Table Of ContentMaking Sense of Corruption
Corruptionisaseriousthreattoprosperity,democracyandhumanwell-
being, with mounting empirical evidence highlighting its detrimental
effects on society. Yet defining this threat has resulted in profound
disagreement, producing a multidimensional concept. Tackling this
important and provocative topic, the authors provide an accessible and
systematicanalysisofhowourunderstandingofcorruptionhasevolved.
Theyidentifygapsintheresearchandmakeconnectionsbetweenrelated
conceptssuchasclientelism,patronage,patrimonialism,particularismand
state capture. A fundamental issue discussed is how the opposite of
corruptionshouldbedefined.Byarguingforthepossibilityofauniversal
understanding of corruption, and specifically what corruption is not, an
innovative solution to this problem is presented. This book provides an
accessibleoverviewofcorruption,allowingscholarsandstudentsaliketo
seethefar-reachingplaceithaswithinacademicresearch.
bo rothstein is Professor of Government and Public Policy at the
Blavatnik School of Government and Professorial Fellow of Nuffield
CollegeatUniversityofOxford.From1995to2015,heheldtheAugust
RöhssChairinPoliticalScienceattheUniversityofGothenburg,wherehe
was co-founder and head of The Quality of Government Institute. Since
2012hehasbeenamemberoftheRoyalSwedishAcademyofSciences.
aiysha varraich received a Master of Science degree from the
International Administration and Global Governance Program at the
University of Gothenburg in 2011. She worked as research assistant in
the ANTICORRP project before entering the PhD program in political
science at the University of Gothenburg in 2014. She is writing a thesis
about clientelism and its effects on democratic processes within new
democracies.
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Making Sense
of Corruption
bo rothstein
UniversityofOxford,UnitedKingdom
aiysha varraich
UniversityofGothenburg,Sweden
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Contents
ListofFiguresandTables pagevi
Acknowledgements vii
1 CorruptionandtheRelevanceofPoliticalScience 1
2 Mapping-RelatedDisciplines 17
3 TheEvolutionofCorruptionasaConcept 31
4 CorruptionandHumanRights 58
5 CorruptionastheConnectingCore 70
6 CorruptionandPatronage 80
7 CorruptionandPatrimonialism 89
8 Corruption,StateCaptureandPoliticalParticularism 94
9 TheChineseExceptionandAlternative 103
10 InConclusion:WhatIstheOppositeofCorruption? 125
References 149
Index 168
v
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Figures and Tables
Figures
1.1 Articlespublishedonpoliticalcorruption. page7
1.2 Corruptionasanumbrellaconcept. 15
3.1 Understandingsofcorruption. 48
Tables
4.1 Anti-CorruptionandHumanRights 66
6.1 OverviewofDifferentConceptsRelatedtoPatronage 87
7.1 ThePatrimonialandBureaucraticModelsof
Administration 91
9.1 GeneralizedTrust,ConfidenceinInstitutionsand
EconomicGrowth 107
9.2 CharacteristicsofBureaucraticandCadreOrganizations 121
vi
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1
Corruption and the Relevance
of Political Science
Inanarticleentitled,‘MedicalCareinRomaniaComesatanExtraCost’,
theNewYorkTimes(9March2009)reportedthefollowingstory:
Alina Lungu, 30, said she did everything necessary to ensure a healthy
pregnancy in Romania: she ate organic food, swam daily and bribed her
gynaecologist with an extra $255 in cash, paid in monthly instalments
handedoverdiscreetlyinwhiteenvelopes.Shepaidanurseabout$32extra
toguaranteeanepiduralandevengaveabout$13totheorderlytomakesure
he did not drop the stretcher. But on the day of her delivery, she said, her
gynaecologistneverarrived.Twelvehoursintolabour,shewasleftaloneinher
roomforanhour.Adoctorfinallyappearedandfoundthattheumbilicalcord
waswrappedtwicearoundherbaby’sneckandhadnearlysuffocatedhim.He
was born blind and deaf and is severely brain damaged ... Alina and her
husband,Ionut,despairthatthebribestheypaidwerenotenoughtoprevent
thenegligencethattheysayharmedtheirson,Sebastian.‘Doctorsaresoused
togettingbribesinRomaniathatyounowhavetopaymoreinordertoeven
gettheirattention,’shesaid.1
Another example comes is a 2010 study from the World Bank
entitled ‘Silent and Lethal: How Quiet Corruption Undermines
Africa’sDevelopmentEfforts’.Thisstudyreportsthatnearlyfourout
of five children in Tanzania who died of malaria had been taken by
their parents to modern health facilities. The reason behind the very
highmortalityrate,ofthisofteneasilycurabledisease,is,accordingto
thereport,a‘rangeofmanifestationsofquietcorruption,includingthe
absenceofdiagnosticequipment,drugpilfering,providerabsenteeism,
andverylowlevelsofdiagnosticeffort’.
Thesearejusttwoofwhatnowadaysseemtobeaninfinitenumber
of ‘reports from the field’ about the devastating consequences of cor-
ruptionforthewell-beingofpeoplearoundtheworld.Theideaforthis
book is inspired by a statement made by the current President of the
1 www.nytimes.com/2009/03/09/world/europe/09bribery.html?pagewanted=all.
1
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2 CorruptionandtheRelevanceofPoliticalScience
WorldBank,JimYongKim,whoinhisspeechof19December2013
stated, ‘In the developing world, corruption is public enemy no. 1.’
As reported by Reuters,2 this announcement showed how much this
world-leadingdevelopmentorganizationhadchangedsincethe1990s
when the issue was taboo in the bank because it should not interfere
in the internal politics of member states. By redefining corruption
as also an economic problem, former World Bank President James
Wolfensohn brought corruption into the limelight in the mid-1990s.
Since then, many international aid and development organizations
havebecomeinterestedinissuesrelatedtotheproblemofcorruption.
Sincecorruptiontendstobeasensitiveissue,the‘codedlanguage’for
this policy re-orientation has been to stress the importance of ‘good
governance’. A typical statement comes from former United Nations
GeneralSecretaryKofiAnnan:‘Goodgovernanceisperhapsthesingle
mostimportantfactorineradicatingpovertyandpromotingdevelop-
ment’ (UN 1998). In academic circles, concepts such as ‘institutional
quality’, ‘quality of government’ and ‘state capacity’ have also been
used (Rothstein 2011; Smith 2007). However, as pointed out by
Fukuyama (2013), a central problem in this discussion is a serious
lackofconceptualprecision.Intheintroductiontoarecentlypublished
Handbook of Political Corruption, the editor writes that although
corruption has attracted a lot of attention during the last twenty-five
years,‘[T]hereremainsastrikinglackofscholarlyagreementovereven
the most basic questions about corruption. Amongst the core issues
that continue to generate disputes are the very definition of “corrup-
tion” as a concept’ (Heywood 2015, p. 1; cf. Heywood 1977). The
purpose of this book is to contribute to what seems to be an obvious
needforconceptualclarificationinthisarea.This,wewanttounder-
line,shouldnotbeseenasapurelyintellectualor‘academic’enterprise.
AsstatedbySartori(1970,p.1038),‘[C]onceptformationstandsprior
toquantification.’Withoutconceptualprecision,operationalizationin
ordertofindempiricalmeasuresforthelevelanddegreeofcorruption
indifferentsocietiesbecomesimpossible.Itfollowsthatwithoutbeing
abletomeasuretheproblem,wecannotcomparethelevelofcorrup-
tionbetweensocietiesorstudychangesovertime.Ifso,wewillnotbe
abletofindoutwhatmayworkasremediesforcorruption(cf.Møller
andSkaaning2014).
2 www.reuters.com/article/us-worldbank-corruption-idUSBRE9BI11P20131219.
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CorruptionandtheRelevanceofPoliticalScience 3
However, we would like to underline that apart from the specific
research and policy interests in such a conceptual project, there is
anotherimportantrationale forwhyadiscussion abouthowtotheo-
rize,defineandmeasurecorruptionandwhatmayconstitutetheoppo-
site of corruption is important. This argument is basically empirical
andhastodowithunexpectedand,formany,includingtheauthorsof
thisbook,alsonormativelyunwelcomeresults.
Theproblempertainstotheeffectsofdemocratization.Thewavesof
democracythathavesweptacrosstheglobesincethemid-1970shave
broughtrepresentativedemocracytoplaceswhereitseemedinconcei-
vablefifty,thirty,oreventenyearsago.Morecountriesthaneverare
now, by the most sophisticated measures used, classified as being
democratic,andmorepeoplethaneverliveinwhatcountsasdemoc-
racies(Teorell2010).Thisiscertainlysomethingtocelebrate,butthere
arealsoreasonstobedisappointed.OnesuchexampleisSouthAfrica,
whichmiraculouslymanagedtoendapartheidin1994withoutfalling
into a full-scale civil war. As Nelson Mandela said in one of his
speeches,theintroductionofdemocracywouldnotonlyliberatepeople
but also greatly improve their social and economic situation. The
sloganthathispoliticalparty,theAfricanNationalCongress(ANC),
usedinthefirstdemocraticelectionswas‘abetterlifeforall’(Mandela
1994, p. 414; cf. Greenberg 2009). However, available statistics give
a surprisingly bleak picture for this promise. Since 1994, the country
has not managed to improve the time that children on average go to
schoolbyasinglemonth.Economicinequalityremainsatrecordlevels,
lifeexpectancyisdownbyalmostsixyearsandthenumberofwomen
who die in childbirth has more than doubled.3 Simply put, for many
central measures of human well-being, the South African democracy
hasnotdelivered(RothsteinandTannenberg2015).Anotherexample
isprovidedbyAmartyaSeninanarticlecomparing‘qualityoflife’in
ChinaandIndia.Hisdisappointingconclusionisthatbymoststandard
measures of human well-being, communist-autocratic Peoples’
RepublicofChinanowclearlyoutperformsliberalanddemocratically
governedIndia(Sen2011).Usingasetofthirtystandardmeasuresof
national levels of human well-being from between 75 and 169 coun-
tries,HolmbergandRothstein(2011)findonlyweak,orno,orsome-
times even negative, correlations between these standard measures of
3 DatafromtheQualityofGovernmentDataBank(Teorelletal.2013).
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