Corruption: 'need or greed?' (or systems?)
I inwardly groan when 'public policy' people use pithy slogans that over-simplify complexity and so undermine effectiveness. Let's retire these one by one - first up: 'need or greed?' in corruption.
**this was originally a LinkedIn piece - now updated for substack**
The question of 'corruption: need or greed?' has come up several times in recent months: Do informal payments - to health workers, to police - reflect their greed or a basic need (they are badly paid, or not paid at all).
motivations
I am attracted to the idea of understanding individual and collective motivations in corruption, anti-corruption, and in public policy more generally ('small p' political economy and all that). However, this 'need or greed' thing is very sticky, has been kicking around for a long time, and risks being an explanatory binary end point, rather than a focus for context-specific investigation - and action.
I'm rarely a moralist in anti-corruption (though good friends in the field tell me that I need to keep testing my position, and not say it out loud so often). But saying 'need' not 'greed' risks a moral justification for people in authority, or in uniform, or with ‘quasi authority’, demanding, expecting, or being offered, some illicit cash. Or worse.
Which I think is quite bad on several levels. Here are a few.
who is really worst off?
First, many people in the world would love a government job. Badly paid and badly treated government employees deserve our empathy and support to deliver their important work and be properly rewarded for it, but they are rarely (never?) the most vulnerable in their society or community. But their clients and service users may be.
Those that they expect cash (or sex) from are usually worse off, and illicit payments perpetuate inequality. Those that pay get a better service or less harassment. Those with status and networks use influence and don't have to pay. Those that cannot pay may wait longer, get a worse service, or get nothing. Moreover, those in government jobs may have got them through (cough) 'non meritocratic' pathways (bribes, connections, political affiliation) and may not expect to be held to account for their performance - to the public, or through formal means. So let's see all the people within the wider complex system, and not overdo the empathy by saying 'it’s need, not greed'.
I originally wrote that paragraph without reference to sex (sexual corruption, 'sextortion', sexual violence). When I re-read it, I thought 'hhm, petty cash bribes can seem minor and permissible, and culturally acceptable, and accepting that they happen can seem 'politically savvy'. But add the very real experience of sexual coercion and violence - such as by the police - and it really focuses the attention on 'greed' over 'need'.
perpetual workarounds
Second, low public sector salaries, or salaries not paid on time, or salaries that do not keep up with the cost of living, are all serious public policy problems, but can be tackled if treated as such - rather than being a kind of quagmire issue that persists and justifies informal ‘work arounds’ - ie tips, gifts, bribes. If low public salaries and late salary payment have been a problem for some time (check sector diagnostic reports - has this been a 'priority problem' for years or decades?) then focus on how and why this persists, and try to 'disrupt this equilibrium'. Public payrolls are a great instrument of political power... there might be good reasons for not fixing the machine. Any ghost worker would tell you this (that is a payroll joke).
The same goes for the increasing numbers of ‘volunteers’ in government service centres who may be untrained, semi trained, or fully trained, but are unemployed yet turn out at government facilities to volunteer. My understanding is that this can be for a variety of overlapping reasons - a commitment to serve and to fill very real gaps, but also because of an expectation of later ‘formalisation’ on the public payroll and/or an expectation of payment - ie through collecting or asking for informal fees. They may have been incentivised to volunteer with the expectation as part of a political strategy by a vote-seeking politician.
I have deep sympathy with their position, but ‘our’ (public policy and international development people) commitment to universal, free, public funded health care is pretty shallow if we turn a blind eye to the reality of voluntary workers being paid through out-of-pocket charges to service users. It does not matter whether this is need or greed. The same is true for ‘theoretically free education’.
systems, innit?
Third, systems systems systems. My personal and professional experience of bribery and gift giving in health and policing is that it is often a system thing.
The lonely police constable at the crossing by the market takes the cash and you picture him buying chai and a samosa, but he actually distributes it through a system so that he, and a range of more powerful people, get their cuts. Rumours abound - of secret price lists (different bribes for different infractions), of structured distribution systems with percent cuts that go all the way up to the most senior officials, of street level police having quotas for cash collection, and may also aim to 'buy' (with a bribe) a lucrative posting (a market, or key road checkpoint)- and then recover their investment through demanding bribes. All of this is, of course, notoriously hard to evidence or research.
You may be reading this (he flatters himself) and thinking 'but that is police greed; I'm talking about health worker need'. But I think ‘systems’ are probably a norm in health service bribery too.
Never miss the chance to draw a system
This brings me to one of my favourite pieces of research in the last year - a cracking qualitative study of the systems of informal payment in a few sampled hospitals in Tanzania.
It's by Mary Ramesh, Peter Binyaruka, Masuma Mamdani, Dina Balabanova, Antonio Andreoni, and Eleanor Hutchinson and from the SOAS ACE stable.
The authors caution about too much extrapolation, but I found it a great insight into how these 'mini systems' of payments operate, and also vary, even within one hospital.
Some services are always free (TB, HIV, family planning). Some payments are 'atomised' (Maternity - a tip in the pocket of one worker). Others are two person systems (Outpatients - I see these as being small molecules). And others - larger payments for complex services, such as jumping the queue for elective surgery - are like complex molecules - longer chains connecting different atoms.
The paper is really worth reading.
I liked it so much that I tried to draw it - and have used this 'systems diagram' to try and explain corruption 'systems thinking' at the relatively micro level.
Perhaps it can also help to retire trite statements about ‘need or greed?’.
(by drawing, I mean that I do a lousy sketch and then get my daughter hamsiidris (@hamsiiidris) / X (twitter.com) to draw it nicely).
What do you think?
Next episode…
As I said at the start, I have an antipathy to pithy slogans1 in public policy that over-simplify complexity. Let's give these some scrutiny, retire them one by one - this was 'need or greed' in corruption.
Next up - ‘sunlight is the best disinfectant’ (see here for a great study of the effect of sunlight on fungal infection in socks).
OK, except when I come up with them
Completely agree, Peter. In fact, studies of compensation in public and private sectors often conclude there is a public sector premium, not the reverse. And the types of jobs with prevalent unofficial payments are often in high demand such that people pay to get them. It’s a vicious circle from there...