(Assignment 2) Reading across perspectives in the West – Reviewing ‘Corruption’ in Germany, Spain and USA - Padmapriya Govindarajan

Cases from Germany – Mrinalini Badrinarayanan

Drawing on Michael Johnston’s category of ‘influence markets’, the author argues that:

‘Germany would fall under ‘influence markets’, which as the name suggests, are political systems where the influence, or access of politicians or policymakers is marketed, or sought to be bought by entities that try to connect wealth with power’

The three instances she has chosen to flesh out this argument are instances where corporations/organizations are involved in attempts to create infuence networks by establishing secret monetary channels – elaborate bribery attempts, veiled under other names or erased without evident traces. Through closer examinations of the cases, she argues that corruption was largely independent of just the type of political system espoused, and credits Germany with the robustness to handle these instances.

Spain Salsa – Krupa Maria Varghese

Arguing for an integration of the social, political and economic spheres in the study of corruption, the author examines the context of Spain. The three instances she draws upon involve:

‘…the practice of ‘revolving door’ strategies—whereby high officials, elected or appointed, from the government and the public administration, become board members of major companies or vice versa’

These are cases where political power directly allows individuals to bend systems and amass monetary power. Her examination of the social dimensions allows her to look at theories that argue that belief systems, human nature and prioritization of one’s immediate social environment are imperatives that encourage corruption.

Corruption in the USA – N. Chandrasekar

The author studies three instances in the USA where bribery serves as a reason to allocate contracts to particular people or in particular ways. Corruption, he argues, is a case where:

‘politicians, bureaucrats etc, are in a position where they can exercise discretionary power by allocating items of value’

His project is to view corruption from an economic perspective, and thus, his case studies deal in particular with contracts and money and their interaction with corporations.

All three authors portray an intimate link between money and power in their focus on corruption, though they attempt to view the phenomenon from very different (albeit intimately related) perspectives – the philosophical, the social and the economic. This is particularly noteworthy, as, even in the case of Spain, where the author’s key concern is the accumulation of more power – the relationship with wealth becomes evident. Though all three run the risk of reducing corruption to bribery, in its most dominant sense, perhaps this speaks of a larger observation within corruption research.

Johnston’s (Reflection and Reassessment, Heywood 2014) argument particularly resonates here and I conclude by drawing upon that. He argues that perhaps it is imperative that we view corruption as systemic, rather than as a transgression. Laws then become less rigid within theory – and perhaps this, coupled with a fluid study of corruption will allow us to capture the phenomenon better.