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Publications
Publications by Affiliates and Fellows of the Corruption in the Global South Network
The ground for the illiberal turn in the Philippines
2022
Marco Garrido
We know a lot about the new wave of autocrats and how they operate but much less about why so many people, particularly in the developing world, are cheering them on. Case-in-point: How do we make sense of widespread popular support for Philippine president Rodrigo Duterte’s strongman rule? Scholars generally cite frustration with a democracy widely regarded as elite-dominated and endemically corrupt, but this account is underspecified. Filipinos have been frustrated with liberal democracy for a long time and Duterte is not the first law-and-order candidate to seek the presidency. I will argue that we need to situate Duterte’s
election and enduring appeal in the conversation about democracy as it has unfolded on the ground. Specifically, (1) repeated failures to reform democracy have resulted in (2) conditional support for democracy and increasing openness to certain authoritarian forms of government. (3) These attitudes manifest on the ground as calls for “disciplining” democracy. (4) Rodrigo Duterte is seen as a “strong leader” and the answer to such calls, hence his enormous popularity. I will provide evidence for each of these claims and make the case for grounding the illiberal turn in people’s experience of democracy.
Brokers and Bribes in India
2021
Sneha Annavarapu
In this essay, the author explores the culture of bribes in India. Drawing on ethnographic data collected over seventeen months (2017-2019) in Hyderabad, the author turns the spotlight away from corruption as a “problem” to glean insight into how corruption is perceived and interpreted by citizens who navigate the literal and metaphorical mazes of Indian bureaucracy.
Democracy as Disorder: Institutionalized Sources of Democratic Ambivalence Among the Upper and Middle Class in Manila
2021
Marco Garrido
Scholars contend that weak institutions as manifest in corruption and bad governance are driving people towards illiberal forms of democracy. This explanation is underspecified. It does not make clear why people are turning towards authoritarian rule instead of working to strengthen democratic institutions. It cannot explain why we are seeing, specifically, a turn to the politics of discipline in countries like the Philippines. We need a better grasp of how weak institutions are experienced and how this experience shapes people’s attitudes towards democracy. Drawing upon several years of ethnographic research, I depict the experience of democracy of the upper and middle class in Metro Manila. For informants, the problem of democracy is not that institutions are weak but that valued institutions are actively contradicted by disvalued ones. They describe an experience of disorder, identifying four major sources: corruption, rule-bending, clientelism, and informal settlement. A view of democracy as disorder prompts calls for “disciplining” it. These findings lead us to reframe the issue. Whereas a weak institutions’ framework emphasizes the gap between valued rules and regressive norms, I emphasize their contradiction as shaping perceptions of disorder. Contradiction is experienced as a moral dilemma, a conflict between how things
are done and how they should be done. This experience is informed by a normative sensibility rooted in upper- and middle-class position. The framework provides a better account of democratic backsliding: socially embedded, broader in scope, and closer to experience.
When civil engagement is part of the problem: Flawed
anti-corruptionism in Russia and Ukraine
2018
Marina Zaloznaya, William M. Reisinger & Vicki Hesli Claypool
In developing countries, the fight against corruption entails purges of political and business elites and the restructuring of electoral, financial, and social provision systems, all of which are costly for the incumbents and, therefore, unlikely without sustained pressure from civil society. In the absence of empirical analyses, scholars and practitioners have, therefore, assumes that civil society plays an unequivocally positive role in anti-corruptionism. In this article, we challenge this dominant assumption. Instead, we show that, under certain conditions, an engaged non-governmental community may, in fact, undermine the fight against corruption. Using the data from forty interviews with anti-corruption practitioners in Ukraine and Russia, as well as primary documentary sources, we present two models of anti-corruptionism whereby active civil engagement produces suboptimal outcomes. One is faux collaboration, defined as a façade of cooperation between the state and civil society, which hides the reality of one-sided reforms. The other model is that of non-collaborative co-presence, whereby the governance role is shared by the government and non-governmental activists without compromise-based solutions. In both cases, civil engagement helps perpetuate abuses of power and subvert such long-term goals of anti-corruption reforms as democratization and effective governance.
What’s wrong with corruption? Messages from confessions in China
2017
Juan Wang
Primarily based on contextualized discourse analysis of confessions from 119 convicted party cadres on corruption charges in China, this article makes two arguments. First, these confession texts are propaganda that signals the government’s strength to punish outliers. Second, using such warning to deter corruption is subject to escalating scale of corruption given social pressure for success and peer learning among grafters. This article contributes to the scholarship of corruption by suggesting possible mechanisms of endogenous reproduction of corruption within the officialdom. It also presents confession as a new type of information communication among political elites for studies of authoritarian regimes.
Does Authoritarianism Breed Corruption? Reconsidering the Relationship Between
Authoritarian Governance and Corrupt Exchanges in Bureaucracies
2015
Marina Zaloznaya
This article advocates for ethnographic and historical study of the political roots of corruption. Focusing on informal economies of Belarusian universities, it reexamines two theoretical propositions about corruption in autocracies. The first proposition is that authoritarianism breeds bureaucratic corruption; the second is that autocrats grant disloyal subjects corruption opportunities in exchange for political compliance. Using qualitative data, the author finds that autocracies can generate favorable as well as unfavorable preconditions for bureaucratic corruption. The author argues that lenient autocratic governance, characterized by organizational decoupling, creates favorable conditions for bureaucratic corruption. In contrast, consolidated autocracy, defined by rigid organizational controls, is unfavorable to such corruption. The author also concludes that in autocracies, disloyal populations may be cut off from rather than granted opportunities for bureaucratic corruption. These findings suggest that the relationship between autocratic governance and corruption is more complex than current studies are able to reveal due to their methodological limitations.
Petty corruption in Central and Eastern Europe: the client’s perspective
2013
David Jancsics
This qualitative study examines the role of clients in petty corruption by analyzing actual corrupt exchanges between ordinary citizens and low level public and private employees in post-communist Hungary. Using a grounded theory approach, interviews reveal how clients from different social strata deal with low-level agents in corrupt situations. Findings suggest two contrasting forms of low-level corruption: transactions where the client and the agent do not have a prior relationship and where external factors dominate the relationship; and cases with stronger social ties between the actors, where the client has more freedom to structure the transaction. However, a client's social background frequently determines the form of corrupt transaction and the form of resources illegally exchanged in the deal.
Anticorruption Campaigns and the Intensification of Corruption in China
2005
Andrew Wederman
Despite repeated crackdowns, over the past two decades corruption in China has become steadily more ‘intense’ as the amounts of corrupt monies and the number of senior cadres implicated in corruption have increased dramatically, leading many to view China’s ‘war on corruption’ as half-hearted and ineffectual. In this article, I analyze the efficacy of China’s campaign-style anticorruption strategy using a combination of formal modeling and empirical data. The analysis suggests that while this sort of strategy may succeed in keeping corruption ‘under control’, it is likely to do so by deterring low-level corruption, but not high-level, high stakes corruption, and may encourage inflation of the size of bribes. The article thus concludes that campaign-style enforcement may have actually contributed to the ‘intensification’ of corruption.
The civic crime of corruption: Citizen networks and public sector bribery in the non-democracies
2022
Marina Zaloznaya
In the Global North, corruption is considered incompatible with civic health: scholars argue that it decreases social trust, atomizes communities, and discourages active citizenship. Using the first-ever national dataset from Russia with behavioral measures of corruption, ego-centric networks, and political participation, this article develops an alternative theory of corruption’s impact on civic life in societies where freedoms of association are limited. Analyses of these new data suggest that: (1) Russian bribe-givers are embedded in outward-oriented and mobilizable personal networks, supportive of civic connectivity; and (2) Russian bribe-givers are significantly more likely than law-abiding citizens to mobilize others when pushing back against the state. Counterintuitively, then, in non-democracies, corruption in the public sector sustains the kind of social networks that underlie civic culture.
Corruption at the University: The Case of Susanne Boyle
2021
David Jancsics and David Kanaan
The case study provides participants a rich narrative about corruption-related ethical dilemmas in a large public organization operating within a multifaceted social, economic and legal environment. Participants are put in the position of a fictive character, Susanne Boyle, Director of the Office of Institutional Compliance, Ethics, and Equity, who must consider immediate action to manage three corruption-related issues but also consider how policies should be changed in order to avoid similar problems in the future. The case study intends to demonstrate the challenges with ethical decision-making within complex social systems and not purely rational bureaucratic arrangements. Similar to many real-life organizational situations, Susanne Boyle is personally and emotionally involved and must navigate between clashing moralities, norms and values related to her informal social network, as well as her official duties and responsibilities.
Institutional proximity and judicial corruption: a spatial approach
2020
Juan Wang and Sida Liu
This article develops a relational explanation for judicial corruption, namely, a spatial theory of institutional
proximity, to complement existing behavioral and institutional approaches. Institutional proximity refers to the spatial proximity between adjacent political or social institutions, including courts. This proximity can be a result of political or administrative regulations, workplace interactions, or the mobility of individual actors
between them. Linking ecologies and space travelers are two key spatial mechanisms through which institutional proximity enables judicial corruption. They pave the pathways of judicial corruption, that is, how corrupt transactions and related social interactions are facilitated by and communicated through institutions adjacent to the court. The theory is operationalized in the context of Chinese courts and the various pathways of judicial corruption are exemplified through a number of publicly reported cases in China.
Pathways to Corruption
2018
Marina Zaloznaya, Vicki Hesli Claypool & William M. Reisinger
Though bureaucratic corruption is widespread, social scientists have yet to develop a comprehensive model predicting ordinary people’s engagement in corrupt exchanges with street-level bureaucrats. Our article fills this gap by specifying an individual-level causal model of bureaucratic corruption centered around three theoretically derived predictors: beliefs about acceptability of corruption, its perceived riskiness, and its utility to the offender. In doing so, we develop a theory of how institutional stability affects rates and causal pathways to bureaucratic corruption. Using the data from nationally representative surveys in Russia (N = 2,000) and Ukraine (N = 1,535), we test a path-diagramed structural equation model that accounts for endogeneity and the relationships among the theoretically derived predictors of corruption. The tests of our model in institutionally more stable Russia and less stable Ukraine, combined with OLS regression models on split samples from conflict areas within each country, show that when institutions have greater stability, (1) citizens are less likely to partake in bureaucratic corruption, and (2) the effects of theoretically derived predictors on corruption behavior are stronger. We are the first to incorporate into a theory of bureaucratic corruption a feedback loop whereby engagement in corruption reinforces perceptions of its spread, which in turn contributes to the belief that bribery is acceptable. Our findings explain the variation in corruption behavior among citizens of high-corruption societies, extend the institutional theory of social control, testify to the importance of contextualizing theories of crime, and reveal the need to tailor anti-corruption policies to specific institutional environments.
Does everyday corruption affect how Russians view their political leadership?
2017
William M. Reisinger, Marina Zaloznaya & Vicki L. Hesli Claypool
Do Russians’ personal experiences with corruption influence how they evaluate their political leaders and, if so, in what direction? In addressing this question, we focus specifically on small-scale corruption that arises when Russians encounter employees of service provision organizations. We analyze survey data gathered in the summer of 2015 from Russia to trace the links between personal corrupt behavior and political attitudes. We show that participation in everyday corruption lowers a person’s support for the political regime, both as a bivariate relationship and in a multivariate model with controls. Being involved in corrupt transactions reduces support for the regime through two indirect mechanisms: by making the political leadership’s performance seem worse and by heightening perceptions that corruption is widespread among the country’s leaders. We find no support for arguments in the literature that bribery and other forms of bureaucratic corruption help citizens pursue their needs in the face of inefficient state institutions and less developed economies. In Russia, those who frequently encounter corruption are less, not more, happy with the regime.
The Social Psychology of Corruption: Why It Does Not Exist and Why It Should
2014
Marina Zaloznaya
In recent decades, corruption has emerged as a major cause of global inequality and an important subject of social scientific research. This article argues that social psychologists have not taken full advantage of analytical tools at their disposal to generate explanatory accounts of corruption in non-Western contexts. In the first part of the article, the author maintains that the lack of social psychological research on why people engage in corruption is due to the dearth of empirical data on corruption, the theoretical complexity of this phenomenon, and current popularity of neoliberalism in politics and academic research. In the second part of the article, the author argues that
the symbolic interactionism school of social psychology has a number of tools that could be more helpful in exploring the causes of corruption in non-Western settings than rational-choice approaches
that are currently en vogue. The article concludes with an argument that such analyses could generate culturally sensitive as well as policy-relevant theories of corruption.
Organizational cultures as agents of differential association: explaining the variation in bribery practices in Ukrainian universities
2012
Marina Zaloznaya
This article explores the variation in bureaucratic bribery practices of ordinary Ukrainians. Despite common arguments about corruption-generating structural constraints of economic transition and about the regional culture of corruption in Eastern Europe, interviews with university-affiliated Ukrainians reveal significant variation in rates and patterns of their engagement in bribery. This article shows that participation in corruption is closely associated with actors' exposure to organizational cultures. It uses Edwin Sutherland's differential association theory of crime to argue that the acquisition of definitions that are either favorable or unfavorable to bribery through exposure to different organizational cultures of universities leads Ukrainians to either commit or avoid bribery. Students and professors acquire crime-related definitions through (1) encounters with institutionalized bribery mechanisms, (2) conversations with peers and colleagues with more substantial experience within specific universities; and (3) observations of other students and instructors. Karl Weick's notion of organizational enactment is argued to be the mechanism whereby these learned definitions translate into specific bribery-related behaviors. Inasmuch as acting against these definitions may lead to academic or professional failure, testing their validity is risky for university members. The processes of organizational enactment of bribery-related definitions are, therefore, at the core of organizations' role as agents of differential association. The article concludes with a brief discussion of the potential synthesis of differential association and organizational theories as a powerful tool for the study of bureaucratic corruption.
Punitive Governance and the Criminalization: of Socioenvironmental, Anti-Austerity, and Anticorruption Mobilizations in Puerto Rico
2022
Jose Atilles
This paper shows how the Puerto Rican government has used punitive governance to deal with three important reactions to the multilayered crisis affecting Puerto Rico since 2006: socioenvironmental mobilizations; anti-austerity mobilizations; and anticorruption mobilizations. The paper proposes a threefold analysis. Firstly, it provides a brief overview of the Puerto Rican economic and financial crisis, the neoliberal solutions to the crisis, and its consequences. Secondly, the paper expands on the intertwined / intertwining relationship between punitive governance, colonialism, and criminal law. Thirdly, the paper analyzes the process of criminalization of the socioenvironmental, anti-austerity, and anticorruption mobilizations resisting colonial abandonment. Two strategies will be discussed: (1) the uses of criminal law to limit freedom of speech and protests and (2) repression and the systemic deployment of state violence against protestors. The state’s violent reactions to sociopolitical mobilizations are part of a long history of criminalizing and repressive practices that must
e understood against the backdrop of US colonial history in Puerto Rico.
For A Broader Understanding Of Corruption As A Cultural Fact, And Its Influence In Society
2021
Fernando Forattini
This brief article intends to demonstrate some of the problems with the main theories on corruption and introduce the reader to the field of Anthropology of Corruption, a type of research that tries to understand one of the most pressing issues nowadays through a non-binary point of view, but trying to understand the root of corruption, and its multifaceted characteristic, especially through its cultural aspect; and why it is, contemporarily, the most effective political-economic discourse – most at the times used in a populistic fashion, at the expense of democratic institutions. Therefore, we will briefly analyze the three main theoretical strands on corruption and point at some of its faults; then indicate to the reader what are the main goals Anthropology of Corruption, and what questions it seeks to answer; and, finally, the political impact that corruption discourses have on society, and its perils when mobilized by populistic discourses.
Corruption and Political Participation in Hungary: Testing Models of Civic Engagement
2019
Tatiana Kostadinova and Zoltán Kmetty
Extant literature concludes that corruption may have a devastating effect on economic growth and institutional trust in transitional democracies, but scholars remain divided on how malfeasance influences political behavior. In this paper we explore the likelihood of a mobilization effect of corruption in a post-Communist setting. We argue that the indicators used in previous scholarship on corruption vary in important ways and may affect citizen incentives for participation differently. In particular, we hypothesize and then assess whether actual experience with bribery, perception of widespread corruption, and concerns about increase of corruption in the future, encourage individuals to engage in different sets of activities. Original data from a 2014 post-election survey in Hungary are used for the empirical tests of several regression models. Our findings suggest that the type of corruption assessment is important for the specific political activity in which a citizen would engage.
Informality ‘in spite of’ or ‘beyond’ the state: some
evidence from Hungary and Romania
2017
Abel Polese, Borbála Kovács & David Jancsics
Framed in the growing body of research on informality, this article attempts to define a distinction between informality performed ‘in spite of’ and ‘beyond’ the state. ‘In spite of’ the state refers to the case where state institutions already regulate a given situation, but citizens decide that state governance is not enough (or not appropriate, effective). ‘Beyond’ the state refers to the case where state institutions do not regulate a particular exchange and interaction so that citizens organize in response to make up for this deficiency. We support our claims through the use of two case studies built on in-depth interview material with Romanian parents and Hungarian private citizens from diverse walks of life to bring to light how individuals may understand and narrate the informal practices they engage in a positive light. By doing this, we investigate the possible conflict between individual and state morality, documenting and conceptually refining how they do not necessarily overlap, informal activities being a locus through which mismatch between them can best be explored.
Gift Giving and Corruption
2016
Adam Graycar and David Jancsics
When individuals exchange gifts social bonds are strengthened and reciprocity is created. If the gift and the reciprocation both come from private resources it is clearly a gift. If what is reciprocated after a gift is given comes from an organization, or is a government resource rather than from “one’s own pocket” then it is most likely a bribe. The key variable is not the value of the gift but the transparency of the transaction. What has occurred is the trading of entrusted authority. This is corruption, and a serious danger to public policy. This study reviews anthropological literature on gift giving, and constructs a typology for the examining the gift/ bribe distinction in public administration. This classification helps to distinguish analytically among different types of gift practice and clarify conceptual ambiguity of the terms gift and bribe.
Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Corruption
2014
David Jancsics
Corruption has become one of the most popular topics in the social scientific disciplines. However, there is a lack of interdisciplinary communication about corruption. Models developed by different academic disciplines are often isolated from each other. The purpose of this paper is to review several major approaches to corruption and draw them closer to each other. Most studies of corruption fall into three major categories: (i) rational-actor models where corruption is viewed as resulting from cost/benefit analysis of individual actors; (ii) structural models that focus on external forces that determine corruption; and (iii) relational models that emphasize social interactions and networks among corrupt actors. Focusing on actors’ behavior and the social context, this article explains corruption concepts taken from sociology, economics, organization studies, political science, social anthropology, and social psychology.
Win, lose, or draw? China’s quarter century war on corruption
2008
Andrew Wedeman
In 1982, the leadership of the Chinese Communist Party ordered a crackdown on corruption. As China’s war on corruption enters its 25 year an obvious question is whether the party winning? Because there is no direct way to measure the actual rate of corruption (ARC) and the data we have on the revealed rate of corruption (RRC) may not perfectly reflect changes in the ARC while changes in the perceived level of corruption (PLC) may be subject to subjective distortion, trends in the RRC and the PLC may not provide reliable answers. The mathematical relationship between the ARC and the RRC, however, can be defined as a function of risk. Increases in risk can be interpreted as signaling a narrowing of the ARC–RRC gap. Decreases in risk can be interpreted as signaling a widening of the ARC–RRC gap. By combining data on changes in risk with data on movement in the RRC it is possible, therefore, to assess (in broad terms) the movement of the ARC even though it remains technically unknowable. Using data on the lag between when officials first engage in corruption and when they are prosecuted to measure changes in risk, this article raises doubts about whether Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is winning its war on corruption.
The impacts of corruption on forest loss: A review of cross-national trends
2022
Jamie Sommer
This research lays out the debates and contradictory findings regarding the impacts of corruption on forest
loss in a cross-national context, specifically in low- and middle-income nations. After, I describe how these inconsistent findings may be due to difficulties in untangling the complexities of corruption definitionally and then operationalizing it in a cross-national context. Then, I review the advances in corruption data collection and measurement. Finally, I discuss how these developments in data collection and operationalization have led to an expansion of research on corruption to other aspects of governance, bringing forward several avenues for future research, but also potentially conflating definitions of corruption with governance. Overall, I aim to capture how scholars are studying corruption and forest loss from a cross-national context and what their findings tell us.
Corruption at the University: The Case of Susanne Boyle
2021
David Jancsics & David Kanaan
The case study provides participants a rich narrative about corruption-related ethical dilemmas in a large public organization operating within a multifaceted social, economic and legal environment. Participants are put in the position of a fictive character, Susanne Boyle, Director of the Office of Institutional Compliance, Ethics, and Equity, who must consider immediate action to manage three corruption-related issues but also consider how policies should be changed in order to avoid similar problems in the future. The case study intends to demonstrate the challenges with ethical decision-making within complex social systems and not purely rational bur-
eaucratic arrangements. Similar to many real-life organizational situations, Susanne Boyle is personally and emotionally involved and must navigate between clashing moralities, norms and values related to her informal
social network, as well as her official duties and responsibilities.
Border Corruption
2019
David Jancsics
In many countries, customs and border protection agencies are perceived as the most corrupt government institutions. Officers in those organizations have more opportunities to participate in corruption than do employees in other law enforcement agencies. Moreover, border related corrupt activities may be directly linked to organized crime groups. Despite the importance of the topic, border corruption has remained conceptually underdeveloped. Complementing already existing classification schemes, this study uses two dimensions to develop a six-cell conceptual typology of border corruption: (1) the actor of the corrupt transaction on the client side, and (2) the collusive/coercive nature of the exchange. Possible implications for research and practice are also discussed.
What’s wrong with corruption? Messages from confessions in China
2017
Juan Wang
Primarily based on contextualized discourse analysis of confessions from
119 convicted party cadres on corruption charges in China, this article makes two arguments. First, these confession texts are propaganda that signals the government’s strength to punish outliers. Second, using such warning to deter corruption is subject to escalating scale of corruption given social pressure for success and peer learning among grafters. This article contributes to the scholarship of corruption by suggesting possible mechanisms of endogenous reproduction of corruption within the officialdom. It also presents confession as a new type of information communication among political elites for studies of authoritarian regimes.
Offshoring at Home? Domestic Use of Shell Companies for Corruption
2016
David Jancsics
The recent “Panama Papers” leak has revealed that public figures in several countries use offshore shell companies in order to hide their real wealth behind murky foreign ownership structures. Less well known is the fact that corrupt policy makers also use shell companies in their own home countries that function as intermediaries to divert public resources for private benefit. Based on a qualitative empirical analysis, this paper describes how corporate vehicles are used by corrupt government officials in contemporary Hungary. One can distinguish “live” shell and “empty” shell companies. Live shells are used by governing elites to build clientele networks or to provide monopolistic market positions for oligarchs. Empty shells are technical vehicles used by local government actors to create valuable assets that can be sold for extra profit. Onshore shell entities are shown to be essential organizational structures supporting governmental corruption.
The Role of Power in Organizational Corruption: An Empirical Study
2013
István Jávor and David Jancsics
This article concerns the extent to which corrupt behavior is dependent on the organizational power structure and the resources available for illegal exchange. This qualitative study is based on 42 in-depth interviews with organizational actors in different organizations in Hungary. Four core themes emerged from the analysis of the interviews: (a) isolated corruption at the bottom, (b) the middle level’s own corruption, (c) “technicization” when middle-level professionals and expert groups are used to legalize the corruption of the dominant coalition, and (d) “turning-off controls” when organizational elites intentionally deactivate internal and external controls to avoid detection.
Anticorruption Campaigns and the Intensification of Corruption in China
2005
Andrew Wedeman
Despite repeated crackdowns, over the past two decades corruption in China has become steadily more ‘intense’ as the amounts of corrupt monies and the number of senior cadres implicated in corruption have increased dramatically, leading many to view China’s ‘war on corruption’ as half-hearted and ineffectual. In this article, I analyze the efficacy of China’s campaign-style anticorruption strategy using a combination of formal modeling and empirical data. The analysis suggests that while this sort of strategy may succeed in keeping corruption ‘under control’, it is likely to do so by deterring low-level corruption, but not high-level, high stakes corruption, and may encourage inflation of the size of bribes. The article thus concludes that campaign-style enforcement may have actually contributed to the ‘intensification’ of corruption.
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