Causes of Corruption Essay: an Analysis of the Topic

Transparency International separates corruption into two sects: 'according to rule' corruption and 'against the rule corruption'. 'According to rule' corruption is a situation where a person may engage in corrupt activities such as bribery in order to get preferential treatment in actions that those receiving the bribe are required to do by law. 'Against the rule' corruption is a bribe paid in order to coerce the bribe receiver to provide services they are prohibited from providing. However, while a more visible effort has been put into fighting corruption, why has it still not been curbed in developing countries? In this causes of corruption essay I will begin by discussing how public sector pay and uneducated citizens reduces the effectiveness of anti-corruption legislation. I will then consider the effect of historical and legal culture of developing countries and whether it's differences to that of developed countries plays a significant role in the failure of measures to curb corruption. 

Low rates of pay in public sector jobs is one of the main causes of corruption, particularly in developing countries. It is often the case that governments in developing countries employ too many people in public sector positions, only to realise that they cannot afford such a large workforce. This causes governments to lower wage levels to the point that those employed in the public sector cannot afford to maintain a basic standard of living on their official wages alone, and so, must engage in corruption in order to stay above the poverty line. This is very common in developing countries and can be seen in report of a field study conducted in India, a country with a large public work force who are paid very low wages. In this field study, public officials were bribed at the time of application for ration cards by one group from the study, another group used the Right to Information Act (RTIA) when applying, with a control group paying no bribe or using the RTIA with their application. The results showed that those who paid a bribe when applying and those who availed of the RTIA had their ration card application processed much quicker and all of them received their ration card in the timeframe of the field study which was one year. This is in stark contrast to the results of those who did not pay a bribe when applying for their ration card, many of who were yet to receive their ration card by the time that the field study had ended. India is a classic example of a developing country with high rates of corruption that regulations have failed to curb and where corruption has become normalised to acquire public goods. However, it is important to note that the small sample size used in this field study of 86 participants is a major limitation of the results. The evidence from this field study also strengthens the hypothesis that public official's salary and corruption have a high correlation: 'corruption will be lower in countries with higher relative salaries in public office'. While India have introduced and updated many anti-corruption acts and legislation such as The Prevention of Corruption Act (POCA) and the Right to Information Act (RTIA), the lack of education and impoverished circumstances of its citizens on such a large scale allows corruption to be and remain pervasive, as citizens are not aware of their rights or are not in a position in which they feel they can take a stand against corruption due to their critical need of public goods. While bribery of public officials occurs in both developed and developing countries, it is far more prevalent in developing countries as a result of underpaid public officials abusing their positions of power by taking advantage of uneducated citizens living in poverty, who are less likely to complain about unfair treatment. In order to curb corruption to the level of an OECD country, developing countries in particular must focus on establishing a stable, suitably sized public sector who are paid a living wage in order to deter the need for accepting bribes from the public in order to have a basic standard of living. Also until citizens are educated on anti-corruption legislation and how they can use it to protect themselves, corruption will remain to be prevalent in developing countries.

The differences in historical and legal culture of developing and developed countries is another important factor to be considered as to why there has been such little success in curbing corruption in developing countries. Another one hypothesis for the causes of corruption was that 'the effectiveness of the legal system will be greater- and hence corruption lower- on Britain and its former colonies'. The results from this study revealed that Treisman's hypothesis was correct and former British colonies tended to score at least one point lower on the perceived corruption scale. But why is this? The answer lies in the legal and cultural framework left behind by the British. Most former British colonies adopted a common law system during British rule and maintained this legal system after they were liberated from Britain. British colonies tend to place particular emphasis on the role of law in maintaining social order in their country, in comparison to other colonies. Therefore, Treisman found that this common law system and legal culture made former British colonies more likely to enforce procedural justice, deterring corrupt activities and maintaining social order than countries which were not once a British colony. This evidence suggests that one of the reasons why developing countries have struggled to reduce corruption is because they have not had a common law system and a legal culture of justice embedded historically into their country's core values and institutions. However, it is important to note the limitations of these findings. These results are based on the perceived level of corruption of a country and while this is a common way of measuring corruption, it is not completely accurate as it is based on people's perceptions rather than on quantitative data of cases of corruption. Therefore, as Treismannotes, a 'pro- British Bias' may have had an effect on the perceived corruption levels, as citizens of former British colonies were less likely to report corruption of public officials and politicians. This raises the question of whether former British colonies are in fact less corrupt or more impartial to corrupt activities taking place in their country. Nevertheless, the importance of strong legal institutions and values of justice embedded in former British colonies' core values are a tool for curbing corruption which should attempted to be adopted by other developing countries who were not a British colony in order to succeed in curbing at least perceived corruption. 

In conclusion, corruption has political, economic, social and environmental costs for the countries it is prevalent in, particularly in developing countries which are usually not as stable as developed countries. While corruption has been around for thousands of years, it is only in the last two decades that real effort has been put into curbing corruption.