Daily Times

Corruption has many definitions, such as the one by cleangovbiz.org: “Corruption is the abuse of public or private office for personal gain. It includes acts of bribery, embezzlement, nepotism, or state capture. It is often associated with and reinforced by other illegal practices, such as bid rigging, fraud or money laundering.” Corruption is a form of dishonesty or criminal activity undertaken by a person or organization entrusted with a position of authority, often to acquire illicit benefit or abuse of entrusted power for the person’s or organization’s private gain. It does not make a difference which definition one uses; it almost always involves using money or resources of one’s stakeholders for one’s personal benefit. A corrupt person is a thief, a crook, and a robber. Like thieves, they should be in jail. Obviously, a corrupt person might say, “I do not use a gun to take the money. People are giving it to me willingly.” However, corrupt persons often use the worst method of intimidation to extract money. They refuse to do their job of helping citizens, for which they are hired and paid a decent salary; instead, they often extort citizens for bribes before performing their regular job. They are worse than thieve, robbers, and crooks.

A 2017 survey from Transparency International, which included 162,136 adults, showed that 25 percent of those surveyed said they had to pay a bribe to access public services in the past 12 months. Perhaps surprising, 57 percent said their government was doing “badly” at fighting corruption. The survey also found that 36 percent of people surveyed ranked police, elected officials, or government officials as the most corrupt groups.

Corruption is prevalent in developing and developed countries. It is the evil that robs people of their wealth, dignity, and life. Unfortunately, corruption is happening openly in many countries, including the United States of America. Regardless of religion, region, and economic status, human greed is the cause of corruption. Some countries have strongly enforced laws against corruption. Those countries have limited corruption, but it still exists. Many developing countries have corruption laws, but they are rarely enforced if at all.

Although corruption differs from country to country, J. Svenssonhas identified some key common characteristics of countries prone to corruption: not only are most corrupt countries low-income developing countries or countries in transition, but they also have closed economies, lack clear guidance from religion, lack media freedom, and have a relatively low level of education

Other countries also have laws for combating corruption. Nevertheless, in many countries, corruption still takes place openly without any consequence. The question one should ask is, “Why is corruption so prevalent with no end in sight?”

To assure that corruption does not take place, several instruments have been developed to monitor corruption. As a result, a survey shows that the implementation from countries that had signed the law was less likely to have corruption.

Obviously, corruption is the result of human greed and laziness. Most people want something for nothing. As a result, some cheat, rob, steal or beg to make money. If regular citizens do these things, they are called criminals, prosecuted, and put in jail. However, those in power who cheat, rob, or steal are called corrupt, and, mostly, they face no consequences.  Those who work for the government or semi-government agencies have the ability to ask for money or favors for doing their regular job because many countries have no clear rules or procedures in place for their responsibility; in addition, many countries have no control mechanism to hold bureaucrats responsible for failing to do their job and provide service to the people they were hired to serve. This lack of procedures and control methods allows these dishonest bureaucrats to make the rules as they see fit to collect bribes.

Although corruption differs from country to country, J. Svensson (2005) has identified some key common characteristics of countries prone to corruption: not only are most corrupt countries low-income developing countries or countries in transition, but they also have closed economies, lack clear guidance from religion (Protestant countries have far the lowest level of corruption), lack media freedom, and have a relatively low level of education. These conditions provide an opportunity for corruption as people lack the knowledge of the role of government to serve people and lack the political power to require the bureaucrats to do their job. As a result, corrupt countries take advantage of their own people.

Eugen Dimant (2014) says that the level of efficiency of public administration determines the extent to which corruption can find fertile soil. The level efficiency is determined by the quality of the regulations and the requirement of licenses. Ineffective and unclear regulations help increase the level of corruption in at least two different ways: 1) the artificially created monopoly of power that enables civil servants to obtain bribes is based on their superior position and is embedded in the system, and 2) ineffective and unclear regulations cause inhibition and, therefore, encourage average persons to pay bribes in order to speed up bureaucratic procedures. The poor state of public administration is the result of politically appointed bureaucrats who are loyal to one party with no professional standards, which causes more corruption.

1. Allen (2015) says that low wages may also cause corruption. However, giving higher wages without strengthening the quality of the public administration would be a mistake and will not prevent corruption. J. Svenson (2005) says that higher salaries also strengthen the negotiating power of the corrupt officials, which leads to higher bribes; therefore, research has not proven that higher salaries cause less corruption, which means that the level of salary is not a decisive factor but merely one of many.
2. Sumah (2018) says that people follow others. That is, if the top levels of the political system are corrupt (i.e., government, parties, and leading politicians), then corruption shows up at all levels, and this evil simultaneously spreads among the ordinary population because nobody trusts the institutions or the rule of law. Thus, M. Johnston (1995) suggests, “ideally, the institutions should be open to influences and feedback from different sources, yet at the same time sufficiently independent to effectively carry out their work. Where the openness and independence of the institutions are in balance, the officials are accessible, but not excessively exposed to private influences; if they can make authoritative decisions, while not using their power to arbitrate, the corruption is relatively low. But where the official power is poorly institutionalized, too exposed to private influence, and the officials’ independence is reflected in excessive exploitation of their power-they can do as they please-the possibility for extreme corruption is again high.”

   The writer is PhD (USA), Professor Emeritus (USA)