FILSAFAT KORUPSI - Direktori File UPI

welfare beneficiaries in Australia found that their distrust of government was founded on a belief
that government did not trust them to articulate their own needs and to manage programs designed
to benefit the community (Peel, 1998).
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These results suggest that reciprocal trust between
government agencies and individuals can produce positive results. Here trust is not based on
empathy or love but on mutual respect. In fact, government may trust citizens to administer public
programs or pay taxes because it believes that citizens will not rely on interpersonal empathy in
deciding how to comply with public responsibilities. The state is more likely to devolve authority to
local groups if it believes that narrow favoritism can be avoided.
In relating democracy and trust, I have highlighted the tension between interpersonal trust
based on empathy for particular individuals and the creation of a state whose citizens expect fair
treatment from each other and from public officials. People who trust each other to obey the rules
also trust others not to favor their friends and relations when that conflicts with a civic
responsibility. This is not to say that democracies do not value family ties and friendship but only to
point out that a commitment to liberal democracy implies a commitment to rule-based, reliable state
institutions that screen out most types of affect-based, reciprocal trust.
To proceed with the discussion of trust in the reliability and fairness of government agents, I
consider an important case where such trust breaks down. When officials are corrupt, they betray
the trust bestowed on them by the citizenry and act in the way that favors those who make payoffs
and/or those with whom they have a reciprocal trusting relationship. Understanding the incentives
for corruption and the ways it can be controlled, helps one see how government legitimacy might be
accomplished without a moral transformation of the population.
C. Economizing on Virtue: The Control of Corruption
Untrustworthy elected officials and bureaucrats are frequently corrupt. They substitute
private benefits for public responsibility. If officials are generally untrustworthy, ordinary people
and businesses may believe that the only way to get what they need is through a payoff.
Furthermore, if most officials are known to be corrupt, people may also seek things to which they
are not entitled, such as tax breaks or waivers of costly regulations. Officials in turn may create
extra rules and regulations and contracting opportunities in order to profit personally. Politicians
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High income taxpayers lowered their payments, but it seems difficult to see this as a reflection of a loss of
moral commitment. The authors make the following argument. If audited, one‘s ultimate tax liability will
be positively
related to one‘s reported income because tax collectors are not perfectly informed. However, one is more
likely to be
audited the greater one‘s underpayment. These effects pull in opposite directions. However, if the audit
probability is one,
only the first effect operates (Slemrod, Blumenthal and Christian, 2001).
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As Gambetta (1988b:220) notes: ―coercion exercised over unwilling subjects B who have not precommitted
themselves to being prevented from taking certain courses of action or who do not accept the legitimacy of
the enforcement
of a particular set of rights B while demanding less of our trust in others, may simultaneously reduce the
trust others have
in us. It introduces an asymmetry which disposes of mutual trust and promotes instead power and
resentment. As the high
incidence of paranoid behaviour among dictators suggests, coercion can be self-defeating, for while it may
enforce
‗cooperation‘ in specific acts, it also increases the probability of treacherous ones: betrayal, defection, and
the classic stab
in the back.‖
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