While these countries are legalistic they are never lawful . This fuzziness allows officials in all ranks to usurp authority, to trade favours, to forge illegal consensus and to dodge criticism and accountability. There is a direct line between lack of transparency and venality. A service is provided or divulged against a benefit or the promise of a benefit from the recipient, and as a result of the receipt of this specific benefit or the promise to receive such benefit. It is wrong to assume that corruption is necessarily, or even mostly, monetary or pecuniary.
Corruption is built on mutual expectations.
The reasonable expectation of a future benefit is, in itself, a benefit. Access, influence peddling, property rights, exclusivity, licences, permits, a job, a recommendation all constitute benefits. Though the perception of corruption itself is a negative outcome, it is so only when corruption does not constitute an acceptable and normative part of the playing field. When corruption becomes institutionalised, it also becomes predictable and is easily and seamlessly incorporated into decision making processes of all economic players and moral agents. In a way, all-pervasive corruption is transparent and, thus, a form of taxation.