CORRUPTION Syndromes of Corruption

Participation, institutions, and syndromes of corruption 39
creating categories too numerous or similar to be useful, and yet to bring
out contrasts among the sorts of conditions expected to shape various
societies’ corruption problems. In this section I will propose four categories
reflecting commonly encountered combinations of participation
and institutions, and will discuss the sorts of corruption problems they
seem likely to have. In the next part of this chapter the four groupings are
tested using country-level statistical indicators and a cluster analysis; the
question at that point is whether the expected groupings are observable.
The actual sorts of corruption found in societies in each group will be the
focus of case studies in chapters 4–7. These categories do not exhaust all
possible combinations of participation and institutions – far from it. They
are only useful simplifications, offered as ideal types (for a discussion of
that Weberian idea see Coser, 1977: 223–224) intended to highlight
patterns and connections for closer study.
Participation and institutions too come in many forms, but as suggested
in chapter 2 my main focus is on the ways wealth and power are sought,
used, and exchanged on a national scale, and on the state, political, and
social structures that both sustain and restrain those activities. With respect
to open, competitive, and orderly participation, then, we want to differentiate
among societies in terms of range and openness of political and
economic opportunities they offer. Strong institutions, in the sense I will
discuss them here, are able to protect economic, political, and property
rights, guarantee fair play, justice, and honest procedures, and protect
society from abuses by the powerful. It is entirely possible for weak institutions
of those sorts to coexist with a coercive state and/or durable individual
interactions and community organizations (many African societies, for
example, have ineffective states and a vibrant social and communal life).
Conversely, strong political and economic institutions are not guarantees
that all is well at other levels: the United States, for example, scores well on
institutional indicators yet, if Putnam (2000) is correct, has a civil society in
decline. Many other factors figure into the full picture of participation and
institutional portrait in any society, and one purpose of the case-study
chapters will be to bring out those complexities; for now, however, I seek
relatively clear-cut definitions of ideal types.
Types of political and economic systems, and levels of institutional
strength, tend (with exceptions) to fall into identifiable patterns. Let us
consider four possibilities to be tested in the next section against countrylevel
data. Established democracies, for example, tend to have mature
market economies in which liberalization is largely a fait accompli; where
open and competitive politics and markets have been in place for a long
time economic and political institutions are likely to be strong. Several
Western European countries, Canada, Japan, and the United States are a