Furthermore, given the limited visibility of poor construction, officials can benefit from a strategy of promising disaster-resistant (or at least good quality) construction without delivering on that promise. Officials and/or construction firms can share the savings from skimping on materials in the form of corrupt payments. The problem is particularly acute because of the diffuse nature of the ‘clients’ of a government construction project who could monitor the quality of delivery. Generations of primary school children, most as yet unborn, are perhaps not the most informed observers of shoddy construction practices in the schools they will occupy, nor the most powerful constituency to counter such practices and demand restitution, for example. The ‘long chain of accountability’ bedevils all public provision of services – service providers are separated from accountability to citizens by layers of government. The chain of accountability is particularly fragile when it is not yet clear which citizens will benefit from the government services to be provided and it is difficult for non-experts to judge the quality of construction.

In part because of the opaque nature of public construction projects, construction firm bribery related to public building contracts is very common according to an Eastern European firm survey. Of a construction firm’s total bribe budget – which we have seen is larger than the average – a larger percentage goes to gain government contracts – an average of 23 percent for construction compared to 15 percent for all firms in the sample. Construction firms in Eastern Europe believe that a typical payoff made for securing a government contract in their industry is around seven percent of the contract value (Kenny, 2008).

Investigations of World Bank-financed projects frequently reveal shoddy construction practices related to corrupt payoffs (see Kenny and Musatova, 2008 for a review). In Indonesia, for example, a physical audit of a World Bank financed community-driven development program that focused on road construction found that an estimated 24 percent of expenditures were ‘lost’ in materials theft, probably orchestrated by village heads who oversaw projects (Olken, 2004). Figures 4 and 5 illustrate two concrete beams that have been poorly constructed in ways that significantly reduce structural integrity of the building – in these cases due to ‘honeycombing’ and debris embedded in the concrete. Both are photos of work financed by Bank projects which are suspected to have been victim to corruption.

It should be noted that there is also considerable scope for shoddy construction linked to political pressure, limited capacity and straightforward incompetence. Poor design and construction was a factor in the failure of levees in New Orleans after Katrina, for example – this may well have been due to innocent incompetence rather than corrupt payoffs. But the result is the same – government buildings and infrastructure are often poorly constructed in a manner that reduces the life of the investment and considerably increases the risk that buildings will collapse or be damaged in natural disasters. This understanding that national government will provide in the event of a disaster. The post-Katrina blame game between local, state and national government in the US regarding both preparation and response suggests that such a strategy can be at least partially successful.

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