‘Spanish Salsa’- Krupa
This article examines corruption in Spain from a sociological and
cultural perspective. This is carried out through three case studies reflecting
incidences of corruption as diverse as: tax fraud committed by the princess of
Spain, high level political bribery in exchange for lucrative contracts, and a
cash for votes scandal. Through these, Krupa brings out the prominence of
revolving door strategies in Spain and their relevance in creating a wider
atmosphere of corruption. She goes on to use sociological theories and
empirical evidence that clearly reflect the pervasiveness of corruption in
Spain, including ‘allegiance theory’ which discusses how social attitudes may
well incentivise wider practices of corruption.
Although there is a brief note about how people in power in Spain
continue to cling on to power despite being outed as corrupt, perhaps an
exploration of the mechanisms that make this possible, from a sociological
point of view- could have been explored more thoroughly. This article does a
neat job of analysing corruption in Spain from a social perspective, but probably
due to the word limit constraint, it spends less time tracing elite cartels at
work.
‘Corruption in the USA’- Chandra
This article seeks to examine corruption in the USA from an economic
perspective. However, it is a little disjointed in its arguments, presenting
one theory- that of discretionary power- followed by a set of 3 case studies
that expound on this concept and flesh it out. The theory side of this article
is essentially limited to the idea that those in power also carry discretionary
power, which allows them to allocate “items of value” in exchange for
bribes. The three US case studies used by Chandra illustrate this. An
interesting deviation followed by him, though, is that one of his examples if
fictional and drawn from an American crime show.
The article is extremely limited in its
analysis due to its usage of only the concept of bribery (in its connection to
power). The case studies were very interesting and it would have been great to
see them analysed in greater detail and from a more detailed economic
standpoint, especially as the specifics reveal greater complexity than has been
set out, such as the case study involving a judge who took a million dollars in
bribes in exchange for filling up juvenile homes with innocent children.
‘Institutional Trust and Elections
in Context of the USA’- Vishali
In this article, Vishali takes a fairly comprehensive look at the nature
of corruption within the political-institutional-corporate nexus in the USA.
Beginning by discussing the ambiguities in the practice of high-level
corruption and how it is understood in the USA (taking a bribe vs taking a
gift, for example), Vishali moves on to looking at the now legal institutional
mechanism that allows corporations to finance political campaigns, which
enables corruption to become inherently embedded in institutional machinery,
such that it becomes difficult to notice it from the outside, leading to a loss
of trust in the system.
Her evaluation of this practice, which employs Johnston’s theorization
on influence markets, looks at both its functioning and consequences, taking
Trump’s example to show that as a self-financed candidate, he enjoys a greater
amount of trust. Examining the consequences of this practice in more detail,
Vishali discusses its negative impact on competition, accountability and
responsible global policymaking. The magnitude of corruption in influence
markets is seen as leading to promoting specific types of corruption, which can
be extremely dangerous because of the consequences outlined above. Given the
strict word limit, this is a very well-covered article, however it does deviate
from the assignment in not primarily using three case studies to examine the
topic.
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