Is Corruption embedded in our culture?
So, we all know that Bangladesh has perennially been designated as "the Most Corrupt" nation in the world. And every year that Transparency International (TI) comes up with this statistic, the government comes up with its own spin to counter this. Well atleast we're number one at something! Anyway, I came across what I thought was a very interesting article in last month's Forbes magazine. The article is titled "Reforming Tony Soprano's Morals". The article concluded that a certain amount of corruption is grounded in culture and immune to carrots and sticks. Since economists like to think that corrupt behavior can be changed through punishment and reward, and in that view there is no such thing as culture or corruption. Alter the legal incentives and, and law-abiding behavior will follow. An ideal test of this would be to bring people from all over the world to a place where they faced no legal constraints, then simply monitor their willingness to behave corruptly.
Accordingly, they studied the behavior of Diplomats at the United Nations who enjoyed diplomatic immunity from prosecution for parking violations until 2002, giving them an opportunity to observe which diplomats racked up the most parking tickets and which observed the law despite the lack of punishment. Unpaid parking violations by diplomats totaled 156,775 between 1998 and 2005. Forbes matched the data with the size of each UN mission, then pulled in data from the Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI) developed by TI. The results?
Scandanavian countries, which perennially rank among the least corrupt in the CPI index, had the fewest unpaid tickets. There just 12 from the 66 diplomats from Finland,, Norway, Denmark and Sweden. Almost all these tickets went to one bad Finn.
Chad and Bangladesh (!!), at the bottom of the CPI, were among the worst offenders They got 1,243 and 1,319 tickets respectively, in spite of the fact that their UN missions were many times smaller than those of the Scandanavians!!! In fact, according to this article, there is a remarkable concordance between the number of unpaid violations and a country's corruption ranking. This would seemingly strongly suggest that one's background and experiences, what we might call culture, does indeed contribute to bad behavior? So the next question then becomes, whether these diplomats flouted the law immediately on arrival in New York and then perhaps absorbed local norms of obedience. Perhaps, they gradually converged with the local culture? Not so apparently! It was broadly true that these diplomats committed more violations the longer they stayed at the UN, and this increase was even faster for diplomats from corrupt countries. In 2002, after a Senate amendment went into effect, that gave New York city the right to tow the vehicles of delinquent diplomats and to recoup unpaid parking violations from U.S. foreign aid disbursements to offending nations, the rate of unpaid violations immediately dropped by 90%, however, postenforcement violations, were still highly correlated with national levels of corruption. So it would seem incentives matter, but so does culture.
Would this mean that local values would seem to undermine the efforts of reformers of economic and social institutions? Changing the law and enforcing it is helpful but by itself not sufficient to induce change in a corrupt country? So does all this point to the fact that corruption is now so embedded in our culture and thought processes, that eradicating it altogether will be a Herculean task indeed?
Accordingly, they studied the behavior of Diplomats at the United Nations who enjoyed diplomatic immunity from prosecution for parking violations until 2002, giving them an opportunity to observe which diplomats racked up the most parking tickets and which observed the law despite the lack of punishment. Unpaid parking violations by diplomats totaled 156,775 between 1998 and 2005. Forbes matched the data with the size of each UN mission, then pulled in data from the Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI) developed by TI. The results?
Scandanavian countries, which perennially rank among the least corrupt in the CPI index, had the fewest unpaid tickets. There just 12 from the 66 diplomats from Finland,, Norway, Denmark and Sweden. Almost all these tickets went to one bad Finn.
Chad and Bangladesh (!!), at the bottom of the CPI, were among the worst offenders They got 1,243 and 1,319 tickets respectively, in spite of the fact that their UN missions were many times smaller than those of the Scandanavians!!! In fact, according to this article, there is a remarkable concordance between the number of unpaid violations and a country's corruption ranking. This would seemingly strongly suggest that one's background and experiences, what we might call culture, does indeed contribute to bad behavior? So the next question then becomes, whether these diplomats flouted the law immediately on arrival in New York and then perhaps absorbed local norms of obedience. Perhaps, they gradually converged with the local culture? Not so apparently! It was broadly true that these diplomats committed more violations the longer they stayed at the UN, and this increase was even faster for diplomats from corrupt countries. In 2002, after a Senate amendment went into effect, that gave New York city the right to tow the vehicles of delinquent diplomats and to recoup unpaid parking violations from U.S. foreign aid disbursements to offending nations, the rate of unpaid violations immediately dropped by 90%, however, postenforcement violations, were still highly correlated with national levels of corruption. So it would seem incentives matter, but so does culture.
Would this mean that local values would seem to undermine the efforts of reformers of economic and social institutions? Changing the law and enforcing it is helpful but by itself not sufficient to induce change in a corrupt country? So does all this point to the fact that corruption is now so embedded in our culture and thought processes, that eradicating it altogether will be a Herculean task indeed?
posted by Asif at 11:20 AM
5 Comments:
Hmmm ...read it, trying to understand; what's wrong with Assif Bhai? Is he trying to go for politics? Although,it's reallly great to see him atleast he is thinking about our culture, our nation. I appreciated your thoughts.
The whole article is about Question...May be, you should thought about some solutions....Good writting.....Panju's blog is supposed to be personal blog, now it's becoming more public....is it because we all know your blog thing....
Keep up the good work
Have a great Brazilian Day
Amzad
How can we get solutions without knowing the right questions? I believe, it is our collective responsibility as Bangladeshis to first realize what our problems are, and then try to get to the root of them.
What an interesting take on the problem of corruption. I would like to read the source article actually if you could provide me with a link (or specify the magazine issue and whatnot). More from a sociological standpoint, I wonder where things like sense of morality or personal responsibility come into all of this. Speaking of corruption and personal responsibility, this was the tailend of one particularly fruitless conversation I had with a Bangladesh consular officer at the Los Angeles office (I was trying to replace my lost passport):
Me: Could I have your name please?
Him: Why do you need my name?
Me: Just for my personal records.
Him: You don't need my name.
Click.
The article can be found on the May 22nd issue of Forbes
Actually you can't extrapolate from that data onto a nation inherent nature. You have to realise what kind of people get the abroad posting in the first place. The kind who is the most corrupt, the most backstabing in the government service (which is all about padding their own nests). So what you end up getting in the US is the ultimate crystalizaiton of corruption. And why not - you worked hard to get here - now party hard as you can.
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