Government corruption is widespread in Africa. However, as spectacular as scandals involving corruption in the central government might be, it is the behavior of local officials that most citizens directly experience, and it is at this level that government officials may be especially susceptible given the lack of media presence and bureaucratic oversight. A culture of corruption promotes short-term, selfish behavior and punishes behavior that citizens would consider fair and oriented towards the common good, such as egalitarianism and trust. The consequences of such behavior can be disastrous.
But what causes corruption? Is the widespread corruption in African politics the product of political institutions or of the type of individuals who seek office? Do individuals prone to corruption self-select into government positions or does holding office condition traits that underlie corrupt behavior? Some researchers in political science assert that political institutions are responsible for corruption in Africa. Others argue that Africa faces widespread corruption because Africans are corrupt, that their culture embeds corruption in tradition and interactions. According to the viewpoint of the former group, that of the institutionalists, corruption arises after political officials take office. According to the latter viewpoint, the cultural viewpoint, corruption is ever-present.
For my dissertation, I plan to test whether political institutions cause corruption using a novel series of experiments with local-level political leaders in Zambia and Tanzania. Since Zambia and Tanzania have similar national levels of corruption but different corruption environments at the local level, they are compelling comparison cases. Designing research to investigate the origins of corruption is difficult, since most of the existing data is based on surveys of citizens, not based on the behaviors of government officials. Fortunately, there is an alternative approach that I plan to utilize in my dissertation. I will gather real politicians to observe their choices in person, allowing me to observe how choices are made and where corruption arises. This method of data collection will allow me to observe the behavior of government officials rather than studying corruption via third party surveys. I will recruit a sample of politicians who ran for local government in Zambia and Tanzania. Some of the subjects will have won the last election and some of them will have lost, providing me with comparison groups. With carefully chosen comparison groups, any differences in behavior in my experiments can be attributed to the political institutions associated with holding office.
This work holds promise for both policymaking and science. Donors and international organizations believe that corruption undermines prosperous and peaceful governments in Africa. While some members of this group believe that the creation and support of well-designed political institutions can reduce the level and extent of unethical behavior, others believe that such behavior is too culturally entrenched to change. There is little rigorous research to inform these positions. My dissertation will help provide a theoretically informed and methodologically sound examination of the foundations of corruption. Understanding the causes of corruption can enable policymakers to create institutions designed to moderate its existence and effects. The project also takes an important step forward in the use of politicians as participants in the study of corruption. Hundreds of research projects have been designed to tackle issues of politics, but none that we know of use actual politicians to investigate the foundations of the choices of the political elite.
." Though I am in the process of writing my dissertation and do not have all of the results completed, the initial outcomes coming out of this project are promising. Using the DDRIG funds, I traveled to two countries in Africa, Malawi and Zambia, where I completed a survey and in-depth interviews with elected and appointed local government officials to learn about corruption. Since I am knowledgeable of the culture in these countries and since I have experience and connections there, the officials were open and honest about their reasons for engaging in corruption and the forms of corruption they employ. There are four main points that may be of interest to the general public. First, corruption takes many forms, and these forms impose different costs on the officials themselves, as well as the public. Politicians acknowledge that they often chose from a menu of forms of corruption so as to maximize their income from corruption. Second, when transparency increases or accountability improves, politicians are often incentivized to choose other forms of corruption that are less visible or less impactful on the general public. Third, these "replacement" forms of corruption are less profitable for them and less costly for the public, demonstrating a potential for positive effects of transparency and accountability interventions, even if the new forms of corruption are simply replacing the old ones, not eliminating them. Finally, the politicians acknowledge that the main reason they turn to corruption is that it accounts for 40% of their salary (on average), and that these funds pay for necessary things like children’s school fees and medical care, not luxury goods, as is the case sometimes with corruption payouts among executives or in the developed world. They believe that increased salaries for public officials would reduce reliance on corruption, perhaps making corrupt behavior less resilient and easier to control.
