The World Bank has long defined corruption as the abuse of public office for private gain. Transparency International defines it as the abuse of entrusted power for private gain. Many commentators and politicians are shying away from referring to the current scandal engulfing our police as corruption. Regardless of what label we apply to this behaviour, dishonest conduct by powerful people carries broader societal implications.
A number of studies explore dishonesty at different levels of society and government. One study by two researchers at the University of Nottingham investigated how individual honesty and the propensity to break rules correlate.
First, they developed a way to measure rule violations for a set of countries by looking at the size of a country’s shadow economy as a proxy for tax evasion, along with other measures of corruption.
Then they recruited university students in those countries to play a game. Each participant was asked to toss a six-sided die in private and report the outcome. Participants received one dollar for rolling a one, two dollars for rolling a two, and so on, except for a six, which paid nothing.
The experiments examined how players’ average choices varied across countries and whether their reported outcomes correlated with corruption levels in their home country.
If someone is completely dishonest, they would always report a five to get the maximum payout of five dollars. But because everyone has a one in six chance of rolling a five, reporting too many fives signals lying.
The researchers found that in countries with minimal rule-breaking, lying about rolling high numbers was low. This contrasted sharply with countries where rule violations were more common. Their results suggest that institutions and cultural values shape people’s likelihood of bending or breaking rules. Many individuals remain honest or limit their dishonesty in ways that mirror the overall integrity of their environment.
A further study by US researchers examined whether cultural norms influence corrupt behaviour. They investigated whether parking violations by diplomats in New York City reflected corruption levels in their home countries.
Until late 2002, members of diplomatic missions to the United Nations had immunity from parking violations. Illegally parked cars were ticketed, but there was no obligation to pay.
Researchers collected data on unpaid parking violations by diplomats from 149 countries. They also measured corruption levels using a method similar to the Corruption Perceptions Index.
They found a strong positive correlation between unpaid parking violations and home country corruption. More concerningly, the frequency of unpaid tickets increased the longer diplomats lived in New York. Diplomats from low-corruption countries showed the fastest proportional increases in violations over time.
Punishing corruption matters. In a bribery game run with co-authors in Australia, university students acted as businesses, public officials and citizens. A business and an official could collude in bribery to enrich themselves, but a citizen would bear significant monetary harm. The citizen could punish the bribery with heavy fines, but doing so required sacrificing their own money.
We recruited about 600 students in Australia and 300 in India to compare behaviour. There were major differences, particularly in willingness to punish corruption. In India, only 28 percent of citizens chose to punish bribe takers. In Australia, the figure was 53 percent.
The problem with dishonesty is that it thrives when people either engage in it or ignore it. Tolerance for rule-breaking makes corruption endemic, hard to uproot and corrosive to our shared norms of honesty.
Ananish Chaudhuri is Professor of Experimental Economics at the University of Auckland. Besides Auckland, he has taught at Harvard Kennedy School, Rutgers University, Washington State University and Wellesley College. This article was sourced HERE
First, they developed a way to measure rule violations for a set of countries by looking at the size of a country’s shadow economy as a proxy for tax evasion, along with other measures of corruption.
Then they recruited university students in those countries to play a game. Each participant was asked to toss a six-sided die in private and report the outcome. Participants received one dollar for rolling a one, two dollars for rolling a two, and so on, except for a six, which paid nothing.
The experiments examined how players’ average choices varied across countries and whether their reported outcomes correlated with corruption levels in their home country.
If someone is completely dishonest, they would always report a five to get the maximum payout of five dollars. But because everyone has a one in six chance of rolling a five, reporting too many fives signals lying.
The researchers found that in countries with minimal rule-breaking, lying about rolling high numbers was low. This contrasted sharply with countries where rule violations were more common. Their results suggest that institutions and cultural values shape people’s likelihood of bending or breaking rules. Many individuals remain honest or limit their dishonesty in ways that mirror the overall integrity of their environment.
A further study by US researchers examined whether cultural norms influence corrupt behaviour. They investigated whether parking violations by diplomats in New York City reflected corruption levels in their home countries.
Until late 2002, members of diplomatic missions to the United Nations had immunity from parking violations. Illegally parked cars were ticketed, but there was no obligation to pay.
Researchers collected data on unpaid parking violations by diplomats from 149 countries. They also measured corruption levels using a method similar to the Corruption Perceptions Index.
They found a strong positive correlation between unpaid parking violations and home country corruption. More concerningly, the frequency of unpaid tickets increased the longer diplomats lived in New York. Diplomats from low-corruption countries showed the fastest proportional increases in violations over time.
Punishing corruption matters. In a bribery game run with co-authors in Australia, university students acted as businesses, public officials and citizens. A business and an official could collude in bribery to enrich themselves, but a citizen would bear significant monetary harm. The citizen could punish the bribery with heavy fines, but doing so required sacrificing their own money.
We recruited about 600 students in Australia and 300 in India to compare behaviour. There were major differences, particularly in willingness to punish corruption. In India, only 28 percent of citizens chose to punish bribe takers. In Australia, the figure was 53 percent.
The problem with dishonesty is that it thrives when people either engage in it or ignore it. Tolerance for rule-breaking makes corruption endemic, hard to uproot and corrosive to our shared norms of honesty.
Ananish Chaudhuri is Professor of Experimental Economics at the University of Auckland. Besides Auckland, he has taught at Harvard Kennedy School, Rutgers University, Washington State University and Wellesley College. This article was sourced HERE
3 comments:
A reason why there is reluctance to call it corruption in NZ is that mates helping mates, not based on the merits of the situation, has indeed become endemic in our universities, corporates & public service in Wellington. Calling it corruption would shatter Kiwis cultural view of themselves & turn many of us into thieves. But having witnessed nearly every high up position in this nation be given to a chum or mate this past decade, that is the way NZ has actually gone. The Police Chief affair is just business as usual in Wellington and in corporate NZ these days Just look at our useless inbred boardrooms of accountants & lawyers who know each other. Its a disgrace and equally bad as the police scandal. I can't write about the names involved since the corrupt actors, many if them lawyers themselves threaten with defamation law suits, even though its true. The law profession in NZ is quietly destroying the country.
On my observation the measure of dishonesty/corruption in this country has been increasing, remorselessly, over the last 50 years. This process affects all our institutions and makes us all much the poorer. The failure of those in positions of authority to ferret out and punish the bad actors is a terminal failure of leadership and responsibility. Now we see this failure virtually everywhere, and it is a dead weight on the nation, dragging us all down with it.
And now we have the former Police Commissioner Coster handing in his ticket (again). He says he is "genuinely sorry" about the issues at hand. But thanks for the 124 grand folks. That's us, by the way.There is nothing "genuine" about someone who was even peripherally or vicariously involved in this appalling turn of events. He was the man at the top. it was his sworn duty to root out the rot, surely. And not with one eye closed either. Good riddance, but where will he and his ilk pop up again? Locally, or in some distant frontier? Time will tell.
As for Sir Brian Roche totally believing in this man's "sincerity", he was too slow out of the blocks to be believed surely? Corruption starts at the top and seeps into the cracks at lower levels, like a leaky home.
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