How Do Intrinsic Motivations,Work‐Related Opportunities,and Well‐Being Shape Bureaucratic Corruptibility?

A large body of research focuses on the institutional factors that shape country‐level corruption and the effectiveness of macro‐level anticorruption measures; however, corruption at the individual level remains understudied and thus poorly understood. This article examines the underlying causes of and mechanisms through which individual government bureaucrats engage in corruption. The researchers develop a framework that incorporates intrinsic motivations, work‐related opportunities, and work‐related well‐being to test the ways in which these micro‐level factors shape bureaucrats' propensity to engage in corrupt behaviors (or corruptibility). Using survey data from more than 1,300 Chinese public employees, the authors identify direct and indirect effects on corruptibility and discuss theoretical and practical implications.     

The Impact of Public Officials’ Corruption on the Size and Allocation of U.S. State Spending

This article demonstrates the impact of public officials’ corruption on the size and allocation of U.S. state spending. Extending two theories of “excessive” government expansion, the authors argue that public officials’ corruption should cause state spending to be artificially elevated. Corruption increased state spending over the period 1997–2008. During that time, the 10 most corrupt states could have reduced their total annual expenditure by an average of $1,308 per capita—5.2 percent of the mean per capita state expenditure—if corruption had been at the average level of the states. Moreover, at the expense of social sectors, corruption is likely to distort states’ public resource allocations in favor of higher‐potential “bribe‐generating” spending and items directly beneficial to public officials, such as capital, construction, highways, borrowing, and total salaries and wages. The authors use an objective, concrete, and consistent measurement of corruption, the number of convictions.     

Corrupt Governmental Networks

ABSTRACT

This study provides an empirically based analysis of corrupt governmental networks. We conducted 45 interviews in Hungary with different organizational actors who were actually participating in corrupt transactions or at least had first-hand experiences of corruption. Given the secret nature of the topic, this article provides a unique insight into the phenomenon. Our findings show that corrupt elite cliques consciously design and coordinate multilevel structures of corrupt networks within and among organizations that involve a large amount of people. We identified the major network elements and their functions in corrupt transactions. The article also provides a typology of corrupt networks. The networks have different structural characteristics based on location of the “cash cows,” points from where the system is fed, and the actors’ positions of power. Our findings are compared with the already existing literature on dark networks, terrorist, and organized crime formations.     

Corruption and State and Local Government Debt Expansion

Theories describing rent seeking in the public sector posit a number of negative fiscal outcomes that the choices of corrupt officials may generate. The evidence presented in this article shows that states with greater intensities of public corruption have higher aggregate levels of state and local debt. If corruption in the 10 most corrupt states were only at an average level, their public debt would be 9 percent lower, or about $249.35 per capita, all else being equal. Notably, institutional control measures may not have succeeded in restraining the expansion of state and local public debt in the presence of greater levels of corruption. State and local governments would achieve more efficient levels of fiscal discipline by curbing public sector corruption.     

Accountable or Untouchable? Electoral accountability in Romanian local elections

While retrospective models of voting posit that voters should “vote the rascals out”, a wave of recent research has found that this is rarely the case. We investigate this question in a context in which many sitting politicians have recently been indicted on corruption charges – the municipal level in Romania, a surprisingly under-researched case in this sub-field. Romania provides a good case for electoral accountability. Not only do Romanians deeply detest corruption, the party system also contains many parties that would make it easy for voters to switch from a corrupt to a cleaner alternative. We collected an original data register of electoral and socio-political data on roughly 3200 localities together with all cases of corruption charges published by the Romanian anti-corruption agency, the Direcţia Naţională Anticorupţie (DNA), accounting for magnitude and timing of the scandal as well as the judicial outcome for the indicted mayor. In all, we find that 81 sitting mayors elected in 2012 were charged with corruption prior to the 2016 election. We test the electoral impact of corruption on the incumbent mayors on four outcomes indicating electoral accountability commonly used in the literature – retirement, vote share compared to the previous election, voter turnout, and reelection using difference and difference and a pairwise matching designs, inter alia. The results show that Romanians do punish their corrupt incumbent mayors to a quite high extent compared to the clean mayors. However, due to the large vote margins, the punishment is not severe enough to make them lose more often than similar “clean‟ mayors, although they tend to not run for re-election at much higher rates. Turnout is unaffected by corruption at the municipal level. In line with previous results, we thus find a certain amount of electoral accountability, but not to the extent that the ‘rascals are thrown out’.     

When do middlemen matter? Evidence from variation in corruption in India

Corruption is a persistent problem in developing countries, and recent scholarship suggests that middlemen play an important role in corrupt acts. Yet, while intermediaries can reduce transaction costs in illicit exchange, they also increase agency costs and reduce benefits to others. The involvement of middlemen may thus vary. I argue that middlemen are most likely to engage in, and benefit from, the subset of corruption transactions that are repeated frequently, but not by the same parties. I test the implications of this argument using survey experiments administered to a large sample of politicians and bureaucrats at multiple levels of government in India. I show that middlemen are critical, but far from ubiquitous. Intermediaries are more relevant where corrupt deals are frequent but involve unfamiliar potential principals. My results suggest that anticorruption efforts must pay greater attention to the type of corruption and the incentives of middlemen.     

权力围猎场:腐败关系网络是如何搭建的——基于动机理论的行贿路径与腐败治理研究

当前我国法律反腐、制度反腐取得了长足进步,但腐败现象却趋向复杂化、隐蔽化和网络化,案件审理取证难,腐败治理面临新的瓶颈。基于动机理论,通过对腐败官员忏悔录的整理,围绕权力围猎场深入分析腐败双方的关系模式,构建由"规避检查的权力""行贿方式""人情文化""信任"四个维度组成的一般性腐败关系网络模型。研究发现,在权力围猎过程中,行贿者通过关系网络更容易实现对公共权力官员的围猎;在人情文化下,腐败双方的特殊利益互动过程是腐败信任关系的建立并不断强化的过程,且腐败行为主体之间的信任可实现关系网络内信任扩散、信任共享。腐败的治理,需要监管"规避检查的权力",优化权力结构和体制,明确"人情文化"与"行受贿"的法律边界。     

Corruption as Resource Transfer: An Interdisciplinary Synthesis

Despite significant investment in anticorruption instruments in the past decades, confusion about their effectiveness remains. While a growing body of scholarship claims that anticorruption reforms have generally failed, other scholars have shown that particular anticorruption tools may actually work. A likely explanation for these puzzling outcomes is that public administration research holds a mistaken view of corruption, and improperly selected anticorruption strategies often target the wrong type of corruption. To overcome this problem, this article proposes a four‐cell typology of corruption, reflecting two critical dimensions along which most corrupt behaviors occur: the resource transfer and the primary beneficiary. Synthesizing recent research developments, this article introduces a new conceptualization of corruption that integrates perspectives from several disciplines. It also offers a series of propositions concerning how each corruption type could be fought. The article concludes with implications for research and practice.     

Pluralism,corporatism and perception of corruption

When people know who is influencing the elected politicians and they may ‘put the rascals out’ in case they feel that the incumbents are corrupt, ceteris paribus, their perception of the level of corruption should not be affected by lobbying. If on the other hand people are not sure which or how many actors are influencing public policy and they are not able to hold the government truly accountable as interest group influence is constant with different governments, people will be more likely to perceive the government as corrupted. The former system is a characteristic of corporatism and the latter of pluralism. This problem is exacerbated by the fact that interest groups with resources such as business groups or firms in pluralist systems are more influential than groups with few resources. Thus, people may perceive pluralist policy‐making system as more corrupt than corporatist policy‐making system where fewer visible actors have more or less equal weight in the policy‐making process. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Ethics by Design: The Impact of Form of Government on Municipal Corruption

While trust in government at all levels is at an all‐time low, actual corruption at the municipal level has been declining. One factor often credited with this decline is the introduction of the council‐manager form of government. One of the key reasons the council‐manager form was created in the early 1900s was to act as an antidote to the corruption prevalent in the big‐city machine politics of the era. Despite this, no one has tested whether the council‐manager form has in fact influenced the decline in corruption rates. This article uses a rare events logit model to analyze corruption convictions in municipalities between 1990 and 2010 to determine which factors, including form of government, affect the probability that a corrupt act will occur. The findings indicate that municipalities with the council‐manager form are 57 percent less likely to have corruption convictions than municipalities with the mayor‐council form.     

Is a corrupt government totally unacceptable?

Corrupt governments are not always punished by voters. Under certain circumstances citizens consider voting for the incumbent party even if the party is perceived as corrupt. Using survey data for Spain, this article analyses what makes citizens reject (or not) the idea of voting for a corrupt party. Previous research has shown that party identification, ideology and political information play a role in voters’ reactions to corruption. The article argues that voters judge corruption in relative terms; what matters is not how corrupt the incumbent party is perceived to be but whether it is deemed to be more corrupt than the other parties.     

Why Anticorruption Reforms Fail—Systemic Corruption as a Collective Action Problem

With an increased awareness of the detrimental effects of corruption on development, strategies to fight it are now a top priority in policy circles. Yet, in countries ridden with systemic corruption, few successes have resulted from the investment. On the basis of an interview study conducted in Kenya and Uganda—two arguably typically thoroughly corrupt countries—we argue that part of an explanation to why anticorruption reforms in countries plagued by widespread corruption fail is that they are based on a theoretical mischaracterization of the problem of systemic corruption. More specifically, the analysis reveals that while contemporary anticorruption reforms are based on a conceptualization of corruption as a principal–agent problem, in thoroughly corrupt settings, corruption rather resembles a collective action problem. This, in turn, leads to a breakdown of any anticorruption reform that builds on the principal–agent framework, taking the existence of noncorruptible so‐called principals for granted.     

Corruption and Rent-Seeking

The rent-seeking theory was one of thefirst economic instruments developed tomodel corruption in the public sector.Comparing corruption with lobbying, itproposes that the former is the lesser oftwo evils, since lobbying entails the wastage of resources inthe competition forpreferential treatment. This study showsthat the traditional rent-seeking theorymisunderstands three factors: first, theimpact of a corrupt monopoly on the rent'ssize; second, corruption as a motivationfor supplying preferential treatment andthird; that corruption involves a narrowerrange of interests than those ofcompetitive lobbying. Taking these factorsinto consideration, the opposite argumentis valid: corruption has worse welfareimplications than alternative rent-seekingactivities.     

Fiscal consequences of public corruption: Empirical evidence from state bond ratings

Empirical analyses of public corruption focus predominantly on international differences; regional differences in public corruption within a single country receive little attention. We empirically investigate the effect of public corruption in the United States on state bond ratings, which previous research shows are inversely related to net interest costs on public debt. After controlling for various economic influences on bond ratings, we find that more corrupt states have lower bond ratings, which implies that taxpayers in more corrupt states face a negative pecuniary externality by paying a premium for debt.     

Getting to Sweden,Part I: War and Malfeasance, 1720–1850

How and why some countries were able to make the historical transition from a patrimonial, nepotistic and corrupt bureaucracy to a clean, Weberian and professionalised one is still an under‐studied topic in the literature on corruption. This article presents original data on such a transition in the case of Sweden, drawing on court hearings of cases of malfeasance among public officials in the period 1720–1850. It is argued, theoretically, that an important explanation for why the Swedish bureaucracy was able to break out of the collective action trap of corruption relates to Charles Tilly's theory of the importance of war for state‐making. Rather than viewing war‐making in itself as a driver of change, however, this article pinpoints the importance of having lost a significant war – in the Swedish case, the war against Russia in 1808–9 – and the constitutional and regime changes this set in motion. Drawing on comparative data on malfeasance, the similarities in this regard between the Swedish and Danish cases are highlighted.     

The Eroding Effect of Corruption on System Support in Sweden

Sweden is consistently found at the top in international indices of corruption. In recent years, however, several instances of corruption have been exposed, and surveys show that large shares of Swedish citizens harbor perceptions that public corruption is widespread. Drawing on recent surveys, two questions are asked. First, to what extent do Swedish citizens believe that corruption constitutes a serious problem? Second, how do citizens' evaluations of the extent of public corruption affect support for the democratic system? Approaching the issue from a comparative Nordic perspective, the data indicate that Swedes are considerably more prone to believe that politicians and public officials are corrupt than their Nordic counterparts. The analysis also suggests that such perceptions constitute an important determinant of support for the democratic system. Thus, even in a least likely case of corruption, such as Sweden, growing concerns about corruption has a potential to affect democratic legitimacy negatively.     

Transparency, wages, and the separation of powers: An experimental analysis of corruption

We conducted an experimental analysis of the causes of corruption, varying the ease of hiding corrupt gains, officials’ wages, and the method of choosing the law enforcement officer. Voters rarely re-elect chief executives found to be corrupt and tend to choose presidents who had good luck. Directly elected law enforcement officers work more vigilantly at exposing corruption than those who are appointed. Increasing government wages and increasing the difficulty of hiding corrupt gains both reduce corruption.     

微博倒逼制度化反腐的成因及出路

微博反腐正成为自媒体时代中国反腐进程中方兴未艾的现象。微博反腐具有显著的正能量,它借助于焦点事件这种非制度化途径,起到倒逼政府介入腐败案件查处的功效,从而加速体制内反腐的理性化和制度化进程。微博反腐的倒逼机理在于,它把以前只是由反腐机构与当事人掌握的不对称"内部信息",通过微博这种自媒体发酵为路人皆知的"外部信息",从而实现了反腐机构、当事人与社会公众间的信息相对对称。在腐败信息相对对称的情况下,体制内反腐的工作重心将逐步从对焦点案件的被动查处,转变为对制度化反腐方略的主动探求。未来的廉政制度化建设应着力解决三大问题:一是国家廉政制度设计中制度短缺与制度剩余的并存悖论;二是既有廉政制度实际执行力不足导致的"制度软约束"现象;三是选择性反腐的合法性危机。     

Roadblocks in Reforming Corrupt Agencies: The Case of the New York City School Custodians

Reformers have traditionally assumed that agencies can combat corruption through controls such as tighter oversight, increased regulation, internal audits, reorganizations, and performance accountability mechanisms. But this case study of the New York City school custodial system shows how a corrupt agency can derail these devices. New York City's $500,000,000 custodial system, responsible for maintaining its 1,200 schools, has been unleashing scandals since the 1920s despite decades of regulations, multiple reorganizations, and layers of oversight. Its history shows that a deviant culture—a management "captured" by special interests—and an infrastructure enmeshed in abusive policies will resist controls, no matter how well-crafted. True reform requires tackling institutionalized corruption through strategies like overhauling management, eradicating special interests, and aggressively punishing misconduct.     

The Dark Side of Social Capital Re-examined from a Policy Analysis Perspective: Networks of Trust and Corruption

Abstract

This work deepens the analysis of the “dark side” of social capital proposed by Alejandro Portes and Patricia Landlot and revisited by Peter Graeff. For this purpose, it combines the individualistic approach of economic theory with the social perspective of other social sciences to study the economics of corruption embedded in a social structure (a network of trust). It assesses the importance of social relations as a necessary condition to achieve corrupt objectives. To do so, a model of corrupt public contracts embedded in networks of trust is built. Theoretical evidence is found on the importance of networks of trust for the success of corrupt deals between officials and recipients. In addition, seeds are sown for future research and analysis of the role of institutions and monitoring agencies. Finally, the foundation is laid for research in the field of experimental economics to conduct an empirical examination of this proposed model and some policy implications are derived.