The View | Transparency key in fighting graft
Petty corruption often easier to identify and classify than sophisticated swindles
The daughter of Hong Kong’s chief executive leaves her carry-on bag behind, and airport security officials bring it to her as she boards an international flight. A local newspaper finds out, and the story splashes across the front pages with big headlines. Leung Chun-ying is asked to explain himself, legislators and aviation unions cry foul, internet users spew venom on social networks, and the incident gets dubbed “bag-gate”.
Hong Kong is one of the least corrupt places in the world, coming in 18th place out of 168 countries ranked by Transparency International. Does the citizenry’s intolerance for the little abuses of power help prevent the larger crimes? Recall, for example, the uproar when it was discovered that government officials had remodelled their homes without obtaining the proper permits and paying any relevant conversion costs.
On the mainland ... citizens, activists or journalists who independently identify or publicise corruption can face jail or other penalties
One wonders if there is a “broken window” effect at play here, as in the theory first propounded by James Wilson, that if a broken window in a building is not fixed, then more will get busted, since it seems no one cares. Buildings in disrepair also attract larger crimes, like burglary. In the Netherlands, experimenters left a €5 note sticking out of a letterbox in a see-through envelope, and 13 per cent of those who passed took it. However, if the letterbox was sprayed with graffiti, then 27 per cent of passers-by pocketed the cash.
I asked Johann Graf Lambsdorff, who teaches economic theory at the University of Passau in Germany, and has worked on corrupt behaviour, whether intolerance of petty abuses of power was strongly correlated with lower overall corruption. As another example, Communist Party general secretary Xi Jinping’s corruption campaign in mainland China seeks to catch both the “tigers and flies”, and the latter goal has led to a severe curtailment of banquets and gift-giving by officials.
“The wining-and-dining issue is something special because it links a broken window with issues of reciprocity,” Graf Lambsdorff said. However, the correlation with larger corruption was surprisingly low. “Hardly ever is there a direct request to deliver something in return for a dinner,” i.e., to violate one’s duties in order to “reciprocate”.
In the corporate world, in recent years there has been much rhetoric about “zero tolerance” for even the most petty cases of corruption. The problem, Graf Lambsdorff said, was that petty corruption was often easier to identify and classify than sophisticated swindles, so the correlation was weak.
Grand corruption is less clear. It often involves intermediaries, and transfers via shell companies in countries with little banking regulation. Corrupt actors can diffuse their responsibility through these channels and claim ignorance of laws being broken.
