
tinction between “bribery” and “extortion”. In bri-
bery, societal interests use extra-legal payments or Though somewhat related to differences based on size
bribes to influence the content of state policy or its and frequency, distinctions are also often based on the
implementation. At a broader, more systemic level, broader pattern of corruption within the system. This
this form of corrupt influence can take on the char- approach focuses not just on the individual corrupt
acteristics of “state capture”, whereby an entire act, but rather on the context in which the act occurs.
agency or institution operates on behalf of societal Mark Robinson (1988), for example, identifies three
interests. Extortion, by contrast, involves the use and forms of corruption: “incidental” corruption, which is
abuse of state power by public officials to demand confined to malfeasance on the part of the individual
extra-legal payments or rents in return for providing and is thus rare; “institutional” corruption referring to
a legitimate or illegitimate service. In extortion, the certain institutions that may be riddled with corrup-
direction of influence moves from state to society, tion due largely to the absence of controls; and “sys-
while bribery reverses the direction. It is quite dif- temic” corruption which reflects situations where cor-
ferent when drug traffickers have half the police on ruption is deeply entrenched and pervasive through-
their payroll doing their bidding versus when the out society.A similar sort of distinction contrasts “cen-
police shake down petty thieves or extort “bribes” tralized” and “decentralized” corruption depending
from citizens for real or imagined offenses. on the level of control exercised by the political elite
over local officials (Bardhan 2006, 344). This approach
A second and more elaborate approach based on tends to parallel other distinctions as well. Institution-
aspects of the corrupt transaction is offered by Syed al, systemic and centralized corruption, for instance,
Alatas (1990, cited in Heywood 1997, 425–26). He usually involves elaborate webs and chains of illegal
distinguishes six forms of corruption. “Transactive” payoffs inside government, often to the benefit of su-
corruption involves the mutual arrangement be- periors or the political party.
tween a donor and a recipient; “extortive” corrup-
tion implies some form of compulsion usually harm- Motive or purpose
ing a party; “defensive” corruption refers to the act
the victim of extortion is compelled to engage in; A final approach distinguishes types of corruption
“investive” corruption involves an act with no imme- based on the motives, purpose or outcome of the cor-
diate payoff, but an understanding of a favor some- rupt act. The range, of course, can be rather exten-
times in the future; “nepotistic” corruption relates to sive. Does the corrupt act – for example, allowing a
family members being appointed to positions in the murderer to go free – result in the diversion of mil-
government; “autogenic” corruption entails one per- lions of dollars from a program designed to help the
poor or simply in speeding up the award of a license corrupt activity generally depends on how much cor-
that would have been granted in time anyway? One rupt activity is taking place throughout society, sug-
easy distinction based on motive separates corruption gesting a common pattern (Bardhan 2006, Mishra
that promotes purely personal interests from corrup- 2006). Such an assertion that leads to grouping dif-
tion that benefits a clique, a political party or an insti- ferent forms of corruption together not only justifies
tution which may be more systematic. In a discussion the use of crude, composite measures of the phe-
of the link between organized crime and corruption, nomenon but it also sustains the search for a com-
for instance, Margaret Beare (1997, 161–69) offers a mon set of causal factors and unified or one-dimen-
non-exhaustive taxonomy of corruption based largely sional consequences.
on motive or outcome. She identifies four types:
“bribes/kickbacks”, which are paid or demanded in re- On the other hand, a wide range of theories suggest
turn for being allowed to do legitimate business; “elec- that different forms of corruption may not necessar-
tion/campaign corruption”, designed to ensure con- ily go together and that certain factors may relate
tinuing influence; “protection corruption”, payments only to certain types of corruption and not others.
in exchange for being allowed to engage in illegiti- Mocan (2004) and Morris (2008), for instance, find
mate business; and “systemic top-down corruption”, weak and limited correlations linking perceptions of
where the nation’s wealth is systematically siphoned- corruption from actual involvement in paying bribes
off by the ruling elites. or being asked to pay a bribe, particularly among de-
veloping countries. Mocan (2004), for example, finds
that when the quality of the institution (measured by
Theoretical linkages and methodological challenges the risk of expropriation) is controlled for, the weak
association between corruption and corruption per-
Identifying different forms of corruption – whether ception actually disappears. Taking a different ap-
based on the institutional location of the partici- proach, Bardhan (2006) distinguishes bureaucratic
pants, the norms, the nature of the transaction or the from political corruption and finds that at least in the
underlying motives – is useful largely to the extent case of the United States, the two do not go together
that it advances our theoretical understanding of cor- and that the United States suffers high levels of
ruption (Gerring 1999). Recognizing different forms political corruption, but low levels of bureaucratic
of corruption, in short, leads to a series of questions: corruption.
To what extent do the various types of corruption ac-
tually go together? Do all forms of corruption stem Michael Johnston’s (2005) work on corruption syn-
from the same underlying causes or are the different dromes, in turn, highlights different causes for differ-
types of corruption caused by different factors? Do ent patterns of corruption. Casting the balance of
the different forms of corruption have different af- economic opportunities and political opportunities,
fects on society or the political system? weak or strong state and civil society as key causal
agents, Johnston identifies four syndromes of corrup-
Much of the corruption literature exploring the un- tion – interest group bidding, elite hegemony, frag-
derlying causes and consequences of corruption fail mented patronage and patronage machines – that dif-
to differentiate forms of corruption. Corruption, in fer in terms of the underlying causal agents, the pat-
other words, is treated generically as a singular class terns or forms of corruption within the society, in the
of political behavior. This is especially true of the consequences for the political system, and hence on
bulk of the quantitative, cross-national studies be- the approaches needed to curb corruption. In a com-
cause of the way corruption is normally measured. parison of corruption in Latin America, Daniel
On the one hand, an argument can be made that po- Gingerich (2009) similarly links different types of pro-
litical corruption of any stripe facilitates all or other portional representation electoral systems to distinct
types of corruption and/or that all types of corrup- classes of corruption. The open-list, proportional rep-
tion stem from similar causes. Factors, such as per- resentation (PR) system found in Brazil tends to cre-
missiveness or tolerance, the lack of trust or social ate strong incentives for legislators to amass a per-
capital or even the lack of democracy, for instance, sonal following by distributing pork and private goods
would seem to feed bureaucratic corruption as well to supporters back home via, in part, corruption. But
as political corruption, bribery as well as extortion, while the open-list PR system in Brazil feeds individ-
corruption within the police, the judiciary, the par- ual schemes of corruption to pay for expensive per-
ties, ad infinitum. Indeed, formal models show that sonal election campaigns, the closed-list PR system
found in Argentina and Bolivia fosters a different pat- forms of corruption (Johnston 2005, 19). While im-
tern of corruption, where the power of the party elite, portant in advancing the study, the use of crude, one-
coupled with a more politicized bureaucracy, pushes dimensional measures of corruption cannot really
party leaders to strike deals with bureaucrats and address questions related to the different types of
channel public resources to help the party. corruption. It may not be enough simply to say that
a county suffers extensive or systemic corruption, or
Tying different forms of corruption to different con- to expect the same causal factors to lie behind all
sequences, Morris (1991) links broad forms of corrup- forms of corruption or for all to exert a similar im-
tion to political outcome. Focusing on Mexico, I argue pact. Unfortunately at this stage, this may be all that
that while extortion can help solidify the elite and standardized measures of corruption can tell us and
enhance centralized control, bribery tends to have the all that we can learn from a global perspective.
opposite effect, undermining elite unity and political Though still relying on perceptions as measured
stability. In a similar way, Mushtaq Khan (1998) shows through opinion polls, Transparency International’s
how different forms of corruption can have different more elaborate Corruption Barometer does differ-
economic outcomes. Specifically, he demonstrates entiate corruption by institutional location. This pro-
that the corruption found in Korea created strong vides an important methodological tool to differenti-
incentives for the state to re-allocate rights and re- ate countries based not only on the overall level of
sources in a way that maximized economic growth, corruption, but different patterns of corruption. Part
while the type of corruption prevalent in South Asian of the theoretical challenge, of course, is to use this
countries enriched political intermediaries and thus data to test and refine theories differentiating cause
tended to undermine economic growth. and consequence, moving the study beyond its one-
dimensional focus.
A somewhat different theoretical approach links dis-
tinct forms of corruption to different perceptions of
the seriousness or level of corruptness by elite and Conclusion
the public. One of the earliest explorations of this by
Arnold Heidenheimer (1970) relates the perception Clearly corruption encompasses a wide range of be-
of corruptness to the nature of obligations within so- havior. As discussed, analysts have identified a num-
ciety. In a similar approach using opinion data, John ber of subcategories or forms of corruption, some of
Peters and Susan Welch (1978) find that acts involv- which are more commonly employed than others.
ing a non-political official (judge rather than politi- Among the criteria most commonly used to draw
cian), a public role (rather than private citizen), do- distinctions are: the institutional location and func-
nations from constituents rather than non-con- tion of the public official involved (“political corrup-
stituents and large payoffs tend to be deemed more tion” versus “bureaucratic corruption”), the direc-
serious. A more recent study in France by Lascoumes tion of influence (“bribery” versus “extortion”), and
and Tomescu-Hatto (2008) also gauges the level of the size and frequency of the transaction (“grand
corruption for a range of different corrupt acts. This corruption” versus “petty corruption”). But despite
enables the researchers to distinguish four groups of these and other efforts to tease out different forms
citizens based on their different perceptions of the of corruption, understanding the relationship among
degree of tolerance for certain acts of favoritism (con- the classes of corruption, their determinants and
demn or not) and overall perception of the extent of their consequences continues to confront both theo-
corruption among public officials. retical and methodological challenges.