Examining the Social and Individual Determinants of Corruption
Many anti-corruption conversations at BriberyMatters focus either on corporate compliance or the quality of countries’ public sector institutions. Less examined are the social determinants, individual behaviors and economic incentives behind corruption. What motivates an official to demand, or a citizen or firm to pay, a bribe? To answer those questions, could we treat anti-corruption like a social science experiment, testing a hypothesis against empirical evidence? If given an opportunity in the future, could such an approach allow us to rebuild better anti-corruption programs within the international development sector?
To explore these ideas, I spoke recently with Christopher Yenkey, Associate Professor in the Sonoco International Business Department at the University of South Carolina Darla Moore School of Business, and a core faculty member of the university’s Rule of Law Collaborative. Yenkey is an economic sociologist concentrating on organizational theory, market formation in developing countries, corruption, corporate wrongdoing and social distrust, among other topics. In Yenkey’s view, the field has no lack of theories about why corruption happens, accompanied by accepted wisdom about how to design and implement anti-corruption programs. He argues that anti-corruption research needs rigorous field testing of known anti-corruption strategies, akin to the randomized field trials that support public health efforts. “Corruption is a social disease,” he explained, “so we should have a stronger focus on testing social cures.
Yenkey’s interest in this topic arose from his graduate study of nascent stock exchanges in Africa, in particular how to create an exchange in a context of low transparency and thin information. “Everyone he met," he told me, “was reading Douglass North, and understood the importance of sound institutions.” When a major fraud scandal erupted during his fieldwork at the Nairobi Securities Exchange, he studied the social factors that explained fraud victimization. The results showed a surprising pattern: clients of the same ethnic group as the corrupt stockbroker were more, not less, likely to be victimized, because these clients assumed the broker with whom they shared an ethnicity was trustworthy, and thus did less due diligence. That work led Yenkey to the study of corruption itself, including empirical analyses of when and why average citizens say no to petty bribery, when they take part, and what leads them to determine that participating is in their interests.
Yenkey sees the behavioral roots of corruption in concerns about status and dignity, as much as about money. As a result, he thinks that people can be reoriented to think differently about the public good, and thus to self-regulate as an anti-corruption strategy. However, he cautions, making that change is easier said than done.
For example, he described a recently-published paper (behind paywall) he co-authored showing that Kenyan citizens are willing to pay petty bribes that help them navigate a personal dilemma, such as getting out of a (deserved) speeding ticket, or getting a new job after being fired for poor performance. Yet at the same time, those same respondents conceded that such “self-interested” bribes are damaging to the public good – just as damaging as a bribe paid to an abusive official who demands payment for a required service. In fact, respondents reported being more likely to feel shame or embarrassment when paying such “self-interested” bribes, which means those payments are more likely to remain secret. The study also found a surprising “preaching to the choir” effect in common anti-corruption messaging: warnings that participating in corruption will harm others in society is primarily effective on those who already strive to avoid participating in bribery. This tendency thus leaves the most problematic participants in bribery unchanged.
As noted, Yenkey would like to see future anti-corruption efforts treated like vaccine trials: rather than rely on theory, the anti-corruption community needs to design interventions, test them, and collect evidence. As an example of what he has in mind, Yenkey is looking to launch an analysis of what will happen when there is an end to the war in Ukraine, once reconstruction money begins to flood in. He would like to research the motives and behaviors of the country’s procurement officers now, so that effective interventions are ready before the money arrives. As he put it, the incentive to extract is always there; the aim should be to determine what will reliably hold that incentive in check, and test and evaluate responses, and implement the needed interventions.
Governance, Democracy and Economic Development Expert