Corruption in its context

The value of thinking about contrasting syndromes of corruption is to frame a key question of reform: what underlying processes and problems shape a society’s corruption problems, and how should those circumstances figure into reform scenarios? When it comes to grappling with such questions in real societies, combinations of participation and institutions are no more than useful simplifications; various examples of a given syndrome will not look exactly alike. Participation and institutions do not determine every detail of a country’s corruption situation; key personalities and groups, events, popular responses, and the ever-present law of unintended consequences will all modify the impact of deeper influences. International factors can also be critical. Moreover, real societies – particularly larger and more diverse ones – may experience more than one syndrome of corruption in different levels, economic sectors, or segments of society. Still, the syndromes scheme can be a useful step beyond one-dimensional corruption indices, and can help us sort out important similarities and contrasts in the predominant forms of corruption countries experience.

While it is tempting to classify corruption cases in terms of immediate techniques – bribery, extortion, judicial corruption, violence – those sorts of characteristics do not tell us much about deeper influences on corruption and reform, and do not take us very far in terms of distinguishing among various societies’ corruption problems. Even if they did, we lack comprehensive evidence as to how often, or where, a country experiences a given corruption technique. The value of examining broader and deeper influences is that we can compare such factors across societies or over time with a useful degree of accuracy. The initial syndromes analysis (Johnston 2005a) relied on a series of country-level indicators and case studies to establish and test the four basic categories, but in examining a given society those who know it well can use a number of other kinds of knowledge to make similar judgments. Indeed, one critical common element among the various approaches to be discussed below is that there is no substitute for extensive local knowledge. Moreover, applying that knowledge to the four syndrome categories should not be a matter of trying to “get the right answer”; instead, the hope is that the syndromes lend depth and insight to what knowledgeable observers have already seen.