FILSAFAT KORUPSI - Direktori File UPI

that the respective institutional, including moral requirements and attitudes, of trans-
cultural and local institutions will mesh, let alone be identical with one another.
Equipped with these admittedly rough characterisations of social groups, trans-cultural
institutions and two types of trans-cultural interaction (convention governed and
institution governed), let us now turn to trans-cultural corruption.
Trans-cultural Corruption
Trans-cultural corruption is institutional corruption that occurs as a consequence of
actions performed in the course of trans-cultural interaction. The institutions thus
corrupted could themselves be trans-cultural institutions or they could be local
institutions (or they could be both).
As with any form of institutional corruption, trans-cultural corruption conforms to our
three theses: Personal Character of Corruption; Causal Character of Corruption, and;
Corruptors or Corrupted are Institutional Actors.
In addition, we need to invoke a distinction between subjectively valid social norms and
objectively valid moral norms. A social norm is a type of action or inaction which
members of some social group believe to be morally right. However they are not
necessarily objectively valid. An objective moral norm is a type of action or inaction
which is, as a matter of objective truth, morally right.
Likewise, there is a distinction between subjectively in/valid acts of corruption and
objectively in/valid acts of corruption. The latter, but not necessarily the former,
actually corrupt some institution or person.
If also needs to be noted that the concept of an objectively corrupt action is the concept
of an action which is objectively corrupt relative to a person and relative to a set of
circumstances. Lying can be morally right or morally wrong, depending on the
circumstances. Moreover, lying in one institutional context might be institutionally
damaging but not in another. So a police officer who tells a lie is performing a corrupt
act if tells the lie in a court of law, but not when functioning as an undercover operative.
This reflects the causal character of corruption. Same moral or legal offence, different
institutional effect.
On my account of institutional corruption, a corrupt act is corrupt by virtue of
corrupting some institution. And I have already noted that the corruption could be of the
trans-cultural or of the local institution (or both). Here it is important to distinguish
between corruption and corrosion. The actions of the role occupants of powerful, trans-
cultural institutions might have a corrosive effect on traditional local institutions
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Paper given at the international conference, Civil Society, Religion & Global Governance:
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without corruption necessarily taking place.
Moreover, it cannot be assumed that the only institutions that can be corrupted are the
trans-cultural institutions that have in many cases been grafted onto traditional social
institutions of a very different kind. Nor can it be assumed that an act which corrupts a
trans-cultural institution will necessarily also be one that corrupts a local institution.
When compliance with the requirements of the trans-cultural institution has a corrupting
effect on the local institution (or vice-versa) then a judgment may need to be made in