Need or Greed? Conditions for Collective Action against Corruption

Abstract

This article calls into question one of the implicit assumptions linking democratic accountability to reduced corruption, namely, that citizens will expose institutions rife with venality and mobilize for better government. Instead, mobilization may be contingent on the type of corruption. The study develops a distinction between need and greed corruption and suggest that citizens are more likely to engage in the fight against corruption when corruption is needed to gain access to “fair” treatment (need corruption) as opposed to special illicit advantages (greed corruption). Using data from the Global Corruption Barometer 2013, the study suggest that need corruption mobilizes citizens, in particular if they perceive that fellow citizens will also engage, while greed corruption leads to secrecy, demobilization, and a propensity to “free ride” on other citizens’ anticorruption efforts. The study thereby contributes to a better understanding of fundamental conditions for collective action against corruption and explaining why greed corruption persists in societies with well‐established institutions for accountability.

Grappling with the “real politics” of systemic corruption: Theoretical debates versus “real‐world” functions

“…Khan (), for example, is known for arguing that corruption persists because it works for those involved (see also Bauhr, , p. 4). He and others (e.g., Chabal & Daloz, ; Englebert, ) argue that political leaders, especially in developing countries, maintain political stabilization out of necessity through “off‐budget” redistribution measures and through patron–client networks—transferring resources to powerful clients in exchange for political support.…”

“…Even if they had the motivation to “stick their necks out,” a collective and coordinated effort will be required. In accepting this, the collective action problem that should draw our attention is not just, or necessarily, one of systemic corruption, but instead that of supporting a true anticorruption reform coalition with enough power to shake up powerful vested interests and enough capacity to coordinate efforts and make a difference (see also Bauhr, , p. 2)…”

Corruption and women in cabinets: Informal barriers to recruitment in the executive

“…Corruption levels across countries are often gauged by perception‐based indicators, such as Transparency International's Corruption Perception Index or the Control of Corruption measure from the World Bank's Worldwide Governance Indicators. These indicators tend to include perceptions of corruption in different spheres of society as well as corruption on different magnitudes (i.e., both bureaucratic and political corruption, as well as small‐scale [petty] and large‐scale [grand] behavior) and rely on an aggregation of these opinions to one country measure (for a discussion, see Bauhr, ). The problem with this approach is that these indices may risk conflating different types of corruption that conceptually do not gauge the same phenomena.…”

Why so few acting whistleblowers? Impacts of institutional anticorruption

“…Practically, by design, anticorruption practices aim to transform situational settings in hope to suppress corruption incidence and/or improve corruptive climate (Huther & Shah, ; Shah & Huther, ). Evidence testifies that different anticorruption practices matter for varying situations (Bauhr, ). The present study proposes that institutional anticorruption shapes situational settings, both of which further enable and constrain citizens' whistleblowing acts, particularly highlighting direct and indirect trajectories.…”