Corruption and Democracy in Europe: Public Opinion and Social Representations University of Salford,

1
Corruption and Democracy in EuropePublic
Opinion and Social RepresentationsUniversity of
Salford, 29-31 March 2007I dont bribe, I just
pull some strings Assessing the Fluidity of
Social Representations on Corruption in the
Portuguese Society Luís de Sousa
(luis.sousa_at_iscte.pt)e João Triães
(joao.triaes_at_iscte.pt)This presentation is
product of the research project Corrupção e Ética
em Democracia O caso de Portugal
(POCI/CPO/60031/2004) financed by the Portuguese
Foundation for Science and Technology (POCI 2010
co-financed by FEDER).
2
Theorising on the relationship between social
capital and corruption

• More social capital (defined as the degree of
  trust and norms of reciprocity which result from
  membership in social networks) means better
  democracy and less corruption
• There is a general understanding that societies
  enjoying higher levels of social capital also
  display higher levels of civicness, which means
  that they are better equipped, more aware and
  less tolerant towards corruption
• Social capital, the theory goes, creates a
  watchdog context and collective pressure that
  help to consolidate and diffuse ethical
  standards to the wider population
• The least civic regions are most subject to the
  ancient plague of political corruption. They are
  the home of the Mafia and its regional variants.
  Although objective measures of political
  honesty are not easily available, we did ask our
  nationwide sample of community leaders to judge
  whether politics in their respective regions was
  more honest or more corrupt than the average
  region. Leaders in the less civic regions were
  much more likely to describe their regional
  politics as corrupt than were their counterparts
  in more civic regions. (Putnam 1993 Making
  Democracy Work. p. 111)

3
Q Scandinavian countries are perceived to be
less corrupt than Southern European countries
(Corruption Perceptions Index - CPI) does that
(external) perception result from the fact that
Scandinavian countries display higher levels of
social capital than their Southern counterparts?

• The causal relationship between social capital
  and corruption is more complex than the
  stereotyped interpretation presented above and
  raises 4 fundamental questions
• How to measure corruption and honesty in the
  exercise of public duties?
• How to measure social capital?
• Is social capital always a inhibitor of
  corruption?
• Is there a causal relationship between social
  capital and corruption? Of what type?

4
The eternal definitional conundrum what is
corruption?

• In 1964, a judge from the US Supreme Court of
  Justice, Potter Stewart when confronted with the
  need to define obscenity, concluded saying,
• I shall not today attempt further to define the
  kinds of material I understand to be embraced . .
  . but I know it when I see it.
• Corruption is a practice or behaviour that
  implies an infringement of legal/penal and/or
  non-codified social/cultural norms governing the
  exercise of offices of entrusted authority
  largely accepted in a given social context and
  period of time, which (often) results in a offset
  or benefit, direct or indirect, proper or
  improper, real or symbolic, pecuniary or
  non-pecuniary, in the short, medium or long term,
  to the office holder(s) directly involved, the
  parties to the transaction or third parties.

5
Some general characteristics concerning the
condemnation of corruption in society

• Corruption does not raise dichotomous positions.
  Nobody is in favour of corruption
• Behaviour or practice deviant from acceptable
  standards of conduct in public life what
  standards and who defines them?
• Corruption lacks a precise definition and
  consensus over its meaning, but that not stops
  people formulating judgements and
  transmitting/re-interpreting opinions formulated
  elsewhere by someone else (distortion, prejudice
  and stereotype)
• Corruption is a social construction, a product of
  social interpretations/perceptions which vary in
  space, time and across different social groupings
  (black, grey, white)
• Legal/formal and social/cultural standards are
  not necessarily concomitant, but interact ad are
  constantly being challenged and redefined in
  society. Occurrences which come closer to the
  legal/penal definitions are likely to be more
  socially condemnable by the members of that
  society in that particular time frame (N.B.
  retrospective evaluations on nature of regime,
  e.g. bribery of officers in Nazi concentration
  camps)
• Volatility of judgements (what is corruption in
  Britain may be regarded as hospitality in
  Mozambique), fluidity of judgements (occurrences
  are not interpreted similarly between those
  holding office and those not holding office),
  flexibility of judgements (efficacy versus
  probity)
• Two levels of anchorage of social judgements a
  symbolic level (morals) and a strategic one
  (action). These are not always in accordance
• Corruption is a global phenomenon,
  notwithstanding it is subject to different legal
  social definitions (internationalization of
  control and penal harmonization effect) and
  variations of opportunity structures for its
  occurrence in p particular country, society,
  group or activity.

6
With regards to perceptions of corruption how do
we measure them?

• Foreign perceptions What does CPI measure?
• Index composed of various surveys which are not
  repeated every year in each country
  (longitudinal analysis difficult to make)
• Measures perceptions and not reality (which
  remains unknown) of the volume of corruption in a
  the administration of a given country
• Restricted definition of corruption (bribery) and
  public-office focused
• Selective sample opinion of businessmen, members
  of commercial chambers, business journalists, not
  necessarily formulated on actual experience
  (stereotyped interpretations) of the performance
  of an government and administration of a foreign
  country.
• Domestic perceptions What indicators have we
  used?
• European Social Survey construction of negative
  social capital index
• Practice (active corruption) and victimisation
  (passive corruption) of bribery degree of
  condemnation of passive corruption
• Degree of lack of trust in honesty of public
  officials in dealing with citizens
• Confrontation between degree of lack of trust
  in honesty of public officials and foreign
  perceptions of corruption (CPI)?
• Confrontation between victimisation of bribery
  and degree of lack of trust in honesty of
  public officials
• ISSP motives/reasons for mobilizing social
  capital resources for petty influence trafficking
  (pulling strings)
• National Survey confirms degree of toleration to
  these practices
• Observation 1 domestic and foreign evaluations
  of performance of the administration do not
  coincide
• Observation 2 lack of trust in honesty of
  public officials without victimisation of
  bribery. How to explain?

7
Victimisation of corruption(indicator of passive
corruption)
8
Offence(indicator of active corruption)
9
Condemnation of Passive Corruption
10
Condemnation of passive corruption
11
Degree of trust in honesty of public officials in
dealing with citizens
12
Confrontation between domestic and
international evaluations of the honesty of
public administrations
13
Confrontation Ranking Domestic Evaluations and
CPI (TI)
r 0,467 p 0,021
14
Why Europeans do not express trust in honesty of
their public officials in dealing with citizens?

• Four explanatory hypotheses
• Dishonesty in the exercise of office is not
  synonymous of corruption the public opinions
  understanding of dishonesty is different from
  corruption and includes other performance
  behaviours such as antipathy, inefficiency, lack
  of rigour
• Dishonesty of public officials is perceived as a
  product of improper conduct in office other than
  bribery. These conducts are evaluated negatively
  by citizens at the symbolic level, even if at the
  strategic level they may be more flexible, and
  characterise the daily relationship between
  citizens with their administration (nepotism,
  clientelism, favouritism, petty influence
  trafficking, gifts and hospitality, etc.)
• Public officials are regarded with prejudice and
  the public administration suffers from a
  stereotyped perception of corruption. Cases of
  corruption or other improper conduct detected,
  especially when of a systemic dimension, are
  generalised to the public administration as a
  whole. Public officials are corrupt, but the
  active actor to the transaction escapes
  evaluations (see Tables). The citizen emerges as
  a victim of the system and not a party to the
  transaction. The flamed way in which the media
  deal with both corruption allegations/cases and
  anticorruption responses, international
  evaluation reports (TI, GRECO, OECD, IMF/WB) and
  measurements (CPI), feed this abusive
  simplification of what remains a complex
  phenomenon
• The perception of dishonesty derives from non
  ethical factors, directly or indirectly related
  to the performance of public administration the
  discontent of public officials viewed as the
  visible and structuring face of public policies,
  the weigh of bureaucracy (red tape) and slowness
  of administrative processes.

15
Explanatory hypotheses on the lack of trust on
honesty of public officials in dealing with
citizens
16
What is social capital?

• There is no consensual definition of corruption
  (better defined in terms of its functions not
  what it is, but what is it for)
• Two levels of mobilization individual (Bourdieu
  1986) and network/societal (Putnam 1993, 2000)
• Social capital is about mutual aid and
  cooperative endeavours between individuals
  resulting from their membership in social
  networks and associations. Social capital
  produces diffuse benefits for society (Putnam
  1993, 2000)
• Social capital is also an investment of the
  individual in social relations in view of
  expectable returns for personal benefit (i.e.
  independently of the good or evil that may
  cause to society) (Bourdieu 1986 Nan Lin 2001).
  Social capital is not one thing but various kinds
  of social relations grouped according to their
  function in producing returns to individuals
  (Coleman 1990).
• Two types of functions/externalities positive
  (Putnam 1993 Fukuyama 1999 Uslaner 2001) and
  negative (Portes 1998 Putnam 2000 Warren 2004)
• Social capital produces social goods better
  democracy, less corruption, better quality of
  life, more security, more prosperity
• Social capital also produces social bads
  facilitates organised crime, terrorism,
  clientelism, etc.

17
How to measure negative social capital?

• Corruption breeds in contexts of widespread
  distrust in interpersonal and institutional
  relations, where norms of reciprocity and
  strategic trust guaranteeing security of return
  and resources (economic and contacts) abound.
• Taking into consideration its condemnable nature,
  corruption results in the creation and
  maintenance of complex contexts of socialization
  between actors, some directly involved in the
  secret pact, others working to assist and/or
  camouflage those exchanges, thus reducing the
  need for explicit language. Corrupt actors are
  social animals.
• A business climate is created to ensure trust and
  reciprocity between the parties (omertá) they
  know what needs to be done, they are aware of the
  gains for each of the implicated players. In
  short, corruption needs social capital in order
  to ensure safety of returns.
• Empirical studies on social capital tend to focus
  on the social goods it produces to society. The
  major components of (positive) social capital
  are trust, norms of reciprocity and the
  involvement or membership in (formal) social
  networks (Loek Halman 2003 262).
• We propose to look only at the components of
  social capital that favour corruption in the
  public administration. We call the aggregate of
  these components negative social capital, i.e.
  resources than can be mobilized in order to
  obtain an illicit advantage
• Context (low moral costs) low levels of trust in
  interpersonal relations (hobbesian context of
  all against all passive lack of trust on
  others active lack of trust on the honesty of
  others in relation to the self) (A8 e A9) and as
  a citizens in relation to the state apparatus
  (lack of trust in the honesty of public officials
  in dealing with citizens) (E6)
• Ethical predispositions/civicness predisposition
  to disobey the law (E18) and to act dishonestly
  (E17)
• Means resources/contacts able to mobilize in
  order to get benefits/services not entitled to
  (E23)
• Norms of reciprocity to celebrate illicit
  pacts/agreements (strategic trust) (E13)
• Sources of means/contacts sociability (degree of
  socialization with affinity groups and non
  organic social networks. Feeds strategic trust
  and means) (C2) low civicness (lack of
  membership in organic social networks
  associations of a political, civic and other
  nature (B14 e B15).

18
Inconsistencies and precautions to be taken when
reading the various indicators/components of
negative social capital

• Levels of trust in interpersonal relations (A8
  and A9) beware of previous authoritarian
  experiences (recent past) and processes of
  democratic transition
• Levels of trust on honesty of public officials in
  dealing with citizens (E6) beware of stereotypes
  (the majority of countries have a negative image
  of their public administration or at least they
  do not express an assertive trust)
  generalisation of known corruption cases
  (narrated and diffused) to the whole public
  administration. Although we could not incorporate
  the ISSP indicator on the performance of the
  administration (civil service spirit), we will
  use it as the motivation that leads citizens to
  mobilize negative social capital to obtain what
  they are not entitled to
• Predisposition to disobey the law (E18) and to
  act dishonestly (E17) the indicators are
  value-loaded, hence likely to suffer from
  excessive rectitude/virtue
• Question on means/contacts to mobilize in order
  to obtain illicit advantages (E23) suffers from a
  conception error the answers available mix the
  possibility of incurring in the practice, i.e.
  the means available to mobilize (how many family
  members or friends could you ask for help), with
  the evaluation of the practice in itself (I
  would never do it). They also mix an illicit
  product/act (service/benefit not entitled to)
  with a solidarity term to qualify the action
  (ask for help), but this may be less
  problematic (translation problems).
• Norms of reciprocity / strategic trust (E13)
  the indicator used is value-loaded, hence likely
  to suffer from excessive rectitude/virtue
• Sociability (C2) in the case of friends,
  sociability can result/occur as a result of
  membership in organic social networks
• Low civicness / lack of membership in organic
  networks (political, civic or of any other
  associative nature) (B14 e B15) membership in
  political parties, trade unions, associations,
  civic movements is regarded as beneficial to
  democracy, hence non-membership means that the
  citizen is disengaged from society this
  indicator must be read together with the degree
  of sociability in non-organic social networks.

19

20
Negative social capital and propensity to
corruption
21
Cluster mean 16,9
Cluster mean 57,1
Cluster mean 62,9
Cluster mean 48,2
Cluster mean 44,1
Cluster mean 45,7
Cluster mean 82,5
22
Negative social capital and cluster analysis
23
CPI (TI) and Negative Social Capital Ranking
r-0,665 p0,001
24

• What motivates portuguese to
• "pull some strings"?
• ISSP 2004

25
Organizational factors deliverance performance
Public service Commitment to serve people
26
Organizational factors litigation performance
Public service Correcting own mistakes
27
Organizational factors ethical performance
Public service Involvement in corruption
28

• What is the acceptability/condemnation of these
  practices?
• Cultural Factors

29
(No Transcript)
30
Cultural Factors
Corruption Social Index
Restricted 11,3
Somewhat Restricted 54
Broad 5,5
Somewhat Broad 29,2