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What is the opposite of corruption?
a
Bo Rothstein
a
Department of Political Science, University of Gothenburg,
Gothenburg, Sweden
Published online: 30 Jul 2014.
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To cite this article: Bo Rothstein (2014) What is the opposite of corruption?, Third World Quarterly,
35:5, 737-752, DOI: 10.1080/01436597.2014.921424
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Third World Quarterly, 2014
Vol. 35, No. 5, 737–752, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01436597.2014.921424
What is the opposite of corruption?
Bo Rothstein*
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Department of Political Science, University of Gothenburg, Gothenburg, Sweden
Corruption has turned out to be difficult to define and what should be
counted as the opposite to corruption remains widely disputed. If the
goal for a post-conflict society is not only to become democratic and
prevent a return to violence but also to reduce systemic corruption,
we need to know what it is that should be fought and how the opposite to systemic corruption should be conceptualised. To define the
opposite to corruption, choices have to be made along four conceptual dimensions. These are universalism vs relativism, uni- vs multidimensionality, normative vs empirical and whether the definition
should relate to political procedures or policy substance. As a result
of this conceptual analysis, it is argued, a universal, one-dimensional,
normative and procedural definition should be preferred. The suggested definition is that of impartiality as the basic norm for the
implementation of laws and policies. This conceptual analysis ends
with a discussion of why such a norm has historically and in the contemporary world been hard to achieve and why it is especially problematic in post-conflict societies.
Keywords: public goods; impartiality; good governance; state capacity;
universalism
Why it is necessary to define the opposite of corruption
From being largely an ignored problem, since the late 1990s issues about
corruption have reached centre stage in academic research. New theories
emphasising the importance of various political institutions for development,
coupled with more and better data have changed the intellectual landscape.
Corruption is now generally thought of as a serious social ill having detrimental
effects on a number of issues: prosperity, population health, child welfare, perceived satisfaction with life, social trust, political legitimacy and economic
equality.1 In addition to these issues, several recent studies have pointed out that
corruption is also a causal factor behind violent political conflicts, both inter- as
well as intra-state wars.2 This has led to an increased interest in what effects
corruption has in post-conflict societies.3
Many international aid and development organisations have also become
interested in the problem of corruption. Since corruption tends to be a politically
sensitive issue, the ‘coded language’ for this policy reorientation has been to
*Email: [email protected]
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emphasise the importance of ‘good governance’.4 However, as recently pointed
out by Fukuyama, a central problem in this discussion is a serious lack of conceptual precision.5 Not only has corruption turned out to be difficult to define
but, maybe even more problematically, what should be counted as the opposite
of corruption remains widely disputed.6 This lack of conceptual precision over
what should count as corruption (and its opposite) is not just a question of academic interest. If the goal for a post-conflict society is not only to become democratic but also to reduce what is known as systemic corruption, which often
plagues many democracies, not least post-conflict societies, we need to know
what it is that should be fought and what the opposite of systemic corruption
may be.7 While there is considerable consensus over what can be seen as a
basic definition for representative democracy, as will be shown below, there is
hardly any agreement on what should count as the opposite of corruption. This
is a problem, not least for post-conflict societies, because, without conceptual
precision, we will neither be able to find out what may work as remedies for
systemic corruption nor will we be able to explain what various types or levels
of corruption imply for post-conflict societies.
In previous work I have argued that the opposite of corruption should be
termed ‘quality of government’. Together with Jan Teorell I have suggested that
high quality of government is to be defined as ‘impartiality in the exercise of
public power’. More precisely, this is defined as follows: ‘When implementing
laws and policies, government officials shall not take anything about the case/
citizen into consideration that is not beforehand stipulated in the law or policy.’8
This article deals with the conceptual and theoretical problem of how the opposite to corruption can be defined and is organised as follows. The next section is
an analysis of how the term ‘governance’ is conceptualised from different
approaches. The third section presents a number of theoretical dimensions that
are important in conceptualising what should be the opposite of corruption. Section four develops the idea of impartiality in the exercise of public power as the
basis for what should be defined as the opposite of corruption. In the fifth and
concluding section, and using this definition, I will discuss the types of problem
we are likely to expect when analysing the problem of corruption in post-conflict settings.
The conceptual problem with ‘governance’
‘Good governance’ is now used, in particular, by many national development
agencies and international organisations, such as the World Bank and the United
Nations. One example is the International Monetary Fund, which in 1996
declared that ‘promoting good governance in all its aspects, including by ensuring the rule of law, improving the efficiency and accountability of the public
sector, and tackling corruption, are essential elements of a framework within
which economies can prosper.’9 A central problem in this discussion is that
there are at least three quite different ideas of what constitutes ‘governance’ in
the social sciences. One refers to the administrative problems found in many
Western countries and consists of a critique of the top-down, rule-of-law-based
type of Weberian public administration for not adequately capturing how things
are actually administrated in these societies. Here, governance research focuses
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on things like public–private partnerships, the use of networks and various
pseudo-market models in implementing public policies.
A second approach to governance is what has become known as ‘participatory governance’. This approach emphasises the role that ordinary citizens can
play in influencing politics outside (or beside) the traditional channels in representative democracy such as voting and active participation in political parties.
This approach places a strong focus on various forms of deliberative practices
in which citizens can discuss and form opinions about how to solve various collective problems.10
While using the same terminology, these two approaches to governance are
very different from what has taken place in development research, where the
term ‘good governance’ was established. This approach is oriented towards
state-centred variables, such as administrative capacity, the rule-of-law, the
secure enforcement of property rights, and meritocratic recruitment of civil servants.11 A first conclusion is that many of the complaints that the concept of
governance is ill-defined stem from the fact that these three approaches use the
same term for completely different things.12 A second conclusion is that much
of the confusion in the discussion about governance is caused by this conceptual
conflation. Since the development approach is more state-centred than the other
two, in order to avoid contributing to this ongoing conceptual confusion, the
term ‘quality of government’ (QOG) is to be preferred when discussing the relationship between political institutions and development. If the opposite of corruption is high quality of government, we have to define what this can be. It is
to this task that the rest of this article will be devoted. The overall ambition for
this theoretical enterprise is nothing less than to provide what Fukuyama has
asked for, namely ‘a theory of institutions, that can be generalized, and that will
provide the basis for policy guidance for poor countries’.13 Below I will introduce a number of dimensions on which this theoretical enterprise has to make
choices and present my arguments for the choices made. In this I rely heavily
on the approach towards/of concept formation (and misformation) in political
science stemming back to Giovanni Sartori, which has been elaborated upon by,
for example, David Collier, John Gerring and Andreas Schedler.14
Defining quality of government
Normative or empirical?
A central issue is whether QOG should be defined by a certain norm (or norms)
that pertain to how government power is exercised or whether it is more of an
empirical ‘thing’, for example bureaucratic ‘autonomy and capacity’ as tentatively suggested by Fukuyama.15 My justification for a normatively based definition rests on three arguments. First, terms like of ‘good’ or ‘quality’ are
inherently normative (as is corruption). Something is ‘good’ or has high/low
‘quality’ in relation to a certain norm (or norms); therefore it is necessary to
specify this norm. Trying to define quality of government, while ignoring the
normative issue of what constitutes ‘quality’, defies logic. Second, recent empirical research in this area gives a surprising result, namely that when people make
up their minds on whether or not they find their governments legitimate, it turns
out that how a state’s power is exercised is more important to them than their
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democratic rights.16 Since perceptions of political legitimacy are inherently
normative, we have to theorise what these norms are that pertain to how
political power is exercised.
A third reason for a normative definition of QOG, instead of pointing at specific empirically existing institutions, is that, if we look at countries that are
judged to have high levels of QOG, their political and legal institutions as well as
their systems of public administration show remarkable variation.17 This implies
that simply exporting such institutions (or a specific state’s institutional configuration) from high QOG to low QOG countries will not work to improve QOG. The
reason seems to be that it is not the specific institutions, but the basic norm(s)
under which they operate, that is the crucial factor.
Should QOG be seen as universal or relativistic?
If what should count as the opposite of corruption (ie QOG) is to be defined normatively, this raises the controversial question of universalism versus relativism.
Is it possible to find a universal norm that would be accepted as valid and legitimate on a global scale or will what counts as the opposite to corruption have to
be relative and thereby differ by society or culture? The development of the
international anti-corruption regime since the late 1990s has not been without its
critiques. One point that has been noted in this critique is that the international
anti-corruption agenda represents a specific Western liberal ideal that cannot be
applied to countries outside that part of the world.18 Others have argued that
political systems operate in such different ways that finding a universal standard
for what should count as corruption is ‘deeply implausible’.19 There are at least
three arguments against this type of relativism in defining corruption. The first
is that if we accept a relativistic definition of corruption or QOG, all efforts to
make empirical comparisons between countries in different parts of the world
will be in vain. For example, it would be impossible to verify that Denmark has
less corruption than Nigeria, since what is regarded as corruption in these two
political cultures is, in the relativistic approach, completely different. This is the
problem with the standard definition of corruption as ‘abuse of public power for
private gain’.20 Since the norm or principle that is ‘abused’ is not defined, this
definition is empty and thereby invites relativistic notions of what corruption is
and also what the opposite of corruption might be.21
The second argument against relativism is normative and based on a similar
discussion in the areas of, for example, human rights, gender equality and
democracy. If we accept relativistic definitions of central concepts like these, the
leaders of China, Syria and Saudi Arabia can claim that they also have democracy, respect human rights and strive for gender equality but, because of their
specific culture, they happen to have a somewhat different definition of what
these concepts entail.
Although the empirical research in this area is not entirely unambiguous,
most of it points to the quite surprising result that people in very different cultures seem to have a very similar notion of what should constitute corruption.
One example comes from a recent quantitative study based on the large databank of anthropological analyses known as the Human Relations Area Files
(HRAF). This study finds that corruption has been reported in all standard types
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of pre-industrial societies and in all the major world regions.22 Accordingly
corruption is not understood differently in different cultures based on different
moral understandings of the problem. Instead the differences that exist can be
explained by the variation in the amount and type of ‘public goods’ in various
societies. This ‘public goods theory of corruption’ presented by the authors can
be summarised as follows: all societies, no matter their level of development,
have to produce some set of public goods. At the minimum this can be collective organisation for physical security, collective supply of water and food,
organised support for orphans, etc. Their explanation for the existence of a universal understanding of corruption is that, when those who are responsible for
managing the public goods convert them into private goods, people generally
see this as morally wrong.23
This result is supported by Widmalm, who has presented similar results from
a survey study carried out in poor rural villages in India in which corruption
was rampant.24 Despite the absence of rule-of-law type civil servants in these
villages, Widmalm found that the impartial civil servant model had surprisingly
large support among the village population. No less than 77% of the villagers
stated that they found it ‘very important’ that civil servants should ‘treat everyone equally, regardless of income, status, class, caste, gender or religion’ and
also that the civil servants ‘should never under any circumstances accept bribes’.
The same results come from the Afrobarometer survey study, in which respondents were asked whether they consider it ‘not wrong at all’, ‘wrong but understandable’, or ‘wrong and punishable’ if a public official: 1) decides to locate a
development project in an area where his friends and supporters live; 2) gives a
job to someone from his family who does not have adequate qualifications; and
3) demands a favour or an additional payment for some service that is part of
his job. The surprising results from this survey carried out in Kenya and
Uganda, countries known for their very high levels of corruption, were that a
clear majority of respondents, between 61% and 78%, stated that these practices
were ‘wrong and punishable’.25 Only a small minority (fewer than 10%) stated
that the three practices were ‘not wrong at all’, while on average about 15% stated that they saw this type of behaviour by public officials as ‘wrong but understandable’. This result is further supported by a recent analysis showing that
grassroots organisations that take up the fight against corruption in such various
places as India, Mongolia, Uganda and the Philippines turn out to have very
similar ideas of what they are fighting against.26
The reason why people in systemically corrupt societies, though condemning
corruption, participate in corrupt practices seems to be that they understand the
situation as a ‘collective action’ problem, where it makes little sense to be ‘the
only one’ refraining from using or accepting bribes and other kick-backs.27 As
Gunnar Myrdal was already stating in his analysis of the ‘soft state’ problem in
developing countries in the 1960s, ‘Well, if everybody seems corrupt, why
shouldn’t I be corrupt?’.28 Reinforcing this idea is an anthropological study of
corruption in Nigeria, wherein Jordan Smith concludes that ‘although Nigerians
recognize and condemn, in the abstract, the system of patronage that dominates
the allocation of government resources, in practice people feel locked in’.29
Similarly, in his classic study of clientelism in southern Italy, Banfield found
that it made perfect sense to all the families in the village of Montegranesi to be
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‘amoral familists’, since everyone was expected to be or eventually to perform
according to this social template.30 This spatial universalism of corruption
increases in theoretical depth when we consider that even temporal approaches
to the phenomenon have provided similar conclusions. Analyses of what
counted as corruption in the distant past, such as the Roman Empire or 13th
century France, give the impression of not being different from contemporary
notions of the concept.31
Especially in postcolonial theory the existence of a universal understanding
of corruption has been questioned.32 However, it can be pointed out that in
Frantz Fanon’s classic book, The Wretched of the Earth, which in many ways is
the founding text for the postcolonial approach to development issues, the
author himself points to corruption among the new political elite as a serious
malady for West Africa. In Fanon’s words:
Scandals are numerous, ministers grow rich, their wives doll themselves up, the
members of parliament feather their nests and there is not a soul down to the simple policeman or the customs officer who does not join in the great procession of
corruption.33
The reluctance by many scholars following the postcolonial approach to look at
corruption as a serious problem is thus difficult to understand.34 In sum, there
are both normative but also strong empirical grounds for opting for a universal
understanding of corruption and its opposite.
Should QOG be based on political procedures or policy substance?
Is QOG something that should be defined by reference to a set of political procedures or should it be defined by reference to certain policies or outcomes. An
example of the latter is the well known definition of ‘good governance’ provided by Daniel Kaufmann and colleagues at the World Bank, which among
other things include ‘sound policies’.35 Another example is Agnafors, who
argues that we should include the ‘moral content’ of enacted laws and policies.36 The reason why this is problematic can readily be seen if we compare it
with how democracy is usually defined. The well known problem with putting
specific policies within the definition of democracy (and thereby QOG) is why
different people, who can be expected to have very different views about policies, should accept them. Since we are opting for a definition which can be universally accepted and applied, also in a post-conflict society, including specific
policies becomes impossible. To use John Rawls’ terminology, political legitimacy requires an ‘overlapping consensus’ about the basic institutions for justice
in a society so that citizens will continue to support them even when they have
incommensurable conceptions of ‘the meaning, value and purpose of human
life’ and even if their group will lose political power.37 This is of course less
likely to be the case if specific (‘sound’) policies or laws that have moral content are included in the definition of QOG. This implies that a strictly procedural
definition of QOG is to be preferred. To use a metaphor from the world of sport:
imagine a sports league in which a group of teams are going to compete. If this
group of teams cannot agree about the rules of the game and also about the
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743
importance of having the games led by impartial and non-corrupt referees, the
league will collapse.
There is a common drawback to all procedural definitions of political processes for decision making, namely that they cannot offer a guarantee against
morally bad decisions. As is well known, there is no guarantee against perfectly
democratically made decisions in a representative democracy resulting in severe
violations of the rights of minorities and individuals.38 This is also the case for
any procedural definition of QOG. In this approach I think the strategy suggested
by John Rawls is the one to follow.39 His central idea is that if a society structures its systems for making and enforcing collective decisions in a manner that
can be justified as fair, this will increase the likelihood that the outcomes are
normatively just. Thus, the probability that a political system that builds access
to power on the fair principle of ‘political equality’ will produce outcomes that
increase social and political justice is higher than if access to power is organised
in a different manner. The equivalent for the administrative side of the state
would then be that, if policy implementation is based on a norm such as impartiality, the probability of normatively good outcomes will increase. Empirical
research shows that the latter case is more probable than the former, that is, high
QOG has a much stronger impact on measures of human well-being than does
representative democracy.40 Given a fair political order such as high QOG, this is
what we can expect but, again, not guarantee.
As Fukuyama notes, we probably would not like to ‘argue that the US military is of low-quality because it does things we disapprove of, say, invading
Iraq’.41 If we define QOG by ‘good outcomes’ or include ‘the moral status of the
laws’ and/or the ‘public ethos’,42 we will be creating a conceptual tautology that
a society with a high moral standard and a good ‘public ethos’ will result in
good outcomes. This is just stating the obvious. Simply put, we must have the
intellectual courage to admit that a public organisation can have high quality or
capacity in doing what it does even if, from a moral perspective, we disapprove
of what it is doing. Otherwise, QOG is simply a situation where a public authority efficiently implements the policies that we happen to like.
The advantage of a procedural strategy is that it is more likely to attain a
broad-based acceptance (ie Rawls’ ‘overlapping consensus’) even in a society
with groups that have incommensurable ideas of ‘the good’, something that is
certainly the case in a post-conflict society. If QOG includes ‘the moral status of
the laws’,43 as defined by some particular ideology, it is very unlikely that a
Rawlsian ‘overlapping consensus’ ever can be reached, especially in postconflict societies.44 In sum, the procedural strategy in defining QOG can be said
to rest on an assumed probability that, if the political system of a society is
based on procedures which can be normatively understood as fair, this will
increase the likelihood of normatively just outcomes. The alternative substantive
definitional strategy is less likely to achieve ‘overlapping consensus’, since there
is not much agreement, in many countries in the world, on what should
constitute what the economists argue are ‘sound policies’ or the philosophers
claim to be the right ‘moral status of the laws’.
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Should the definition of QOG be multi- or uni-dimensional?
Several attempts to define the opposite of corruption have argued for a multidimensional or ‘complex’ strategy. QOG should entail that decisions in the public
administration adhere to efficiency, public ethos, good decision making, transparency, accountability and stability to name a few. Others have argued for a
uni-dimensional strategy.45 There are several drawbacks with the multi-dimensional strategy. The first is that we may treat what is an empirical question by
definitional fiat. Simply put, we want to explain why high QOG makes some
states’ public administration more efficient than others and this implies that we
cannot include efficiency in the definition of QOG, since we probably do not
want to state the obvious, namely that efficiency explains efficiency. The same
goes for good decision making,46 and capacity.47 We want a definition of QOG
that can be helpful in explaining why the civil service in some states has a better capacity for making good decisions than the public administration in other
states (or regions, cities) and if we include what we want to explain in the definition this explanatory purpose becomes impossible.
The problem with accountability for what should count as the opposite of
corruption is that accountability as such does not contain a normative standard.
No organisation or bureaucrat can be held accountable ‘in general’, since one is
always held accountable according to some previously specified normative standard. Without defining this standard accountability is just an empty signifier.
Another well known problem with multi-dimensional definitions is how to handle a situation when a state for which we want to measure QOG shows different
values on the various dimensions. For example, the World Bank researchers
include five different dimensions, while Agnafors includes no fewer than six.48
The question then becomes how to handle a situation where the rule of law is
zero but where there is maximum efficiency (or stability, or public ethos, or
good decision making). Would that be a state with 50% QOG? As Agnafors readily admits, there can be ‘no universal and complete weighing procedure’ for
solving this problem. His solution is that ‘one can perform an incomplete weighing, at least in theory, because it will be inescapably messy in practice’ (original
emphasis).49 Agnafors further states that he does not want to take responsibility
for how his many criteria for what should be included in QOG should be weighed
when they come into conflict. He readily admits that his method is ‘incomplete’
and then he adds that he does not want to address ‘the extent to which such
incompleteness can be overcome’. This is a luxury that political philosophers
may perhaps allow themselves but such a lack of responsibility does not work
for those who care about the relevance of their research to people’s well-being.
Producing a definition that cannot be operationalised in any meaningful sense
will not help us answer the question of why some states are much more successful than others in implementing policies that cater to the basic needs of their citizens. This stands in sharp contradiction to Rawls, who argued that ‘political
philosophy must describe workable political arrangements that can gain support
from real people’.50 As argued by Van Parijs, ‘it is sound intellectual policy…
not to make our concepts too fat’. He continues: ‘fat concepts hinder clear
thinking and foster wishful thinking. By packing many good things under a
single label, one is easily misled into believing that they never clash’.51 As has
been known ever since William Ockham’s day, ontological parsimony is an
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analytical virtue. In sum, the conceptual obesity suggested by Agnafors and
many others for what should constitute QOG will inevitably lead to explanatory
impotence and thereby become unusable for policy recommendations against the
general social ill caused by corruption.
Quality of government as impartiality
The conclusion, so far, is that we should strive for a normative, procedural, universal and parsimonious definition of QOG, which, moreover, can be operationalised and measured. The definition should not include the system of access to
power (eg representative democracy), since we want to be able to explain the
relation between representative democracy and quality of government. Also, it
should not include things like efficiency, capacity and human rights, since we
want to be able to explain whether QOG has a positive or negative impact on
these things. This conceptual strategy can be seen as resting on the assumption
that, if we can suggest ‘just institutions’ for making and implementing collectively binding decisions, the people that come to operate these ‘just institutions’
are also likely to produce morally good outcomes. The alternative, namely that
we should suggest specific (‘sound’) policies or prescribe the moral status of the
laws, runs in the face of the need to reach an ‘overlapping consensus’ for how
collectively binding decisions in a society should be made and implemented.
Again, no such procedural definition (of democracy or QOG) can work as a guarantee against morally bad outcomes – we are dealing with probabilities, not
absolute certainty. Since empirical research shows that higher levels of QOG are
related to higher levels of human well-being (and political legitimacy), we have
a moral obligation to increase our ambitions to define, measure and study what
takes place on the ‘output’ side of the political system. This is not an internal
academic affair in which one can sacrifice what actually works for what would
be an ideal (but un-implementable) definition. I have no doubt in stating that a
major part of human misery in today’s world is caused by the fact that a majority of the world’s population is forced to live under dysfunctional, that is low
quality and highly corrupt, government institutions.
The question, then, is what would be the equivalent to Robert Dahl’s ‘political equality’ as the basic norm for the ‘output’ side of the political system.
Based on the type of rights-based political theory launched by philosophers such
as Brian Barry and John Rawls, as stated above, Jan Teorell and I have suggested such a basic norm – namely impartiality – in the exercise of public
power.52 This definition fills the requirements stated above of being universal,
procedural, uni-dimensional and normative. As we have shown in other studies,
this definition of QOG can be operationalised and measured in both expert surveys and surveys with representative samples of the population. Neither experts
nor ordinary people in low, medium and highly corrupt societies seem to have
problems understanding and answering the battery of survey-questions that follows from this definition. Moreover, these measures largely perform in the
expected way when correlated with various outcome measures, such as measures
of human well-being.53
In contrast to the standard definition of corruption, this definition makes clear
what basic norm is being abused when corruption, clientelism, favouritism,
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discrimination, patronage, nepotism or undue support for special interest groups
in the implementation of public policies occur. It excludes the content of policies, since it is strictly procedural and it does not include what we want to
explain, such as economic efficiency, administrative capacity or good decision
making. An argument for why impartiality in the implementation process usually leads to administrative efficiency and better decisions is that this principle
translates, in practice, into meritocratic recruitment to the civil service, which
leads to better competence and knowledge in the state apparatus.54
What does it mean to be impartial in the exercise of public power? Cupit
writes: ‘To act impartially is to be unmoved by certain sorts of considerations –
such as special relationships and personal preferences. It is to treat people alike
irrespective of personal relationships and personal likes and dislikes.’55 The connection to ‘good’ or ‘quality’ is motivated by the fact that impartiality is the
driving notion behind Rawls’ liberal rights-based theory of justice. As Goodin
argues: ‘Certainly, the antithesis of justice is favouritism’.56 In this context,
impartiality is not a demand on actors on the input side of the political system,
but first and foremost an attribute of the actions taken by civil servants, professional corps in public service, law enforcement personnel and the like. The reason impartiality cannot be a guiding principle for the input side of a democratic
political system is simple: politics is about partisanship.
In political philosophy this distinction between which norms should guide
the content, versus the procedural sides of the political system, is readily seen in
Brian Barry’s important book Justice as Impartiality. Barry argues that impartiality should be a normative criterion in the exercise of political power: ‘like
cases should be treated alike’.57 His idea of ‘second order impartiality’ implies
that the input side of the political system should be arranged so that it gives no
special favour to any conception of ‘the good’. However, as Barry readily
admits, his theory ‘accepts that a demand of neutrality cannot be imposed on
the outcomes’.58 Accordingly, when it comes to decisions about the content of
the policies that governments should pursue, it is not neutrality or impartiality
but ‘reasonableness’ that is his main criterion.59 By this he means that people
engaged in the political process should give sound arguments based on a secular
understanding of knowledge for why they prefer certain policies over others. In
Barry’s words: ‘What is required is as far as possible a polity in which arguments are weighed and the best arguments win, rather than one in which all that
can be said is that votes are counted and the side with the most votes wins’.60
The implication is the one argued for here, namely that impartiality cannot
be a moral basis for the content of policies that individuals, interests groups and
political parties pursue on the input side of the political system, since reasonableness is not the same as impartiality. For example, in a given situation there
may be good reasons for lowering pensions and increasing support for families
with children. This is, however, not the same as being impartial between these
two groups, because there is no such thing as an impartial way of deciding in a
case like this.61 The implication is that when a policy has been decided upon by
the political system, be it deemed just or unjust according to whatever universal
theory of justice one might apply, QOG implies that it has to be implemented in
accordance with the principle of impartiality.
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Third World Quarterly
747
Impartiality in the exercise of political power should not be conflated with
equal treatment, but instead that we do not ‘favor some people over others in
illegitimate ways’.62 For example, applicants to positions in the civil service
who are best qualified should be favoured over those with lower qualifications.
A public school system would usually give children with learning problems
more support than children that do not suffer such problems. Impartiality implies
that only legitimate reasons for differential treatment are acceptable and what
constitutes such a legitimate reason is stated in the policy and/or the law. Impartiality is also not to be conflated with indifference.63 We do not want social
workers or health care personnel to be indifferent to the problems or suffering
of their clients. However, we would strongly object if patients and clients were
given favours because they had good political connections, had paid bribes or
belonged to the ‘right’ ethnic group.
It is important to note that, for many, increased social justice implies policies
that contain more partiality (for example, extra resources for underprivileged
groups). However, proponents of such policies usually do not want these policies, once enacted, to be implemented in a partial way, where bureaucrats are
given total discretion in each and every case.64 For example, it may be perfectly
legitimate to argue for a government to establish academic positions that only
women (or some other disadvantaged group) may apply for, given the gender
inequality that exists in higher academic positions. However, once such a position is announced and a number of women apply, the impartiality norm takes
the upper hand, since those who have argued for such a quota system usually
want the most qualified in the preferred group to get the position. This conditionality, in the application of impartiality as a justice principle, in fact goes all
the way back to John Stuart Mill:
Impartiality, in short, as an obligation of justice, may be said to mean being exclusively influenced by the considerations which it is supposed ought to influence the
particular case in hand, and resisting the solicitations of any motives which
prompt to conduct different from what those considerations would dictate.65
As Rawls states, ‘a just system must generate its own support’.66 The argument
presented here implies that such a just political system must be based on two
completely opposite norms which, moreover, must be handled simultaneously in
the very same system. At the ‘input’ side of this machinery, partisanship (partiality) is to be seen as fully legitimate. Political parties, interest groups and civil
society organisations have the full right to argue for the enactment of laws and
policies that cater to their specific and often very partisan political ideologies.
This is, after all, what democratic politics is about – a competition by various
economic, ideological and/or cultural interests who want the state to deliver policies that cater to their interests. However, as shown above, when policies and
laws are to be implemented, political legitimacy as well as overall human wellbeing is best served if policies and laws are implemented by the opposite norm,
namely impartiality. To continue with Rawls, the institutions ‘must be not only
just but framed so as to encourage the virtue of justice in those who take part in
them’.67 As the empirical results indicate, this is precisely what QOG as impartiality does, since in general it increases both overall human well-being and
political legitimacy.
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B. Rothstein
Conclusions: what to expect in post-conflict societies
This conceptual enterprise has resulted in a definition of the opposite to corruption as based on the norm of impartiality in the exercise of public policies and
laws. The argument is that, contrary to many other analyses of corruption, it is
possible to find a universal, normative, procedural, and uni-dimensional
approach to this issue that works in much the same manner as, for example,
most definitions of human rights, gender equality and representative democracy.
Based on this conceptualisation of quality of government, what can be expected
in post-conflict societies? From one perspective the results of this theoretical
enterprise are encouraging. The universalist standpoint, which is based on the
idea of a public goods approach to corruption, implies that the problem of corruption lies in the prevailing institutions and not in any specific national culture.
If, in principle, people all over the world can be expected to react against
favouritism in how public goods are managed and distributed in very much the
same manner, this should also make the task of improving QOG in post-conflict
societies easier. Simply put, if corruption is to be understood as a concept only
pertaining to politics in Western, modern, liberal and capitalist societies, the idea
of establishing the opposite of systemic corruption in most post-conflict societies
is, by definition, in vain, since most such societies are not located in the western
hemisphere.
However, if corruption is understood instead as a problem of collective
action, as stated above, while certainly not an easy task,68 reducing the level of
corruption becomes a question about how to establish trustworthy and impartial
institutions instead of achieving changes in deeply held cultural practices. The
reason why reducing corruption becomes more difficult in post-conflict societies
is that, if the conceptualisation of the opposite to corruption offered above is
correct, the important task becomes how to establish impartiality as the basic
modus operandi of a civil service. In a society that has for a long time been rent
apart by violent conflicts between various (political, ethnic and/or religious)
factions, there may be few people left who can be trusted by these factions to
be impartial. Most agents may predict that most other agents, if given public
office, will use whatever resources and power there is to favour her or his faction. If most agents in the civil service believe that this is what most of their
colleagues are doing, it becomes irrational for them to strive to be impartial
when they implement laws and policies, even if they believe that this is ‘the
right thing to do’. Recent experimental research strongly supports the notion that
this is what will happen in such a situation.69 One model to follow could be the
one used for carrying out elections in post-conflict societies, where it has
become common to use election officers or election observers from outside
countries – which do not have a stake in the outcome of the elections. These
agents are used to increase the trustworthiness of the organisation of the elections, especially taking responsibility that votes will be counted in an honest
and impartial manner. With this model as a template, a similar practice could be
used by international aid and development organisations for assisting postconflict societies to establish quality of government. Given that the factions (and
the population) in a post-conflict society may support the use of an impartial
administration of elections, they may also value and support the importance of
establishing an impartial civil service. According to the collective action theory
Third World Quarterly
749
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presented here, the crucial requirement for this to happen is that some
institutional device be established that can convince most agents that most other
agents are willing to play by the new (impartial) rules.
Notes on Contributor
Bo Rothstein holds the August Röhss Chair in Political Science, University of
Gothenburg, where he is head of the Quality of Government Institute. He has
been a visiting scholar at the Russell Sage Foundation, Collegium Budapest,
Harvard University, University of Washington-Seattle, Cornell University, Stellenbosch Institute for Advanced Study, Australian National University and Stanford University. His most recent books are The Quality of Government:
Corruption, Inequality and Social Trust in International Perspective (2011, also
published in Chinese in 2012) and the co-edited volume Good Government: The
Relevance of Political Science (2012). In 2013 he was awarded an Advanced
Research Grant by the European Research Council.
Notes
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
11.
12.
13.
14.
15.
16.
17.
18.
19.
20.
21.
22.
23.
24.
25.
26.
27.
28.
29.
30.
31.
32.
Holmberg et al., “Quality of Government”; Halleröd et al., “Bad Governance and Poor Children”;
Rothstein and Uslaner, “All for All”; Bentzen “How Bad is Corruption?”; and Gilley The Right to Rule.
Fjelde, Sins of Omission and Commission; Råby and Teorell, A Quality of Government Peace? and
Lapuente and Rothstein, “Civil War Spain versus Swedish Harmony.”
Fearon et al., “Can Development Aid Contribute?”; Le Billon, “Buying Peace or Fuelling War?”; Cheng
and Zaum, Corruption and Post-conflict Peacebuilding; and Philp, “Peacebuilding and Corruption.”
Smith, Good Governance and Development.
Fukuyama, “What is Governance?”
Rothstein and Teorell, “What is Quality of Government?”; Agnafors, “Quality of Government”; De
Maria, “Why is the President of Malawi Angry?”; and Heidenheimer, “Perspectives on the Perception of
Corruption.”
Diamond, “A Quarter-century of Promoting Democracy.”
Rothstein and Teorell, “What is Quality of Government?” 187.
Rothstein and Teorell, “What is Quality of Government?” 173.
Bevir, Democratic Governance; and Bellina et al., Democratic Governance.
Smith, Good Governance and Development.
Lynn, “The Many Faces of Governance,” 49ff; and Fukuyama, The Origins of Political Order, 469.
Fukuyama, State-building, 22.
Schedler, Concept Formation in Political Science.
Fukuyama, “What is Governance?”
Gilley, “The Determinants of State Legitimacy”; and Dahlberg and Holmberg, “Democracy and
Bureaucracy.”
Andrews, The Limits of Institutional Reform.
De Maria, “Why is the President of Malawi Angry?”; Heidenheimer, “Perspectives on the Perception of
Corruption”; Bratsis, “The Construction of Corruption”; and Koechlin, Corruption as an Empty Signifier.
Philp, “Peacebuilding and Corruption,” 312.
Rose-Ackerman and Søreide, International Handbook on the Economics of Corruption.
Philp, “Peacebuilding and Corruption.”
Rothstein and Torsello, “Is Corruption Understood Differently in Different Cultures?”
Rothstein and Torsello, “Bribery in Pre-industrial Societies.”
Widmalm, Decentralisation, Corruption and Social Capital, 149.
Rothstein and Torsello, “Bribery in Pre-industrial Societies.”
Landell-Mills, Citizens against Corruption.
Karklins, The System Made Me Do It; and Persson et al., “Why Anti-corruption Reforms Fail.”
Myrdal, “Den mjuka staten i underutvecklade länder,” 409.
Jordan Smith, A Culture of Corruption.
Banfield, The Moral Basis of a Backward Society.
MacMullen, Corruption; and Jordan, “Anti-corruption campaigns.”
de Maria, “Neo-colonialism through Measurement.”
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750
33.
34.
35.
36.
37.
38.
39.
40.
41.
42.
43.
44.
45.
46.
47.
48.
49.
50.
51.
52.
53.
54.
55.
56.
57.
58.
59.
60.
61.
62.
63.
64.
65.
66.
67.
68.
69.
B. Rothstein
Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth, 67.
cf. Koechlin, Corruption as an Empty Signifier.
Kaufmann et al., Governance Matters III.
Agnafors, “Quality of Government.”
Rawls, Political Liberalism.
Mann, The Dark Side of Democracy.
Rawls, A Theory of Justice; and Rawls, Political Liberalism.
Rothstein, The Quality of Government.
Fukuyama, “What is Governance?” 351.
Agnafors, “Quality of Government.”
Ibid.
Philp, “Peacebuilding and Corruption.”
Rothstein and Teorell, “What is Quality of Government?”
As suggested by Agnafors, “Quality of Government.”
As suggested by Fukuyama, “What is Governance?”
Agnafors, “Quality of Government.”
Ibid.
Wenar, “John Rawls.”
Van Parijs, Just Democracy.
Rothstein and Teorell, “What is Quality of Government?” 170.
Charron et al., Quality of Government; Dahlström et al., “The Merit of Meritocratization”; Dahlberg
et al., The Quality of Government Expert Survey; and Rothstein and Teorell, “Defining and Measuring
Quality.”
Rothstein, “Quality of Government and Epistemic Democracy.”
Cupit, “When Does Justice Require Impartiality?”
Goodin, “Democracy, Justice and Impartiality,” 100.
Barry, Justice as Impartiality, 126.
Ibid., 238.
Ibid.
Ibid.,103.
Arneson, “The Priority of the Right.”
Stone, The Luck of the Draw, 71.
Ibid., 79.
Tebble, “What is the Politics of Difference?”; and Young, Justice and the Politics of Difference.
Mill, On Liberty and Utilitarianism, 154.
Rawls, A Theory of Justice, 261.
Ibid., 262.
Lemay-Hébert, “The Bifurcation of the Two Worlds”; and Grimm and Leininger, “Not All Good Things
Go Together.”
Bicchieri and Xiao, “Do the Right Thing”; and Fehr and Fischbacher, “The Economics of Strong Reciprocity.”
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