Corruption

GV313-6-AU: Authoritarianism
“Upon taking the ‘Corruption’ module, you are disappointed with how
political scientist conceptualize and measure corruption. In your essay,
outline a better measurement of corruption.”
Nicholas Iswa Jais

1601496
Nj16609@essex.ac.uk
Abstract: Traditional methods in defining and measure corruption is severely

criticized and sometimes outdated in the modern and pacing society. With the
development of a more well based research created by academics will
certainly provide a suitable measurement to corruption or at least help define
its definition fairly. Thus this paper will generate a possible answer to an
alternate approach in measuring corruption from the old traditional
perspective. This paper will acknowledge the work provided by (Kurer, 2005):
“Corruption: An Alternative Approach to Its Definition and Measurement” as
guidance to answering most of the questions being raised. The first section (1)
we would describe why we should measure corruption. The second part (2)
reviews the major existing measures and definition of corruption plus criticism
of it. Thirdly (3) the paper will proceed to provide an alternative to the
previous section and lastly (4) conclude with an overview of what have been
discussed to so far.
Final-Year Student.
Lecturer: Marius Radean
Word Count: 3015
1
Introduction
Why Measure? According to the book written by (Sampford, Shacklock, Connors, & Galtung,
2016) titled “Measuring Corruption” provided an extensive understanding why measuring
corruption is important. Ultimately, common sense term, corruption undermines the
fairness, stability and efficiency of a society and its ability to deliver sustainable
development to its members. Moreover, corruption distorts the ‘procurement process and
has resulted in the selection of uneconomic ‘white elephant 1’ projects which have saddled
many developing countries with debts which they cannot repay. They argued that, the
viability of democratic institutions and of market economies is threatened if corruption
cannot be brought under control2.
In addition, (Sampford, Shacklock, Connors, & Galtung, 2016) believes that a widespread
expectation of corruption can breed a cycle in which its incidence increases inexorably and
they continue by stating that the unscrupulous are rewarded and the honest become
demoralized. As a result, the legitimacy of the state in the eyes of ordinary people is
compromised. Furthermore, Corruption should be pursued, not merely because it is a moral
issue, and not just because it is bad for business, but because ‘people everywhere pay the
cost of corruption one way or another and none more so than the people of the developing
world and countries in transition’3.
(Langseth, 2016) is one of the contributors to the book also provide a compelling argument
on why we should measure corruption. He argues that corruption represents a ‘leakage 4’ of
resources from institutions that are supposed to be using them for social objectives. A
further explanation is needed here where he exuberated an extravagant definition. He
stated that it is not only the large-scale larceny of contract rigging, kickbacks and misuse or
simply misappropriation of public funds that represent leakage. Moreover, he suggested
that the leakage can be in the form of unofficial user fees5, grease payments or even free
time from service not performed. Langseth stated that the leakage results in the creation of
a fertile breeding ground for grand corruption, diverting already scarce public service
resources which looks like “double taxes” to the public. (Sampford, Shacklock, Connors, &
Galtung, 2016)
He suggested that another reason to measure corruption is that resources may not be
maximized because of information asymmetries and constraints6. In other word the public
have the right to know what services their money should be buying. He argued that a major
reason for asymmetry is the introspective nature of institutional information system 7.
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Sampford, Charles J. G., et al. Measuring Corruption. Routledge, 2016.
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Where even in the best environments, however, the date tends to be introspective
concerned with the viewpoint of the institution rather than the users of the services. He
pointed out that many ‘users8’ are not in contact with the services and their opinions cannot
be registered in a service-based information system.
According to (Langseth, 2016), the second asymmetry concerns the lack of information on
which people base their expectations, (Sampford, Shacklock, Connors, & Galtung, 2016).
Frequently, public service users have little idea of precisely what services their money
should be buying and are consequently subjected to local market dynamics. Langseth
argued that ‘they cannot tell whether a particular shortfall in services, or any number of
reasons linked to system leakage, the formation of expectation becomes rather difficult’ 9.
Henceforth, that concludes why measuring corruption is important, in the next paragraph,
we will look at the classical review of the definition of corruption and its measurement plus
its criticism.
Literature Review
As mention before, we will acknowledge the work provided by (Kurer, 2005) “Corruption: An
Alternative Approach to its Definition and Measurement” as it provides a clear and robust
alternative to the traditional values that is associated with measuring corruption. He
pointed out that the definition of corruption has progressed little since
(Arnold.J.Heidenheimer, 1970) groundbreaking distinction between definitions cented on
public opinion, public office and public interest. Where all these definitions are severely
criticized by him where he pointed out that the public opinion definition of corruption,
based on what public opinion believes is corrupt, is thought to fail the operationability test
because of the difficulty of pinning down ‘public opinion10’. Similarly goes for public interest
definition: it presupposes a generally accepted agreement on what constitutes the public
good.
On the other hand, Heidenheimer suggested that the public office definition, defining
corruption as violation formal rules of office, is operational but fails to cover cases where
legislation itself is corrupt (for example, ‘legislative corruption’ such as the indiscriminate
enrichment of legislators), and it is inapplicable in pre-modern settings 11. The argument
continues by suggesting that underneath these traditional concepts of corruption lurks a
much older conception of corruption based on distributive justice which Kurer calls this the
‘impartiality principle12’ whereby a state ought to treat equally those who deserve equally.
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10
Heidenheimer, Arnold J. Political Corruption: Readings in Comparative Analysis. Hold, Rinehart and Winston,
1970.
11
Heidenheimer, Arnold J. Political Corruption: Readings in Comparative Analysis. Hold, Rinehart and Winston,
1970.
12
Kurer, Oskar. “Corruption: An Alternative Approach to Its Definition and Measurement.” Journal of Research in
Crime and Delinquency, 2005, journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/j.1467-9248.2005.00525.x.
3
Kurer elaborate the importance with this principle because it provides a much more
plausible reason for why the public condemns corruption than alternative approaches, and
moreover, it is recognized fairly universally: the implicit distinction between ‘public’ and
‘private’ is certainly neither as ‘modern’ nor ‘Western’ as many have claimed, (Kurer, 2005).
Kurer argues that the universality of the principle of impartiality does not imply universality
of its content: who deserve equally or alternatively on which grounds discrimination 13 is
ruled out, will be answered differently at different periods in time and will vary from society
to society. However, Kurer also mentioned that the impartiality principle does not 14 demand
rule-bound administration and thus underpins the public office definition of corruption with
arguments of distributional justice. Bureaucratic norms are meant to ensure, after all,
precisely this –that ‘decisions be made without regard to personal interest and group
pressure’ (Braibanti, 1962). Ultimately, Kurer, suggested that impartiality principles provide
a starting point for the discussion of both corruptions in ‘traditional 15’ societies and
contemporary political process and the allocation of rights and resources. Moreover, he
added that the principle allows the application of the concept to the private sector without
leading to inflationary usage16.
Kurer proceeds by criticizing current literature on the classic definition of corruption in

particularly of the public office definitions, for being ‘culturally relativistic 17’. Thus he stated
that most of the contributors to the definitions debate have implicitly judged definitions by
the ‘public opinion test18’, perhaps for the sensible reasons that the evolution of the term
has indeed been closely connected to the breaking of public office norms and therefore to
public disapproval. In addition, he stated that the public opinion has, for this reason, taken
on a peculiar dual role19 in this definition debate –as a ‘source’ for a definition (the public
opinion definition) and as a criterion for evaluating other definitions. This practice is
followed explicitly in what follows: conformity to public opinion constitutes a criterion that
determines the quality of the definition of corruption, (Kurer, 2005).
(Johnston, 1996) called the ‘classical’ view, corruption describes a society or a state that has
lapsed from a standard of goodness. Kurer states that alternatively, corruption can relate to
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qualities of individuals actions, whereas in the classical view social degradation is implicit in
the term ‘corruption, corrupt individual acts might well be beneficial social consequences 20’.
However, the concerns here was with individual actions, what Johnston called ‘behavioral
corruption21’, or more precisely the criteria that distinguish a corrupt from a non-corrupt
act.
The most common ‘objective22’ type of definitions today are public office definitions: corrupt
actions violate rules of public office and are motivated by private gain. ‘Private’, in turn, is
understood as a personal, close family, or private clique pecuniary or status gain or gain in
influence ((Nye, 1967), a definition that will be adhered to in what follows, proposed by
(Kurer, 2005), and the advantage of this definition is that it scores high on the
operationability count: what constitute breaking formal rules and regulations is relatively
easily established and, in principle at least, observable, as are the gains derived by the
official in question. Kurer proceed by stating that,’ unobservable in principle is the
motivation, but this is of moderate practical concern, since someone who breaks rules and
regulations and pockets a reward for doing so is not generally motivated by altruism 23’.
On the contrary, we now move forward to the alternative section where Kurer further
elaborates the connection between ‘impartiality’ to corruption in which he suggest the
concept of impartiality belongs to the realm of distributive justice and embodies the idea
that those who are equally deserving ought to be treated equally 24. This suggest that the
idea of corruption to the impartiality principle suggests that the two are inseparably bound
together. And Kurer suggested that corruption involves a holder of public office violating the
impartiality principle in order to achieve a private gain25. Furthermore, operationability
requires that the impartiality principle be fleshed out by specific rules based on what might
be called non-discrimination norms that prohibit certain type of discrimination. In other
words, Kurer, states that these are the rules that specify the categories of cases that
deserve equally and ought to be treated equally and whose unequal 26 treatment constitutes
a case of corruption.
Kurer, continues by saying that non-discrimination norms relate to the distribution of rights
and obligations – who gets what, when and how – and provide bounds within which this
distribution is to be confined if it is to pass as morally acceptable. Typical non-discrimination
norms prohibit public officials from discriminating in favor of those who are socially close
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21
Johnston, Michael. “The Search for Definitions: the Vitality of Politics and the Issue of Corruption.” International
Social Science Journal, vol. 48, no. 149, 1996, pp. 321–335., doi:10.1111/1468-2451.00035.
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(nepotism) or who are able to pay the highest price (bribe). Generally, corrupt acts can now
be defined as violations of non-discrimination norms governing the behavior of holders of
public office that are motivated by private gain. (Kurer, 2005)
Finally, Kurer proceeds by explaining what are the implications of this approach for
measuring corruption? He explains that a definition has nothing to contribute to the debate
on the reliability27 and precision of measures of corruption: it is exclusively concerned with
the scope of the actions covered, and thus with the validity of the measurement. Kurer
suggested that the ideal measurement of the level of corruption generally captures the
incidence of all practices28 that are corrupt according to our definition – all actions that
violate non-discrimination norms. The validity criterion however has implications for the
discussion of private-to-private29 corruption, for the scope of legislative corruption and for
the cultural relativity problem arising when corruption is measured.
Moreover, Kurer argues that if surveys try to assess the level of corruption generally, they
need to cover corrupt practices comprehensively if they are to be valid 30. He stated that the
impartiality rule suggests a range of additional practices that ought to be part of a
comprehensive survey but are not generally included in current surveys. (Kurer, 2005) have
categorized corrupt acts into two broad areas: administrative and legislative corruption. The
latter category has been broken down into corruption influencing the policy-making process
itself (‘input’) and that influencing the outcome (‘outcome’): (a) administrative corruption -
practices including bribery, extortion, nepotism and misuse of public funds in public
administration and the judiciary; (b) corrupt influence on the legislative process (‘input’):
practices including payments to politicians and administrators to shape rules and
regulations in their favor generally and, more specifically, party financing and the sale of
laws and decrees; (c) corrupt rules and regulations (‘output’): (i) practices including
privileges in taxation and the allocation of government resources for particular groups
(including the political class); and (ii) the absence of effective legislative measures and
programs to contain corruption (including the independence of the judiciary) 31.
(Kurer, 2005) said, ‘although existing surveys that focus on practices (as opposed to the level
of ‘corruption’ generally) do cover both violations of administrative rules and corrupt
influence on legislative process, this is not the case with the ‘output’ side of legislative
corruption’. He argues by stating that none of the surveys contains questions on the quality
of legislative measures and programs (or the political will of the government) to contain
corruption – the power and independence of the auditor general or the judiciary or legal
impediments to whistle-blowing (such as the nature of whistleblower legislation and libel
laws). Furthermore, none of them looks at distributive justice in terms of privileges granted
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to narrow special interest groups or to the political elite itself, said Kurer. On the contrary,
Kurer points out that if indeed accepted that corruption is a question of violating 32 the
impartiality principle and the non-discriminations norms associated with it, then
overstepping certain bounds in providing legal privileges to particular groups and in failing
to constrain the spread to corruption will be perceived as corrupt. Therefore, there is a
certain new approach on corruption does suggest a ‘broader and richer concept and
comparison’33.
In addition, Kurer elaborates that the cultural relativity problem arises because non-
discrimination norms are culture-specific34. He continues and state that how serious
comparative studies affected by the cultural relativity problem will depend on what
precisely is measured and compared. It is useful to ‘distinguish three types of comparisons:
comparisons of the different kinds of practices that are considered corrupt at different times
and place by different sections of the population; comparison of beliefs about the causes,
extent and consequences of corruption; and comparison about actual levels of corrupt
practices35’.
According to (Kurer, 2005), the study of corruption is a comparative study of different

practices that public opinion considers s corrupt in different context and such comparison
makes sense if the concept of corruption is universally understood as a violation of public
office norms, and if this argument is correct, more specifically of the impartiality principle.
Methodologically, such studies follow the lines that have been taken, for example, by the
World Values Surveys (Inglehart, 1997). Furthermore, Kurer argues that such comparisons
ought to be able to solve the issue of whether the suspected systemic differences in public
opinion on what constitutes corruption do exist36, and if they do, whether they exhibit the
pattern that is often postulated – that they are related to economic factors such as poverty
or ‘cultural’ factors such as extensive family or kinship systems.
Moving on, (Kurer, 2005) suggested that the second type of comparison compares beliefs
about corruption which of interest, is not primarily the frequency of the occurrence of
certain practices, but beliefs among different strata of society about the pervasiveness and
importance of corruption – however defined by the respondent – in political decision-
making and the allocation of government resources. Kurer suggested that the interest of
such studies derives largely from the influence these beliefs have on government and
regime legitimacy.
Lastly, Kurer proposed that the third37 type of measurement attempts to capture actual
levels of corruption. He suggested that surveys are generally used as proxy and this is
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because these levels are unobservable. Here the cultural relativity problem comes into play:
according to Kurer, these comparisons involve standards of measurements according to a
set of predetermined formal and informal standards that ignore local norms. He raised a
concern that this becomes a problem primarily because surveys do not specify what is
meant by corruption and respondents are asked unspecified general questions – to assess
the ‘level of corruption’ or whether ‘bribing and corruption prevail or do not prevail in the
economy’. Kurer criticized the weakness of Transparency International’s corruption
perception index, which is based on many questions of this kind (Lambsdroff, 2002).
On the contrary, Kurer quoted that other indices, such as BEEPS (the business environment
and enterprise performance survey), avoid this problem by focusing on specific practices 38:
the sale of parliamentary votes, laws and presidential decrees to private interests; the sale
of court decisions; central bank mishandling of funds; contributions paid by private interest
to political parties and election campaigns; patronage defined as public officials appointing
their friends and relatives to official positions; and bribes paid to public officials to avoid
taxes and regulations (Hellman, 2000). Therefore, as long as these practices are interpreted
uniformly, the cultural relativity problem does not enter at this stage. Kurer also stated that
whether the practices are indeed condemned universally can now be treated as a
conceptually separate question to be analyzed with the help of studies about attitudes to
corruption. Nevertheless, according to (Kurer, 2005), even here the problem of cultural
relativity is of limited importance as long as comparative studies focus on the incidence of
reasonably well-understood practices for which there is a priori evidence that they break
non-discrimination norms.
Conclusion
To conclude this essay, this paper has at least answered the intended question raised.
Firstly, it started by defining why we should measure corruption the basis of (Sampford,
Shacklock, Connors, & Galtung, 2016) Measuring Corruption. While also we acknowledge
the contribution of (Langseth, 2016) to the alternative definition. Moving on we put forward
(Kurer, 2005), “Corruption: An Alternative Approach to Its Definition and Measurement” as
our guidance to answer the important question where includes (1) classical review on the
defining corruption and (2) we provide an alternative approach to the definition and lastly
(3) measuring the new alternate corruption definition.
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Bibliography
Arnold.J.Heidenheimer. (1970). Political Corruption: Readings in Comparative Analysis . Holt,
Rinehart & Winston of Canada Ltd.
Braibanti, R. (1962, December ). Reflections on Bureaucratic Corruption. Retrieved from
Wiley Online Library : https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1467-
9299.1962.tb01294.x
Hellman, J. S. (2000). ‘Measuring Governance, Corruption, and State Capture’. Washington
DC: Policy Research Working Paper .
Inglehart, R. (1997). Modernization and Postmodernization Cultural, Economic, and Political
Change in 43 Societies (ISBN9780691011806 ed.). Princeton University Press.
J.G, L. (2002). The Transparency International Corruption Perceptions Index 2002.
(Transparency International ) Retrieved February 24, 2019, from Tranparency :
https://www.transparency.de/
Johnston, M. (1996, September ). The Search for Definitions: the vitality of politics and the
issue of corruption. (W. O. Library, Producer) Retrieved February 24, 2019, from
Wiley Online Library : https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/1468-
2451.00035
Kurer, O. (2005). Corruption: An Alternative Approach to Its Definitions and Measurement.
(Sagepub.com) Retrieved February 24, 2019, from Political Studies :
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/j.1467-9248.2005.00525.x
Langseth, P. (2016). Measuring Corruption. In C. SAMPFORD, A. SHACKLOCK, C. CONNORS, &
F. GALTUNG, Measuring Corruption (pp. 7-14). Australia: Routledge .
Nye, J. S. (1967). Corruption and Political Development: A Cost-Benefit Analysis . In J. Nye,
Corruption and Political Development: A Cost-Benefit Analysis (Vol. 61, pp. 417-427).
The American Political Science Review .
Sampford, C., Shacklock, A., Connors, C., & Galtung, F. (2016). Measuring Corruption. New
York , NY, USA: Routledge .

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GV313-6-AU: Authoritarianism

Nicholas Iswa Jais

Abstract: Traditional methods in defining and measure corruption is severely

Kurer proceeds by criticizing current literature on the classic definition of corruption in

According to (Kurer, 2005), the study of corruption is a comparative study of different

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