Corruption and marketization: Formal and informal rules in Chinese public procurement

Abstract

The relationship between market liberalization and corruption has attracted scholarly attention in recent years. Conventional wisdom holds that increased economic marketization reduces corruption. China, however, provides evidence to the contrary; corruption has grown as its market‐oriented reforms progress. This paradoxical co‐development of the market and corruption begs the intriguing questions of how corruption has survived marketization and what explains the failure of government regulation. Extending the conceptual framework of institutional theory about formal and informal rules, and using public procurement in China as an example, this article shows that formal tendering rules and regulations may be modified, circumvented, or replaced by informal ones which facilitate corruption. The article identifies four corruption schemes through which procurement actors may distort competition processes and mechanisms under the guise of formal rules. Consequently, public procurement in China displays the structural outlook of market competition, but not its essential substance.

Corporate religiosity and individual decision on conducting entrepreneurial activity: The contingent effects of institutional environments in China

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

“…Second, research on corruption in China has focused largely on the correlation between corruption/anticorruption and economic development (e.g., Gong and Zhou 2015;Zhu 2017;Zhu and Zhang 2017) and citizens' attitudes toward corruption and anticorruption (e.g., Li, Xiao, and Gong 2015;Su and Ni 2018). No research has shed light on bureaucrats' motivations for corrupt behaviors.…”

“…In this article, the term corruption takes a narrow and strictly economic sense, referring mainly to bribery and embezzlement, as previous studies focusing on China's corruption have done (Gong and Wu 2012;Gong and Zhou 2015;Li, Xiao, and Gong 2015;Zhu and Zhang 2017). The reason for this narrow definition is that bribery and embezzlement are the two dominant forms of corruption in China and the targets of anticorruption campaigns (Li, Xiao, and Gong 2015).…”

The impact of economic well-being on perceptions of anti-corruption performance: Evidence from China

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