Documenti di Didattica
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Documenti di Cultura
4 October 2019
Robert Goddard South Wing 709
r.j.goddard@aston.ac.uk Office hours: see WASS
In today’s session Next
What is corruption?
Wednesday
What are the consequences of
corruption? A focus on
bribery
What measures and perceptions including
of corruption exit? international
frameworks
What insights are provided from and the UK
economists and other disciplines? Bribery Act
2010
What international rules and
domestic legislation exists in this
field?
2
According to (the late) Kofi A.
Annan (former Secretary-
General of the UN).
https://www.unodc.org/documents/treaties/U
NCAC/Publications/Convention/08-50026_E.pdf
”
3
The study of corruption
“The study of corruption
“Corruption is an elusive cannot be neatly pigeon-
phenomenon conceptually. Its holed in terms of a
particular academic
literature is enormous, and most discipline”.
disciplines in the social sciences
attempt to say something about it. Any serious attempt to
Unfortunately, there is a lack of understand corruption has
interdisciplinary communication to be holistic. People are
corrupt for numerous
about corruption, such that reasons, and even where
models developed by different there is an identifiable
academic disciplines are often primary motivation, this
isolated from each other” differs from one person or
group to the next”
(D. Jancsics, “Interdisciplinary
L. Holmes, Corruption, Oxford:
Perspectives on Corruption”, 2014
OUP, 2015.
Sociology Compass 358). 4
The study of corruption
5
Discussion questions [some we will answer
today, others later in the module]…
9
The emergence of corruption
10
But what is corruption?
11
Activity: building a corruption continuum
12
What is
corruption is
provided in the
UN Convention?
corruption?
What definition of
https://www.unodc.org/documents/treaties/UNCA
C/Publications/Convention/08-50026_E.pdf
13
What is
corruption?
Transparency International has,
for a long time, used this
definition:
What might
explain the
“The abuse of public office
increasing
for private gain”.
popularity of
the second
But now also uses this definition:
definition?
“The abuse of entrusted
power for private gain”.
14
Heidenheimer (1970) identified three
categories, centred on:
1. Public office.
2. Markets.
3. Public interest.
18
Insights from economics
“… empirical research demonstrates that corruption is
associated with lower levels of investment, productivity, and
growth and that corruption discourages both capital inflows
and foreign direct investment … Corruption reduces the
effectiveness of industrial policies and encourages business
to operate in the unofficial sector in violation of tax and
regulatory laws … Overall, corruption reduces the perceived
legitimacy of democratic governments … Of course, one can
question the quality of the corruption data as well as the
direction of the causal arrow. Does corruption cause these
outcomes, or is corruption the result of these underlying
conditions? It seems likely that the causation goes both
ways”.
From: S. Rose-Ackerman, “The Law and Economics of Bribery and Extortion”, John
M. Olin Center for Studies in Law, Economics, and Public Policy Research Paper
Number 408. Available to download free at SSRN (id=1646975).
19
Insights from economics
“For most economists, the root causes of
corruption lie in the delegation of power. It
is the discretionary use of that power and
the often monopolistic position public
agents enjoy when dealing with contracts
which make corruption possible. The
incentives and opportunities for corruption
depend on the size of the rents, or the
personal profit, which public agents can Implications
derive from allocating those contracts”. for
prevention?
From:
http://oecdobserver.org/news/archivestory.php/
aid/239/Economics_of_corruption.html
20
Insights from economics
21
Insights from economics
See further (if a little dated): A. Ades and R. Di Tella, “The new
economics of corruption” (1997) Political Studies 496 and available here:
http://www.people.hbs.edu/rditella/papers/pscorrsurvey.pdf
22
“It is, in principle, possible for some bribes to be
What is wrong with bribery? beneficial, on balance, if they overcome unfair,
inhumane, or inefficient practices … bribery might
permit someone to escape an oppressive regime,
or it might allocate import quotas to the most
efficient firms. However, bribery is always a
second best outcome. If bribery overcomes
inefficient rules, the best policy is either to repeal
the rule or to legalize payments to the state.
Official tolerance of bribery leaves in place the
transaction costs of corruption, favors those who
disrespect the law, encourages officials to create
even more red tape and delay to increase
incentives for payoffs, and undermines state
legitimacy”.
From: S. Rose-Ackerman, “The Law and Economics of Bribery and
Extortion”, John M. Olin Center for Studies in Law, Economics, and
Public Policy Research Paper Number 408. Available to download
free at SSRN (id=1646975).
23
Understanding corruption: psycho-
social explanations
These focus on the individual and his/her
interactions with others in society.
24
Understanding corruption: cultural
explanations
Cultural explanations focus on the dominant values,
attitudes and behaviours in society. Academics have
explored the significance of the following within
individual countries:
Political factors:
Question:
28
Corruption: bribery – insights from
the literature - language
“Overall, we observe two different approaches to bribing
public servants. While transferring a ‘‘gift” is preferred
because it appears less offensive and demanding, a bribe is
chosen precisely for the opposite reason: it is more
demanding. A bribe makes it clearer that reciprocity is
expected, including the threat to retaliate in case of
opportunistic behavior. Participants were willing to live up to
this threat and devote resources to retaliation after naming
their payment a bribe. This suggests that the wording of a
bribe is intended to help enforce a corrupt agreement.
This disproves the notion that corrupt actors strictly
prefer to camouflage a bribe as a gift.” [emphasis added]
http://ipaidabribe.com/
last three decades; however, identifying successful anti-corruption
policies remains a challenge. … we ask whether bottom-up institutions
that rely on voluntary and anonymous reports of bribe demands, such
as the I paid a bribe website first launched in India in 2010, could act as
effective anti-corruption tools, … Our results show that the presence of
a reporting platform like the I paid a bribe website may be insufficient to
systematically lower bribery. A more effective platform is one where
posts disclose specific information about the size of the bribes and the
location of their requestors, i.e., a platform that could serve as a search
engine for the least corrupt officials … Our results also show that while
citizens rarely post false information, lying by officials, when allowed to
post on the platform, is widespread”.
33
for
corruption
preventing
and bribery
frameworks
International
https://www.unodc.org/documents/treaties/UN
CAC/Publications/Convention/08-50026_E.pdf
34
http://www.oecd.org/daf/anti-bribery/ConvCombatBribery_ENG.pdf
frameworks
International
35
36
UK legislation
37
Thank you
for listening
Any
questions?