Causes of corruption: Towards a contextual theory of corruption

ABSTRACT The more we know about the causes of corruption, the better we can decide which policy instruments to use to combat corruption. The primary question of this article is: how can the causes of corruption in Western countries be studied? Here, an overview is presented of the causes of corruption mentioned in the literature using the kind of causality of explanations of corruption as an organizing principle. Six groups of theories are distinguished concerning causes of corruption, paying attention to the discourse on corruption control these groups of theories lead to. A primary conclusion is that there are not many studies on actual, individual corruption cases. It seems, therefore, that we need more contextual corruption research; many current studies lack contingency. The overview also makes clear that the theoretical model chosen determines, for a large part, the direction of the proposed solutions. Different causal chains lead to different discourses on corruption prevention and corruption control. INTRODUCTION In October 1994, Piet Neus, former alderman of the Dutch city of Maastricht, received a one-month suspended prison sentence and was fined 10,000 Dutch guilders (about 5,000 US dollars) for accepting gifts valued at 42,000 Dutch guilders (about 21,000 US dollars) from three local companies in the form of household renovations (Dohmen 1996: 237). Just after his conviction, Neus commented, "I still believe I did nothing wrong. Society apparently disagrees. The judge considered the postponed payment for the renovation of a kitchen a gift. I have to respect that verdict" (Dohmen 1996: 218). With that incident in mind, the primary question of this article is: how can the causes of corruption in Western countries be studied? The more we know about them, the better we can decide which policy instruments to use to combat corruption. But what are causes? Let's look at the example of Piet Neus again: why did it occur? This question seems straightforward for students of Public Administration. On closer inspection, it is not. To answer it, we first have to ask ourselves: what do we really want to know? After all, the 'why' question can be interpreted in many different ways. Maybe we mean to ask: why did this corruption case start? In that case, we seek out the immediate causes and circumstances of the corrupt transactions and decisions. We look directly at the corrupt acts themselves. Or do we want to know why the corruption case continued over a period of time, possibly in connection with other cases? (This is in fact what happened; see Dohmen 1996.) If so, we are less interested in the exact conditions by which the corruption case occurred than we are in the readiness of Piet Neus to become corrupt. Perhaps we want to know why this particular corruption case occurred rather than not. Were there alternatives for Piet Neus, or was he 'forced' to do what he did? Was corruption, given the causes and conditions, his only course of action? This raises questions concerning the 'determinism vs. freedom' debate, which here will be left aside. Maybe we are looking for the causes of this particular case of corruption, which gets most attention in corruption research (and in this article). In this context, are we interested in the causes of corruption that are external to the corrupt act itself? Or are we interested in the actual process of Piet Neus's corruption? The first interpretation is the most popular in the literature - not surprisingly, since social sciences usually deal with concepts rather than processes and thus 'freeze' reality (Schinkel 2004: 8). Corruption is then studied in an abstract sense, looking for the governing laws of corruption at a meso or macro level. As we shall see later in this article, in individual corruption cases, it is quite tricky to identify causal links. Another possible interpretation of the 'why' question is: are we interested in the reasons and motives for Piet Neus to become corrupt? …