Abstract
This book focuses on the role of norms in the description, explanation, prediction and combat of corruption. It conceives corruption as a ubiquitous problem, constructed by specific traditions, values, norms and institutions. The chapters concentrate on the relationship between corruption and social as well as legal norms, providing comparative perspectives from different academic disciplines, theoretical and methodological backgrounds, and various country-studies. Due to the nature of social norms that are embedded in personal, local and organizational contexts, the contributions in the book focus, in particular, on the individual and institutional level of analysis (micro- and meso-mechanisms). The book will be of interest to students and scholars across the fields of political science, public administration, socio-legal studies and psychology.
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Notes
- 1.
This is, in particular, the case where the pioneering anti-corruption strategies of the 1990s were first implemented in Eastern European states. For instance, Hungary’s score on corruption has gradually worsened over the past decade, and Poland continues to face a deeply entrenched problem of corruption and scores the worst in this category of all categories evaluated by Freedom House’s Nations in Transit (Freedom House 2015).
- 2.
Klitgaard’s corruption formula is based on Becker’s groundbreaking work on crime and punishment (1968). His classical economic approach considers criminal behavior as a positive cost-benefit analysis of expected gains, that is, the output of the criminal activity, and expected costs—the potential punishment for the criminal activity. According to the theory, a rational actor would opt for criminal—thus, corrupt—behavior once the expected benefits exceed the expected costs.
- 3.
The most prominent example is Hong Kong’s overly successful anti-corruption agency that has been used as an institutional blueprint for developing countries without producing comparable results (Lawson 2009).
- 4.
Based on panel data for 130–189 countries, Mungiu-Pippidi (2011) shows that the existence of an anti-corruption agency or an ombudsman office has no statistical impact on control of corruption.
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Kubbe, I., Engelbert, A. (2018). Introduction. In: Kubbe, I., Engelbert, A. (eds) Corruption and Norms. Political Corruption and Governance. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-66254-1_1
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