Corruption

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The general idea

I want us to discuss "corruption" in a very particular sense. I'm not interested in overt lawbreaking or outright bribery (e.g., Congressman X takes $50,000 personally to vote Nay on a particular bill); I am instead interested in non-obvious corruption--instances where a decision is improperly and/or subtly influenced by a government actor's anticipation of some sort of indirect economic gain or loss. Where a person in power is motivated more by, e.g., money to their campaign, support for favored research, etc., than the interests they claim to or otherwise should be advancing. 

For this is the core of the corruption in our present system of
government.“Corruption” not in the sense that representatives are bribed.
Rather, “corruption” in the sense that the system induces the beneficiaries
of Congress’s acts to raise and give money to Congress to induce
it to act. There’s only so much time; there’s only so much Congress can
do. Why not limit its actions to those things it must do—and those
things that pay? - Lessig, Free Culture

I've listed some contexts in which I'd like to explore these ideas. Within each, I'd be eager to see (1) recommendations for things I should read; (2) research it would be helpful to do (meaning, if you had all the money in the world, what research question would you explore); (3) examples (of corruption) it would be useful to document.

The definition of corruption is slippery indeed. It seems to emerge from a property of social systems where people employ everyday denial (we all do, see this recent NYT article), to see their role in a limited context while overlooking amoral or immoral aspects of the systemic context in which their role is defined. Of course, an actor's desire to get ahead, have power, influence, reward, abets such "overlooking." Moral Mazes is a critically important book because it an anthropological study of how this works in corporations. -- isen

As I described in my Required Reading blog post, this is a new field for me. I want to read as broadly as I can.

Please don't slander people on these pages (meaning if you do, I will remove them). If you've got some hot tip, save it for email. And NPOV is very important here.

Thanks for the help.

Flaws in the General Idea

Failure to Distinguish Between "Corruption" and "Influence"

Lessig explains that he's not really interested in the exciting subject of corruption as much as in the more pedestrian notion of influence, and has apparently chosen to use the former word because it's more electric than the latter. So how does one begin to critique a work that flies a false flag, by what it says it is or by what it really is?

In our capitalist economy, money flows all over the place, and politics is no exception. Many people find it possible to make excellent livings critiquing capitalism, such as Ralph Nader, a multi-millionaire who's never held a job outside of his own non-profit corporation. Does this mean Nader is corrupt? Are we to assume that Nader is influenced by Cisco because he holds their stock?

Jesse Unruh, a former speaker of the California House and a lion of politics, famously said of lobbyists: "if you can't take their money, drink their whiskey, [sleep with] their women and still look the bastards in the eye and vote against them, you don't belong [in the legislature]."

Instead of complaining about the money in politics, we should be cultivating Unruh-like spines in our elected officials. All the study of influence will do is create a massive confusion of correlation and causation.

Elected officials are supposed to be influenced by their constituents and others affected by their legislation. To insist that they not be is to deny one of the fundamental assumptions on which representative government is founded.


Overview

Must reads

[3] see esp. pp. 5-22 on "the basics."

  • Brooks Jackson, Honest Graft,[4]
  • Charles Lewis, The Buying of the President, 2004,[5]
  • David Cay Johnston, Perfectly Legal,[6]
  • Mancur Olson, The Logic of Collective Action (Amazon)
  • E. E. Schattschneider, The Semisovereign People (Amazon)
  • Stuart Sutherland Irrationality ([7])
  • R Douglas Arnold, 'The Logic of Congressional Action'([8])
  • Roger B. Myerson, Game Theory: Analysis of Conflict (Amazon)

Good Reads

  • George Lakoff, "Whose Freedom?: The Battle over America's Most Important Idea"
  • Sandel, Michael J. "What Money Can’t Buy: The Moral Limits of Markets." The Tanner Lectures on Human Values. Delivered at Brasenose College, Oxford, May 11 and 12, 1998. On web as a pdf [9]. Usefully distinguishes between the "argument from corruption" and the "argument from coercion" in debates over limits of commodification.
  • Bernard Bailyn, The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution. (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 1992), perhaps best read in conjunction with David S. Lovejoy, The Glorious Revolution in America. (Hanover, NH: Wesleyan University Press, 1987). What emerges from these two is in part a question: were colonial concerns about British corruption overblown, or reasonable, and to what extent did these inform the revolution. Also helpful in understanding what corruption meant, historically, to British citizens and American colonists.
  • Confidential Memorandum: Attack of American Free Enterprise System. Lewis F. Powell to Eugene B. Syndor Jr., August 23, 1971, available from http://reclaimdemocracy.org/corporate_accountability/powell_memo_lewis.html. Considered the start of the modern conservative movement, this memo outlines a vision through which businesses, organizations, and individuals unite to form a single machine through which to influence politics.
  • James Q. Wilson, Political Organizations, esp. chapters 1­5, 8, 13; and Bureaucracy, esp. chapters 5, 9. Proposes a useful model for predicting policy outcomes based on nature of interests involved in debate, i.e. concentrated vs. diffuse interests.
  • Bent Flyvbjerg, Rationality and Power: Democracy in Practice (U. Chicago Press 1998) (extended case study of effort to change planning practices and traffic in downtown Aalborg, Denmark). Flyvberg carefully documents how power works to define its own rationality. See also Flyvbjerg, Making Social Science Matter: Why social inquiry fails and how it can succeed again (Cambridge U. Press 2001) for his more general prescriptions on inquiry into this sort of thing.
  • Adam Curtis, The Trap: What Happened to Our Dream of Freedom (BBC Two, 2007). Curtis's criticisms of game theory and public choice theory reminded me of Lessig's alpha-lecture defense of "naive volunteerism" against Thomas Friedman. Curtis portrays game theorists as victims of paranoia--not only a perhaps plausible paranoia of the Soviet Union during the Cold War, but of actual clinical paranoia. Game theory assumes that everyone will do whatever it takes to advance their own interest, no matter what it does to anyone else. Social norms and decency are then difficult to account for in the theory. Lessig spoke of the "pathological, the unreformable, and the rest of us", but to game theorists everyone would be unreformable.


Must reads rationales 
 Jonathan Rauch: Rauch's explanations best match my 
 actual experiences working Washington.  The problem 
 is not simply that money corrupts politics.  The 
 problem is that interests fight much harder for 
 policies that are beneficial to them than the general 
 public will fight for policies that are good for 
 everyone.  If an interest gains ten million dollars 
 from a regulation at the expense of ten cents from 
 every tax payer, that interest will fight harder than 
 all the tax payers combined.  After all, each tax 
 payer has no incentive to lead a fight, as they would 
 only gain 10 cents.  This applies whether it's a big 
 media company advocating restrictive copyright laws 
 or NASA arguing for money for projects that do not do 
 anything.


Jackall: From isen's review: Moral Mazes, "is written as if 
the observer had just parachuted into a Fijian out-island 
or the Stone-Age Lacandon jungle.  But the bizarre alien 
culture of this book happens to be that of the big, modern, 
unreconstructed American corporation . . . " It describes 
how a different -- an outside observer might well call it 
corrupt -- morality emerges from managers' roles within. 
Aaron Swartz, pulls this quote in his review
of  Moral Mazes, where a manager describes his own decision process:
 "People are always calculating how others will see
 the decisions they make. ... They know that they have to gauge
 not just the external . . . market consequences of a decision, 
 but the internal political consequences. And sometimes you 
 can make the right market decision, but it can be the wrong 
 political decision."
Here's another good review of Moral Mazes.

Moral Mazes draws this picture: corruption emerges from an system 
of local, internalized norms and values, where ordinary people 
driven by ordinary motives (desire for approval, acceptance, 
recognition, power, reward etc.) willingly define their roles
in terms of the internal context.

Here's another recent relevant blog post.
Chomsky: Key quotes, (or see Chomsky details): Professor Noam Chomsky is said to be the most quoted living author, and the 8th most quoted of all time. As a professional in linguistics, he uses words in very powerful and persuasive ways. He appears to have made a second vocation of challenging authority. His view of "Corruption" is:
I think that the United States has been in kind of a pre-fascist mood for years -- and we've been very lucky that every leader who's come along has been a crook. See, people should always be very much in favor of corruption -- I'm not kidding about that. Corruption's a very good thing, because it undermines power ... if somebody shows up who's kind of a Hitler-type -- just wants power, no corruption, straight, makes it all sound appealing, and says, "We want power" -- well, then we'll all be in very bad trouble. 
 Thurrow: tbd

 Foucault:  What is the proper conduct of the prince?
 Well, what exactly does that question mean today and how
 did we arrive at today's understanding of that 
 question?

 Lasch:  How did we get here?

 Solzhenitsyn:  This is not just a history book, but rather a cautionary tale of corruption and
 regrettably of similarities in addition to differences.

 Hayek: The systematic study of the forms of legal institutions which will make the competitive
 system work efficiently has been sadly neglected; and strong arguments can be advanced that
 serious shortcomings here, particularly with regards to the law of corporations and of patents,
 not only have made competition work much less effectively than it might have done but have even
 led to the destruction of competition in many spheres.

 Friedman: Why Special Interests Prevail [...] Why are the results of policies so often the 
 opposite of their ostensible objectives? Why do special interests prevail over the general  
 interest? What devices can we use to stop and reverse the process?

 Machiavelli, Discourses on Livy:  The theme of "corruption" as a destructive element 
 in the history of Ancient Rome pervades the Discourses.  What Machiavelli means by "corruption" 
 is debatable, and debated.  Of particular interest may be the connection between eras of 
 corruption and popular "tumults" which Machiavelli argued could serve as correctives to corruption.

 Diggins:  Traces influence of Machiavelli on American political thought, in particular with regard 
 to attempts of, inter alia, Madison, Thoreau, Lincoln, and Emerson to wed individual 
 self-interest with the common good as motivated by moral responsibility to country.

 Dewey:  A classic work about the challenges of uniting diffuse individuals and inchoate groups
 into a well-defined "public" capable of advancing their shared interests. This one is especially 
 interesting when read in conjunction with some of Hayek's writings, because, like Hayek, 
 Dewey has an epistemological bent, viewing social problems primarily as problems of knowledge, 
 communication, and coordination.
   

 North:  A short, non-technical read that uses a transaction costs approach to examine the 
 development of political, economic, and social institutions. Here are a few passages that seem 
 especially relevant: "The evolution of polities from single absolute rulers to democratic
 governments is typically conceived as a move toward greater political efficiency.... But
 it would be wrong to assert that the result is efficient political markets in the same sense as we
 mean efficient economic markets. The existence of efficient economic markets entails 
 competition so strong that, via arbitrage and information feedback, one approximates
 the Coase zero transaction cost conditions. Such markets are scarce enough in the economic world
 and ever scarcer in the political world. (p. 51)" "[T]here are immense scale economies in 
 policing and enforcing agreements by a polity that acts as a third party and uses coercion to 
 enforce agreements. But therein lies the fundamental dilemma.... How does one get the state to
 behave like an impartial third party? (p. 58) "Put simply, if the state has coercive force,
 then those who run the state will use that force in their own interest at the expense of the
 rest of the society. (p. 59)"

Olson: The seminal work on collective action problems.

Schattschneider: A classic of American political science, Semisovereign argues that the pressure system has an upper-class bias. I can't do this book justice from memory; Larry, it's less than 150 pages: you owe it to yourself to read (or re-read) this book.

Sutherland: The causes of corruption are frequently latent, hidden in human psychology. Sutherland's immensely readable Irrationality explains the most common modes of irrational behavious in humans, and how they can cause organisations to act in irrational ways. I believe that irrationality and bias are probably more insidious and widespread causes of corruption than greed or self-interest. I'd recommend reading this one first: many of the other books listed assume rational behaviour. This book explains why this is a dangerous assumption. It also suggests ways in which biases and irrationality can, in practice, be countered.

Must reads citations (for more obscure materials) 
 Foucault: "Power: Essential Works of Foucault 1954-1984,
 Volume III" (James D. Faubion, ed.; Robert Hurley
 et al, tr.; Paul Rabinow, series ed.)

 Hayek: "The Road to Serfdom" Fiftieth Anniversary Edition, 1994, p. 43

 Friedman: "Free to Choose: A Personal Statement", First Harvest Edition, 1990, p. 290

Science

Must reads

Please research

  • Funding of research by corporate interests that "already know what the results should be".
  • Effect of less tenured positions. How did tenure come into existence? Where did the disinterested scientist come from, and where did they go?
  • Publish or perish encouraging scientists to publish dubious or minor results. Effect of publication rate and Impact Factors on scientist employment and grants. Here there's no-one explicitly trying to obtain influence, just a race for cash, is this beyond your scope?
  • Efforts in other countries and examples in our own system that try to isolate government scientists from improper political influence.
  • One serious problem that enables massive corruption (intellectual) is lack of information. Congress abolished the Office of Technology Assessment in the 1990s, leaving it without an organization that could provide timely, unbiased reports on issue legislators were facing. This is an issue much broader than just science; it covers national security, industry, etc. The lack of such an evaluative organization is seriously problematic. (Yes, the National Resarch Council and GAO do do some of this, but neither serve the same important function that OTA did.) Restoring such capabilities to government seems quite important in preventing corruption/hijacking of the political process.
    • This seems like an angle worth exploring separately -- to what extent have independent internal government evaluators become victims of any of the following? a) Abolition (e.g. OTA), b) Overwork, c) Capture. Does anyone have any sources on this? --Pgowder 21:06, 8 August 2007 (PDT)
  • The area of game theory and mechanism design seem to be highly relevant for setting up systems that resist corruption. Roger B. Myerson's work (who, along with Eric Maskin and Leonid Hurwicz, received the Nobel Prize in Economics in 2007 for work in this area) seems particularly relevant.

Corruption in action

Climate Change:

PDF of Testimony by Dr. Drew T Shindellfor the hearing on political interference with the work of government climate change scientists, Congressional Oversight and Government Reform Committee, Jan. 30, 2007, U. S. House of Representatives.

PDF of Testimony of Rick Piltz, Director, Climate Science Watch Government Accountability Project before the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform Hearing on allegations of political interference with the work of government climate change scientists, January 30, 2007.

Bush Administration uses National Academy of Science panel report to bolster climate change deniers' criticism of the overwhelming anthropogenic climate change consensus of the international scientific community.

National Security:

Political influence used to stifle findings of experts at DOE to prevent their findings about the probable use of machined alumninium tubes from undermining the Bush Administration claims of their use in nuclear weapons manufacture.

Pentagon fakes National missile Defense tests to justify continuance of a non-functioning system and its deployment despite clear evidence that the system is functionally useless.

Prevailing bias:

Why Most Published Research Findings Are False There is increasing concern that most current published research findings are false. .. Simulations show that for most study designs and settings, it is more likely for a research claim to be false than true. Moreover, for many current scientific fields, claimed research findings may often be simply accurate measures of the prevailing bias. [Much research is only funded if it is likely to produce intended results.]

Legal Academics

Must reads 

* Susan Rose-Ackerman, Books and Articles.

Please research

  • How are corporations different from individuals. They have some similarities in term of rights and liabilities. Is it true that all corporations, if psycho analyzed as though they were an individuals, would appear psychopathic? see: http://www.thecorporation.com/
  • Plagiarism within the legal academic community. There are a number of informal, unverified complains of unattributed quotations in high quantity throughout articles submitted to law journals. These include multiple page quotations without any citation. It would be interesting to verify the truth and frequency of such occurrences. Further, reports of professors submitting and taking credit for articles written almost entirely by their students is equally if not more troubling.

Corruption in action

Medicine

Must reads

  • Marcia Angell, The Truth About the Drug Companies (review)
  • Arnold Kling, Crisis of Abundance (one of the better primers of health care economics, whether you agree or disagree with his solutions)
  • (Watch) - (PBS Frontline - Dangerous Prescription)
  • Judith Levine, Harmful to Minors - For the way sexual statistics are repressed if they do not conform to legislators worldview.
  • Michael Perelman "Steal this Idea: the corporate confiscation of creativity" has extensive coverage of health issues, with examples of life saving treatments being suppressed, researchers whose work reached the "wrong" conclusions had their papers 'edited' or suppressed, and how some valuable drugs don't make it because they can't be patented. Also, how important valuable work at the NIH gets handed to Big Pharma, who profit handsomely from this corporate welfare. This book also covers other issues, and could be listed in some of the other sections as well.
  • Uffe Ravnskov, "The Cholesterol Myths" (review)

Please research

  • Drug companies influence on GPs, psychiatrists, etc. Should patients be asking their doctors out to dinner too?
  • Patent extension by patenting a trivial variation on a medicine (such as extracting its more potent isomer), then trying to influence doctors to switch to the variant.
  • Media reports of health stories: can they be trusted to be impartial when dependent on advertising. For example: Forbes article (http://www.forbes.com/forbeslife/health/feeds/hscout/2007/06/27/hscout605925.html) with headline "Mom's antidepressent use poses little danger to baby" contradicts article which says antidepressants increase risk of some defects four-fold. (Must be countless better examples).
  • Why do we focus on curing a problem rather than preventing it? (i.e. cancer's 'Race For the Cure™' versus better carcinogen regulation)

Corruption in action

Former Surgeon General Richard Carmona alleges political influence was brought to bear upon him to prevent him speaking out on subjects of political concern to the Bush Administration.

Susan F. Wood, assistant FDA commissioner for women's health and director of the Office of Women's Health resigns over political influence in preventing OTC release of the "morning after pill". She says, "I can no longer serve as staff when scientific and clinical evidence, fully evaluated and recommended for approval by the professional staff here, has been overruled,"

  • My local GPs use adware to maintain patient records. Fairly minor, but why do they consider it acceptable? How common is this?
    • All information shared must comply with HIPAA regulations. While it is very unlikely that the information collected by an adware company complies with HIPAA, asking before accusing enhances your credibility.
  • Congressman Billy Tauzin was chairman of the House committee overseeing pharmaceutical companies. After pushing through a bill benefiting the industry, he left Congress to become president and CEO of PHRMA, the industry's top lobbying group.
  • There is apparently a controversy within the American Psychological Association, as members with alleged "direct ties" to the military prepared a code of ethics section permitting psychologists to participate in military interrogations. The AMA apparently does not permit its members to do so. story
  • Institutionalized corruption among some ethically challenged Federally Qualified Health Centers (FQHCs), which receive an extraordinary reimbursement rate, way above what MediCare or the private insurance carriers pay. This extra reimbursement is designed to compensate the clinic for providing care to patients with no coverage. This model does in fact work quite well at a lot of FQHCs. But FQHCs fall into two types: corporate vs. mission based health centers. The "mission based" health centers work quite hard at providing medical services to the underserved. The "corporate" FQHCs work harder at gaming the reimbursement system than at delivering care. Savvy CFOs game the reimbursement system by exploiting a loophole in the reimbursement rate calculation that allows the rate to grow faster than annual increases in the cost of delivering care. In impoverished rural areas, a fiscally agressive corporate FQHC can significantly distort the local health care business market. This form of corruption is rarely confronted because it an agile advocate for the corporate FQHC will play the "we give away services to poor people" card.
  • Special interests can enforce their will on inconvenient doctors by corruptly influencing medical review boards to go after these doctors and give disproportionate punishments, removing them as credible opponents. The practice is called sham peer review.
  • The entire health care non-system suffers from paying for procedures rather than outcomes which corrupts it all. See "Health Care Reform Now" by George Halvorson, the CEO of Kaiser Premanente.

Lawyers

Must reads

Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, Chapter XVI ("Causes Which Mitigate the Tyranny of the Majority in the United States")

Anthony Kronman, "The Lost Lawyer".

Please research

  • I'm not sure if this QUITE falls under what you're going into, but if you can swing it, I'd love to see what you can do with the way an increasingly litigious society has harmed us. Medical malpractice, in particular, is a field that this relates to, but, this article about "pedophilia hysteria" points to how this might be reaching its arms into other aspects of the world.
  • The effect of self-regulation on the legal profession, especially as such regulation pertains to ethics. To my knowledge no studies exist that examine the effectiveness of this arrangement. A particularly troubling example is the interplay between law school honor systems and bar ethics rules. Accusations against law students, regardless of validity, can create great prejudice against a hopeful practitioner. Such accusations often result in immediate consequences for the accused, and can present a significant challenge to bar admission even after acquittal. Further, the lack of ethical sanctions (whether de jure or de facto) for "gaming" the legal system is troubling.

Corruption in action

  • How prosecutorial discretion and sentencing are influenced by identity of defendants, e.g. their races, and the dependence of elected prosecutors and judges on votes from identity group voting blocs. As a specific example, think here of racism in the American South -- even more particularly, prosecution and sentencing in post-Katrina New Orleans for looting, and differential treatment by race associated therewith.
  • Should Trial Lawyers Make Terror Policy? [T]here is a healthy and extensive debate about the appropriate relationship between and scope of the powers of the three branches of government in addressing terrorism. Perhaps surprisingly, however, there has been little discussion of the role of unelected trial lawyers, and how the civil justice system and the judicial branch's friendliness to regulation through litigation gives attorneys a financial incentive to use state and federal courts to undo sensitive decisions of the elected branches of government. Worse still is that the trial bar has lobbied for such an expanded role, and Congress has aided and abetted its goals.

Politicians

Must reads

  • Thomas Ferguson, Golden Rule: The Investment Theory of Party Competition and the Logic of Money-Driven Political Systems
  • Larry Makinson, Speaking Freely: Washington Insiders Talk About Money in Politics
  • William L. Riordan, Plunkitt of Tammany Hall (1905)
  • Ken Silverstein and Alexander Cockburn, Washington Babylon; on Washington Journal -- YouTube 1 and 2 -- discussing his article "Their Men in Washington: Undercover with D.C.'s Lobbyists for Hire." The article examines what lobbyists for foreign governments do, how they do it and how much of their activity is open to Congress and the general public.
  • Study of government failure (wikipedia, econ blogs)
  • Moneyandpolitics.net has an unbelievable amount of material on both U.S. and international campaign finance regulation.
  • Mark Monmonier: "Bushmanders and Bullwinkles: How Politicians Manipulate Electronic Maps and Census Data to Win Elections". A good academic overview of gerrymandering, which corrupts our politicians whose safe seats free them from worrying about relection.Amazon

Political Science

Here are a few samples of how political scientists approach this question.

  • Schlozman, Kay Lehman. 1984. “What Accent the Heavenly Chorus? Political Equality and the American Pressure System.” Journal of Politics 46 (November): 1006-1032.
  • Hall, Richard L., and Frank W. Wayman. 1990. “Buying Time: Moneyed Interests and the Mobilization of Bias in Congressional Committees.” American Political Science Review 84 (September): 797-820.
  • Evans, Diana. 1996. “Before the Roll Call: Interest Group Lobbying and Public Policy Outcomes in House Committees.” Political Research Quarterly 49 (June): 287-304.
  • Spriggs, James F. II, and Paul J. Wahlbeck. 1997. “Amicus Curiae and the Role of Information at the Supreme Court.” Political Research Quarterly 50 (June): 365-386.
  • Caldeira, Gregory A., Marie Hojnacki, and John R. Wright. 2000. “The Lobbying Activities of Organized Interests in Federal Judicial Nominations.” Journal of Politics 62 (February): 51-69.
  • Drope, Jeffrey M., and Wendy L. Hansen. 2004. “Purchasing Protection? The Effect of Political Spending on U.S. Trade Policy.” Political Research Quarterly 57 (March): 27-37.
  • Fellowes, Matthew C., and Patrick J. Wolf. 2004. “Funding Mechanisms and Policy Instruments: How Business Campaign Contributions Influence Congressional Votes.” Political Research Quarterly (June): 315-324.
  • Eggars, Andrew and Jens Hainmueller. 2008. "MPs for Sale? Estimating Returns to Office in Post-War British Politics". Unpublished.

Please research

  • How about research into the idea of requiring (by law) all political contributions to be anonymous. If a politician didn't know who his campaign contributions were coming from, then he couldn't tailor his votes to benefit those contributors. I'm sure there are crypto protocols that could be adapted to the purpose. Also, it would allow removing the existing limits on size of contribution (which are debatable from a free speech point of view).
    • I would argue that limiting political contributions isn't a free speech issue. If a rich man wants to say something, they can write a blog and get their message across that way; but they might not get a big audience for what they say. Political contributions are not about free speech, they are about buying an audience. As the phrase has it "free speech doesn't include the right to an audience"; let the thoughts of rich people be judged on what they say not on the size of their wallets.
    • The problem with this idea is that it still allows a political candidate to tailor his views/votes to the richest special interests. It also continues to allow special interests to donate money to those candidates that support their views (giving them an advantage over their opponents). A truly incorruptible system selects for candidates that have the most fair/populist views--not those with the most money.
    • A truly incorruptible system would not allow money to have any influence at all over elections. U.S. law presently supports the idea that money = speech. The problem with this is that the more money you have, the more speech you have (and the more speech you have the more influence you have). This gives an enormous advantage to the rich and severely disadvantages the poor.
    • I don't think anybody has hit on the main issue here: Special interest contributors would inform politicians of their contribution anyway, outside of the depositing system. Making the process of contributing 'anonymous' doesn't prevent that. The special interest can say, "Hey, Congressman X, we're going to give you $5,000." The Congressman then looks at his campaign fund and sees that there's $5,000 more in there than there was before, verifying that the contribution has been made. Plus, under this system, there would be no way for voters, public interest groups, and opposition candidates to analyze where a politicians' money is coming from, which is basically the only way they can currently be held accountable.
      • There are ways round this. Donations to a politician could go in a special fund, and the politician gets the whole balance every quartrer, without knowing what quantities the individual contributions came in. Or, for even stronger safeguards, the politician could be given at random between 50% and 100% of their fund every quarter.
  • It would be pertinent to examine the usefulness of television advertisements in elections. Not from the perspective of the candidate but from the perspective of society as a whole. Do advertisements for or against any given political candidate serve a legitimate purpose? A 30-second or 1-minute ad on television cannot say a whole lot and yet it can swing votes. Should a candidate with the most clever advertisements win an election? Why should the amount of money spent on ads or the cleverness of an advertising firm make or break an election? Is there any evidence to suggest that the candidate with the best or most ads is the most qualified? The best choice? Presumably the candidate with the most money would have the most advertisements and be able to hire the best advertising firm. This implies that the candidate in question is taking money from the richest sources or at best, the most sources. Television advertising may not be inherently corrupt but it can certainly be an effective tool of the corrupt. How to make it fair and just--if possible--must be carefully studied.
    • Impact of television ads in different voting systems. Oregon has vote by mail where there are no polls and the voting window covers a significant length of time. Other states have very short voting periods and polls. Does this impact the ads in a positive or negative way?
  • Consider the effects of politician's relations with, and dependence upon, the media. Almost 100% of a member of the public's contact with politicians, especially national figures, is through the broadcast media. To what extent are politicians constrained in what they're willing, or able, to say be the need to achieve, and sustain, high levels of media exposure. Are politicians whose policies conflict with the interests of media owners "punished" by getting either reduced media exposure, or hostile, critical media exposure. It'd also be useful to track the extent to which it is transgressing against the opinions/interests of proprietors which earns criticism, rather that being out of step with public opinion.
  • Research: (a) decisions to outsource government functions to private enterprises that make financial or related contributions to those in power, (b) flaws in OMB and other processes that can distort cost-benefit analysis to the advantage of those with power and/or those with a financial interest to avoid regulation (and to the detriment of the safety and health of the general public), together with the ways in which those with a financial interest can, and do, influence the conclusions of the cost-benefit analysis, (c) how those with power discourage (overtly or otherwise) the poor and others from participating in the democracy (e.g. making it difficult to register and vote, or failing to enforce laws that require making registration available in public assistance offices), (d) how incumbent politicians can use public money (e.g. postage, etc.) to their advantage against challengers, (e) legislation is increasingly being drafted by powerful interests and served up to legislators who receive campaign contributions from the drafters -- and the lack of transparency in knowing the source of the bills, (f) how powerful interest groups systematically target legislators and give significant contributions to legislators' personal interests (e.g. schools the legislators' kids attend, charities the legislator is involved in) in order to gain influence and curry favors -- e.g. Fannie Mae was notorious for these practices and nobody in Congress dared cross Fannie Mae's apple pie homeownership pitch, at least until the truth about Fannie's books were revealed; in CA, many speculate that the prison guard union is the most powerful interest group in the state and employs similar tactics to exert influence over prison building bills, and (g) the absence of any meaningful "conflicts of interest" standards for politicians, while other professions have standards that would require recusal (e.g. lawyers, judges, scientists, doctors, etc.).
  • Can "qui tam" (suing on behalf of the government) approaches to corruption be extended beyond fraud to other failures of responsability to the law by legislators, jurists, and civil servants, and result not only in financial penalty but loss of position? This approach might also enable legislators to create laws about lobbiests with teeth as a form of self-protection.

Comparative Approaches

  • It goes without saying that a thorough investigation of a solution to corruption should include a study of how money flows to elected officials is handled in other countries. For example, in The Netherlands every political party receives a healthy statutory stipend. Private party contributions have to be noted in the party's financial report as soon as they exceed €5000,- (around $6800,-). The report has to record the name and the amount. This makes for greater transparency.
  • In Canada, contributions may only come from individuals (not corporate bodies), and there is a $1100/year limit. There is a single national nonpartisan organization charged with administering elections. There are election expense limits - for the largest national parties, the maximum expense limit was $18 million/party for the last election. Radio and TV broadcasters are required to provide significant free airtime during elections, which is allocated to political parties based on how many votes they received in the previous elections. Each party receiving more than 2% of the vote gets 1.75$ per vote received in the previous election. This largely eliminates the largest reason for U.S. campaign fund-raising - buying TV airtime. Overall, elections in Canada 'cost' (in terms of trying-to-get-elected expenditures) about 1/10th (or less?) as much per capita as they do in the U.S.
  • To build a political structure with minimal corruption, it's necessary to first see which existing structures work and which fail from this perspective. For this purpose, I'd suggest doing an in-depth study comparing different countries by their legal policy on political corruption and their actual level of corruption - in other words, seeing what effect anti-corruption laws and other checks and balances have on the level of corruption in the country. If possible, this research should do a separate correlation for different types of corruption. If done in enough countries, this study should help us get an idea of how much individual laws actually do to prevent corruption.
    • Some of this work already has been done. Torsten Persson and Guido Tabellini, for example, did a panel data analysis of 80 countries and found evidence that, among other things, the method of election matters a lot. There's more corruption where politicians are elected indirectly via party lists as compared to places where individuals vote directly for specific politicians. They argue that switching from an all-list elected parliament to an all-plurality system would drop corruption perceptions by 20 percent. See Persson, Torsten and Guido Tabellini, 2004, "Constitutions and Economic Policies", Journal of Economic Perspectives, 18:1 (Winter), 75-98. The bibliography there is also a decent starting point into some of the economic literature on corruption.
    • Another recent comparative analysis on political finance regulation - comparing law and practice in eight Latin American countries has been produced by Transparency International and The Carter Center. CRINIS - Political Finance "[10]"
    • It would be interesting to see if there exists a government that has a body solely dedicated to the investigation and removal of corrupt individuals in government. Something like the GAO but with the ability to kick people out. Imagine if the GAO discovered that 12 politicians who voted on a Medicare bill took money from pharmaceutical companies--and kicked those politicians out of Congress (without pension). Any such organization would need strict checks and balances itself but it would certainly be useful. The founding fathers imagined that political parties would find corruption in their opponents in order to defeat them but if both ruling parties are corrupt in the same ways they will never call each other out.
    • The key international organization on corruption is Transparency International. [11]. Their site is the best single place to get started on the insidious impact of corruption worldwide. Beyond that, as you begin to search and look for experts to which you can speak, the impact of corruption is often mentioned in papers dealing with the "Informal economy".

Corruption in action

Corruption in contemporary news

  • Iron Triangle [[12]] - process of buying influence in regulatory bodies, or using political donations to secure secure positions in regulatory bodies for persons sympathetic to the regulated industry. There are many clear examples of this in Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.'s book Crimes against nature, about the EPA under the Bush administration.
  • There are many examples of the revolving door at the Pentagon, where people who have secured lucrative defense contracts end up with high-paying jobs in the contractor's company. There are cases where an individual has gone back and forth between the private sector and the Department of Defense multiple times.
  • Congressman Billy Tauzin was chairman of the House committee overseeing pharmaceutical companies. After pushing through a bill benefiting the industry, he left Congress to become president and CEO of PHRMA, the industry's top lobbying group.
  • This page archives many stories of the "revolving door" between government and lobbying/industry groups.
  • In Sicily, Farmland Seized From Mafia Is Hard to Cultivate - The Sicilian Mafia transformed itself into a modern global financial enterprise, but a clash over cooperative farms underscores how their survival still rests on an ability to control local territory and everyday business of people's lives. One of the biggest threats is that the Mafia will find a way to infiltrate the cooperatives, impairing their ability to stand apart from the surrounding illegal economy.
  • Money intended for disaster relief sometimes ends up being used for other purposes. There were recent stories about how money for relief from Katrina was being used to provide tax breaks for upscale condominium developers in Tuscaloosa.
  • Albeit indirectly, a principle result of laws against attractions such as sex and drugs is to foster corruption among the supposed enforcers. For example, you can buy any drug you desire even in a maximum security prison

Research Tools

The Market

Must reads

[13] and [14]

  • Oligopoly Watch Blog is a fascinating exploration and record of how oligopolies behave, particularly how they try to control their competitive landscape.
  • An interview with Vandana Shiva, Indian physicist, organic farmer and author. Discussing the Earth Democracy movement, Shiva links the problems currently seen in democracy with the effects of globalization—money and power, absolutely linked, are no longer in the hands of people or their local governments.

Please research

  • Politics and the free market are intertwined. Research should be performed to determine how the free market is corrupted by the most powerful entities within it. Either through influencing the government or by using their wealth and power to prevent competition and/or maximize profits at the expense of the consumer/tax payer.
  • Research should be performed to determine if punishments enacted upon corporations are just. Whenever a government entity imposes a fine on a corporation that corporation will pass the costs on to their customers. So in effect, fining misbehaving businesses is really a proxy fine levied upon tax payers. In a market where there exists loads of competition a fine may be an effective measure but it is unlikely. More research needs to be done in this area to determine what would benefit the public the most when businesses break the law or act against the public interest.
  • Regarding "denialism:" going beyond money, it's worth researching corruption of rhetoric and argumentation. That is, the money itself corrupts, but it also creates a welcoming environment for bogus arguments; a willingness to accept fallacious arguments in support of monied interests, if you will. It would be interesting to evaluate the economics arguments employed in political situations, because the public dialogue is filled with simplistic, econ 101 ideas. I think these ideas flourish only because they are in support of major financial interests.

Corruption in Action

  • The incestuous relationship between real estate developers and local government officials is certainly an example of corruption. No specific work to cite, but Kelo v. New London is obviously a good example of the interests of ordinary citizens being shoved aside for the interests of large corporations.

The Public Relations Industry

Must Reads

  • John Stauber & Sheldon Rampton, Toxic Sludge is Good for You
  • PR Watch
  • John Stauber & Sheldon Rampton, Trust Us, We're Experts
  • Naomi Klein, No Logo
  • Robert N. Proctor, Historical Reconstruction of Tobacco and Health - The testimony that linked what is now the CEI and companies like Lorilar and R. J. Reynolds and their use of public relations pp 16 of 46[15]

Please research

  • Even though PR firms are used for many types of lobbying, they generally are not required to register under the 1995 disclosure law. The role of PR firms in lobbying needs more examination. There was an interesting article on this in the July 2007 issue of Harper's magazine.

Academia

Must Reads

  • Stanford Magazine, McCormick, Ties That Bind
  • Honorary degrees; see e.g. [16]
  • Hiring public officials as lecturers; see e.g. [17]

Media Reform & Communication Justice

Must Reads

  • Robert McChesney, Telecommunications, Mass Media, & Democracy: The Battle for Control of U.S. Broadcasting 1928-1933
  • Paul Starr, Creation of the Media: Political Origins of Modern Communication
  • Joel Brinkley, Defining Vision: How Broadcasters Lured the Government into Inciting a Revolution in Television
  • Yochai Benkler, Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets & Freedom
  • Chomsky, Noam, "Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media"

Corruption in action

See this three-part series from I, Cringley for a demonstration of corruption at several levels, relating to broadband, telecos and Congress: When Elephants Dance: Get ready (finally) for faster Internet speeds at lower prices, Game Over: The U.S. is unlikely to ever regain its broadband leadership, The $200 Billion Rip-Off: Our broadband future was stolen

This Media Matters report details a significant disconnect between our media and general American consensus on a wide range of issues: [18]

A PIPA report highlights the problems that occur when clarity of presentation is not sufficient for ordinary consumers to differentiate fact and opinion: [19]

Elections & Money

The functioning of democratic self-government in the U.S. in the 21st Century cannot be separated from the functioning of the nation’s media system. Most critics agree that the role of money in the current political system is at the root of the problem. Some critics argue that public financing of election campaigns would reduce or eliminate the outsized influence that money plays in the current system. Few critics go far enough to ask why election campaigning in the U.S. is as expensive as it is or ask whether alternative forms of communication might also contribute to a stronger, more functional democracy.

The current system of communication in the U.S. is a significant barrier to political participation and democratic self government. When Hillary Clinton started thinking about running for the U.S. Senate in 2000, she was the most recognized, most admired woman in America. Yet, the first question she needed to answer was whether or not she could raise the $12 million needed to run for statewide office in New York.

The $12 million was needed because that’s how much television advertising she would need to compete successfully. If the most recognized, most admired woman in the U.S. needed to pay a $12 million entrance fee in order to merely run for the U.S. Senate, how would anyone else compete? How would the voters of New York choose good candidates if only people who could raise $12 million were even considered?

In the 2006 election cycle, candidates for various elected offices spent more than $800 million on radio and television advertising, largely in the form of 30-second spots. The U.S. faces many problems in 2006 and beyond. None of these problems can be adequately resolved or even described in 30 seconds.

Fixing the broken U.S. political system will require fixing the broken U.S. communication system.

The next 18 months present a rare opportunity to do exactly that.

Digital TV

The era of over-the-air analog broadcasting, formalized by the 1934 Communications Act will come to an end a few months short of its 75th birthday. In February 2009, television stations throughout the U.S. will stop broadcasting analog TV signals, and broadcast only in digital formats.

While Congress has created a firm deadline for the transition to digital TV, many of the ripple effects of this broader move to digital communication have yet to be considered.

Clarity / Potential to inform

Should media companies be allowed to confuse fact and opinion to a degree that is harmful? They are allowed this today. The question of harm comes from the general public being less informed than they would otherwise, as a result of consuming some broadcast media.

There has been some discussion of a return to the fairness doctrine as a means to address this growing problem. That legal test was one of time allocated to various viewpoints, such that bias remained diverse. The removal of that restriction allowed for "Newstainment" that is clearly more compelling. This change, coupled with greater media ownership consolidation, and no real accuracy / clarity standards, is an enabler for corruption.

Given the compelling nature of what we consider to be news productions today, should we consider tests for clarity? Bias is acceptable, if clear? Average view actually being more informed of fact based content resulting from consumption of said broadcast, however biased? Would sufficient clarity serve to address bias and media owners leveraging their properties counter to the public interest to be informed?

Other Issues

There are at least half a dozen major policy areas in which important questions will need to be answered:

  • The digital TV transition follow up: The date is now certain, but many questions remain. Should broadcasters pay cable companies or cable companies pay broadcasters in this new digital world? The rules from the 1980s and 1990s that govern negotiations between these powerful licensed monopolies may have to be updated.
  • Broadband policy: What role should governments, particularly municipalities and public utilities, play in creating a national broadband networks we will need to be competitive in the 21st century global economy?
  • Unlicensed spectrum: Can we convert unused TV channels to wireless broadband to make digital communications cheap and accessible? Or would new spectrum cause too much interference for existing operators?
  • Net Neutrality: Should we return to the traditions of common carriage and universal service upon which the Internet grew from its birth to 2005, or should we adopt the Bush Administration policy and let market forces alone determine the cost of access of Internet service for both businesses and consumers?
  • Copyright: How can we protect intellectual property in digital form while at the same time preserving fair use and protecting innovation?
  • Media ownership consolidation: Should large corporations be allowed to continue buying up media properties, concentrating media power in fewer and fewer hands or should local ownership and diversity be supported through regulation?

General Public / Consumers

There are many instances where individuals are less than subtly influenced to make anticompetitive decisions while spending other people's money. Example - airline miles... While it is wise to focus on cases where corruption is "concentrated" and one or few individuals control a lot of money, by its pervasiveness in our culture and to the extent that it forms habits in thinking and decision making, it would be useful to list here instances where individuals are given such incentives. The few people setting such policies also exercise a lot of power, though the anticompetitive decisions are distributed.

  • Frequent Flyer Clubs - Airlines offer "points" or "miles" to entice people to choose them again. People can make their own decision whether and how to use such "buy-five-get-one-free" incentives, but there is a conflict of interest when third parties (employers) are paying for the tickets, while individuals are getting the incentives. Some companies have wisened to this fact and prohibit the choice of airline company based on such program memberships, but it is hard to prove a person has done an unbiased comparison of airfares.

The system encourages people to make decisions for the wrong reasons.

  • Similar case with credit card "points" programs, when the money spent is not the individual's own money but they are reimbursed by someone else.

Both of these cases must be hard to enforce because the personal interest at stake is often small and not worth the enforcement trouble to declare. (which is also a reason internet scammers getting small amounts from many people are hard to prosecute).

Are all consumer corruption cases in this category or are there ones that are qualitatively different?

Corporate Culture

Corporate/business culture has become somewhat homogenous thanks to our 'best practices,' tools, business schools, trade media and the such. Young employees are often told to network and work hard to be more visible with higher ups.

This emphasis on visibility provides a subtle form of corruption. The best decisions are not made. The quiet opinions are blocked out in favor of the loud. Those with poorer (non-native) language skills have the value of their input diminished.

If somebody takes, somebody else gives

To influence a government there should be somebody who influences. A guess is that corporate governance is a cornerstone in this game. there might be a few questions arising:

  • Who influences, is it big companies, small ones, celebrities, anybody?
  • If there is influence, how is it? Is it money, travel, network&career, etc., or the opposite of it?
  • Do companies have ethical values, and do they live up to it?
  • Do companies follow legal values, e.g. sox?
  • How to best organize lobbying? E.g. winning influence game.

What can be done to be more ethical?

References for Corporate Culture

Jack Welch "Winning"

Clive Thompson, "The See Through CEO," Wired Magazine, April 2007.

The Corporate Library

History

Must reads

  • Bernard Bailyn, The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution (Cambridge: 1967)
  • Gordon S. Wood, The Creation of the American Republic, 1776-1787 (Chapel Hill: 1969)
  • J.G.A. Pocock, The Machiavellian Moment: Florentine Political Thought and the Atlantic Republican Tradition (Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1975)
  • John M. Murrin, "The Great Inversion or Court vs. Country: A Comparison of the Revolutionary Settlements in England (1688-1721) and America (1776-1816)," in J.G.A. Pocock, ed., Three British Revolutions: 1641, 1688, 1776 (Princeton, 1981), 368-453.
  • Gordon S. Wood, "Conspiracy and the Paranoid Style: Causality and Deceit in the Eighteenth Century," William & Mary Quarterly, 3rd ser., Vol. 39 (1982), pp. 401-41.
  • Isaac Kramnick, "Republicanism Revisionism Revisited," American Historical Review, Vol. 87, No. 3 (June 1982), pp. 629-64.
  • Daniel T. Rodgers, "Republicanism: The Career of a Concept," Journal of American History, Vol. 79, No. 1 (June 1992), pp. 11-38.
  • Gabriel Kolko, "| Railroads and Regulation, 1877-1916." Greenwood Pub Group; New Ed edition (January 1977). An excellent history of the origins of the Interstate Commerce Commission and its corruption by railroad interests. Ralph Nader produced a report documenting the outcome in 1970, which was | reported on by Time magazine.

Please research

  • The notion of "corruption" you appear to have in mind seems very similar to that targeted by "civic republicanism" or "Country" ideology of Britain in the early eighteenth century. For a time, historians of early America believed that the Revolutionary leaders were primarily motivated by civic republican ideology, but that idea has waned somewhat in recent years (see Rodgers).

Other

Sociology & Networking

I think you need to add the more fundamental, foundational corruption of "public spaces." That is, Manuel Castells, who created the "Network Society" mode of sociological analysis and who some compare his Post-Industrial Society concepts as what Emile Durkheim did in Spirit of Capitalism for an industrial society, talks about the logic of a network, its identity, how networks exclude and simultaneously include. So not only our public spaces become brand "Disney"-like groves, the corruption and destructive logics seeps into people's identity in powerful ways. Thus, these concept can be applied to every social unit, the family, terrorism, Corporate global actors whether financial or ent., on the minute level of an individual's action and on the macro, global level regarding the massive flows of capital and images through networks. I'd recommend you read his two seminal books, The Rise of the Network Society and esp. Vol. II, The Power of Identity. Regarding corruption, a network analysis helps one understand and disentangle how multiple networks intersect in lobbying and legal decisions. These tools provide great dexterity in uncovering intersections and inter-penetrations.

Corruption Markets and Marker Systems

Observation of patterns of corruption in diverse social contexts and across a broad span of history suggests that secret and semi-formal trading networks are at the root of the corruption phenomenon. The trade in "markers," recognized quanta of benefit, is what establishes a network member's standing in an underground system of corruption. An instance of a simple market exchange is: a corrupt lawyer bribes a judge and the corrupt judge softens the sentence of the lawyer's defendant. But the judge can also accumulate markers by consistently giving preferential treatment to a particular party (individual, corporate, or political), in anticipation of the delivery of future market repayment.

An interesting recent anecdotal example of marker trading was the revelation that a leading securities analyst in New York provided a favorable rating on a company's stock in return for placement of his daughter in an exclusive Manhattan preschool. This illustrates the extraordinary diversity of markers in corruption networks and points toward a theoretical challenge in elucidating how network members value and transact their exchanges while maintaining secrecy. Improving this theoretical understanding is a key objective for disrupting networks of corruption. Traffic analysis on contacts and relationships among suspected members in a corruption network may be a fruitful avenue of inquiry.

Audio References

The below link includes the audio from a USC Free Culture talk with panelists, Jerry Del Colliano, Clinical Professor Music Industry & Recording Arts Thornton School of Music, Founder of Inside Radio. B.J. Dodge: Adjunct Professor USC School of Theatre. Faculty Coordinator and Director for California Institute of the Arts’ Community Arts Partnership Youth Theater Workshop at Plaza de la Raza in Lincoln Heights. Janet Owen – Adjunct Professor of Public Art Studies, USC School of Fine Art. Curator of Exhibitions with the newly established Studio For Social Sculpture, based in Los Angeles. Previously she was Co-Director of Raid Projects, an LA exhibition and curatorial organization, and Founding Director of the AIM international festival of time-based media. Nelson Pavlosky: Co-Founder, Free Culture – An International Student Movement.

Janet Owen is heading up a new public "Studio Scupture" project that specifically addresses how the disappearance of real public spaces allow such corruption to flourish. ([link][20])

Foreign Aid

Aside from the blunt forms of corruption that have become a major focus of the development community (theft, graft and other forms of "obvious" corruption), the undue influence of money is corrupting outcomes in the foreign aid regime in two other ways: (1) The undue influence of money in the system provides incentives for donors and aid agencies to ignore corruption and perpetuate a system that is failing to help the intended recipients, and (2) The perpetuation of the 'tied aid' system, wherein foreign aid must be spent on goods and services provided by the donor country, further dilutes the effectiveness of the aid system; financial rewards for domestic business corrupt the intended outcomes of the aid regime.

(1) Readings on Incentives for Donors (IFIs, NGOs) to Ignore Corruption

  • World Bank, The Wapenhans Report, Portfolio Management Task Force (1992) (pivotal World Bank report discussing the 'approval culture' which incentivizes employees to throughput money without adequate accountability mechanisms in place).


(2) Readings on "Tied Aid"

  • "Aid Abroad is Business Back Home: Washington Firms Profit From Overseas Aid," The Washington Post, Jan. 26, 2001, at A1. (profiling domestic businesses that receive significant profits for the foreign aid system).
  • CJ Jempa, The Tying of Aid (1991) (an authoritative overview of the tied aid system and its deleterious effects on the efficacy of aid).

fight against corruption

  • European Union tries to put policies in place, therefor justice ministeres meet ans work out plans.

corruption in action

  • 2008-03-04 User:Woozle/soft drink hard sell: A Pepsico distributor uses monetary incentive to keep out smaller competition (non-governmental Lessigian corruption), depriving customers of their rightful Dr. Pepper; Woozle proposes a meta-solution.
  • 2008-03-01 My Forbidden Fruits (and Vegetables): how legislation is designed to keep the local food movement from catching on. "Why? Because national fruit and vegetable growers based in California, Florida and Texas fear competition from regional producers like myself. Through their control of Congressional delegations from those states, they have been able to virtually monopolize the country’s fresh produce markets."
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