corruption
Corruption is a form of dishonesty or a criminal offense that is undertaken by a person or an organization that is entrusted in a position of authority to acquire illicit benefits or abuse power for one's gain. Corruption may involve activities like bribery, influence peddling, embezzlement, and fraud as well as practices that are legal in many countries, such as lobbying. Political corruption occurs when an office-holder or other governmental employee acts in an official capacity for personal gain.
Historically, "corruption" had a broader meaning concerned with an activity's impact on morals and societal well-being: for example, the ancient Greek philosopher Socrates was condemned to death in part for "corrupting the young".
Contemporary corruption is perceived as most common in kleptocracies, oligarchies, narco-states, authoritarian states, and mafia states, however, more recent research and policy statements acknowledge that it also exists in wealthy capitalist economies. In How Corrupt is Britain, David Whyte reveals that corruption exists "across a wide range of venerated institutions" in the UK, ranked as one of the least corrupt countries by the Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI). In a 2022 speech on "Modern Corruption", USAID Administrator Samantha Power stated: "Corruption is no longer just about individual autocrats pilfering their nation's wealth to live large", but also involves sophisticated transnational networks, including financial institutions hidden in secrecy. Responding to Whyte's book, George Monbiot criticized the CPI for its narrow definition of corruption that surveys mostly only Western executives about bribery. Similarly, others point out that "global metrics systematically under-measure 'corruption of the rich' - which tends to be legalized, institutionalized, and ambiguously unethical - as opposed to 'corruption of the poor'".
Corruption and crime are endemic sociological occurrences that appear regularly in virtually all countries on a global scale in varying degrees and proportions. Recent data suggests corruption is on the rise. Each nation allocates domestic resources for the control and regulation of corruption and the deterrence of crime. Strategies undertaken to counter corruption are often summarized under the umbrella term anti-corruption. Additionally, global initiatives like the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals 16 also have a targeted goal which is supposed to reduce corruption in all of its forms substantially. Recent initiatives like the Tax Justice Network go beyond bribery and theft and bring attention to tax abuses.
Definitions and scales
Stephen D. Morris, a professor of politics, wrote that political corruption is the illegitimate use of public power to benefit a private interest. Economist Ian Senior defined corruption as an action to secretly provide a good or a service to a third party to influence certain actions which benefit the corrupt, a third party, or both in which the corrupt agent has authority. World Bank economist Daniel Kaufmann extended the concept to include "legal corruption" in which power is abused within the confines of the law—as those with power often have the ability to make laws for their protection. The effect of corruption in infrastructure is to increase costs and construction time, lower the quality and decrease the benefit.
Corruption is a complex phenomenon and can occur on different scales. Corruption ranges from small favors between a small number of people (petty corruption), to corruption that affects the government on a large scale (grand corruption), and corruption that is so prevalent that it is part of the everyday structure of society, including corruption as one of the symptoms of organized crime (systemic corruption). "Corruption of the rich" is particularly hard to measure and largely excluded from conventional metrics like the CPI.
A number of indicators and tools have been developed which can measure different forms of corruption with increasing accuracy; but when those are impractical, one study suggests looking at bodyfat as a rough guide after finding that obesity of cabinet ministers in post-Soviet states was highly correlated with more accurate measures of corruption.
Petty theft, grand theft, speed money, access money
Political economist Yuen Yuen Ang "unbundles corruption" into four types, encompassing both petty and grand corruption as well as legal and illegal versions: petty theft, grand theft, speed money, access money. According to her definition, speed money "means petty bribes that businesses or citizens pay to bureaucrats to get around hurdles or speed things up." This is the kind of corruption associated with the "efficient grease hypothesis," which economists found burdensome to businesses in practice. Ang defines access money as "high-stakes rewards extended by business actors to powerful officials, not just for speed, but to access exclusive, valuable privileges." Most theories about bribery focus on speed money, but neglects access money. "From a businessperson's point of view, access money is less a tax than an investment... making it more sludge than grease." The Unbundled Corruption Index measures the prevalence of these four types of corruption.
Whereas corruption with theft and speed money is endemic in poor countries, access money can be found in both poor and rich countries.
Whereas corruption with theft and speed money is endemic in poor countries, access money can be found in both poor and rich countries.