Patterns of Corruption

George Economakis, Yorgos Rizopoulos, Dimitrios Sergakis

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 Journal of Economics and Business
Vol. XIIΙ – 2010, No 2 (11-31)

Patterns of Corruption

George Economakis1, Yorgos Rizopoulos2 & Dimitrios Sergakis3

Abstract
The ambiguities that characterize the economic significance and impact of
corruption make it necessary to develop a coherent and more satisfactory
analytical framework. We argue that the institutional structure that governs the
interactions between players and, more particularly, public and private actors is
a decisive factor of corrupt practices and largely influences the nature of
corruption. On this basis, we propose a taxonomy of the different corruption
patterns as a function of two institutional parameters, namely the structural
features of the interest intermediation systems and the degree of institutional
stability.

Keywords: Corruption patterns, Institutional determinants, Public/private

interactions
JEL classification: B52, D73, O17

1
University of Patras. E-mail: economak@otenet.gr
2
University of Picardy. E-mail: yorgos.rizopoulos@u-picardie.fr
3
University of Picardy. E-mail: dimsergakis@gmail.com
 EAST-WEST Journal of ECONOMICS AND BUSINESS

Corruption in economic literature: convictions and ambiguities

Corruption is not a new phenomenon. Observable throughout history, it is not
related to a specific socioeconomic system, be it capitalist, socialist or
“transitional”. Dobel (1978: 958-959) stresses that, “while in contemporary
usage ‘corruption’ usually means the betrayal of public trust for individual or
group gain, the technical notion of ‘corruption of the body politic’ has a long
and impressive history in both political philosophy and polemics. The decay of
the moral and the political orders are phenomena which political theorists have
constantly had to confront”. Dobel assumes “that, while historical situations
change, there is a continuous tradition of rational reflection upon such problems
and that the results of this reflection need not be limited to the comprehension
of a particular era”.
Nevertheless, a renewed and intense interest can be noted in recent years
concerning the various expressions and impacts of corruption. According to
Tanzi (1998: 560-561), “the greater reliance on the market for economic
decisions and the increased need to be competitive have created an environment
in which the pursuit of efficiency has acquired greater importance and
distortions attributed to corruption attract more attention”. However, even if
“like an elephant, while it may be difficult to describe, corruption is generally
not difficult to recognize when observed” (Tanzi, 1998: 564), this renewed
concern does not imply more clarity concerning the nature and patterns of
corruption, nor a fully articulated and coherent theoretical framework.
The ambiguous definition of corruption is one major aspect of the problem.
Caiden (1988: 7) notes that it “means something spoiled […] When applied to
human relations, corruption is a bad influence, an injection of rottenness or
decay, a decline in moral conduct and personal integrity attributable to venality
or dishonesty. When applied to public office […] the practice has been to spell
out specific acts of misconduct that disgrace public office and make the
offenders unfit to remain in office”. However, the varying uses of the term
undermine its analytical rigor. Robbins (2000: 425) considers the word to be
meaningless “insofar as it describes any transaction or exchange that is viewed
as normatively ‘bad’ by the observer; the term corruption is value-laden and
thus analytically weak or simply vacuous”.
Indeed, even widespread convictions about corruption are far from obvious.
One conjecture points out the various forms of state as its main agent: “Ever
since the dawn of civilization, it has been recognized that anyone put into a
position of exercising communal or collective or public power and
commanding public obedience is tempted to use public office for personal gain
and advantage” (Caiden 1988: 3). Corruption is described as a behavior that

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deviates from the formal rules of conduct governing the actions of public
servants because of private-regarding motives such as wealth, power or status
(Nye, 1967). In this sense, “the anti-corruption strategy the World Bank
announced in September 1997 defined corruption as the ‘use of public office
for private gain’” (see Huther & Shah, 2000).
Corrupt practices are generally considered to be related to the importance and
types of transactions that are subject to bureaucratic involvement. For instance,
public servants in virtually every country have the power to allocate rights over
scarce resources. Under such circumstances, they could bargain for a share of
the rents created by their own contribution (subsidies, licenses or other valuable
resources). This can be viewed as a redistribution tax, increasing costs and
shifting risk from some stakeholders to others. Bureaucratic rent-seeking
typically occurs in the context of patron/client transactions and implies not only
monetary payments (bribes) for firms and other stakeholders, but also non-
monetary costs, such as bureaucratic delays. Through the organization of
collusive transfers, officials benefit from a share of the resources being
attributed to clients or from the wealth eventually created by the resource
transfer.
Provided that “corruption is generally connected with the activities of the state
and especially with the monopoly and discretionary power of the state”, and
that “particular aspects of governmental activities create a fertile ground for
corruption”, Tanzi (1998: 565-576) exposes and analyzes aspects of
government activities and factors that contribute directly and indirectly to state
corruption, such as: institutional regulations and authorizations, the taxation
system, spending decisions, public expenditure, provision of goods and services
at below-market prices, financing of political parties, quality of the
bureaucracy, level of public sector wages (low salaries), penalty systems and
institutional controls.
Following Becker’s famous assertion that “the only way to reduce corruption
permanently is to drastically cut back government’s role in the economy”
(Business Week, no. 3551, November 3, 1997: 26), Lui (1996: 26-27) affirms
that, “if the resource allocation system is perfectly competitive, then corruption
cannot exist […] Deviation from the competitive market caused by government
regulations or interference is a major cause of corruption [...] Countries with
highly distorted markets tend to have high levels of corruption”.4 This author

4
According to Boerner and Hainz (2007), high corruption levels and entry fees for lucrative
positions in the bureaucracy are linked, with the entry fee rising in tandem with the amount of
bribes that can be appropriated in a particular position.

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goes further by pointing out that market distortions due to state intervention
rather than corruption “may be the principal deterrent to investment in physical
capital”. In the same perspective, Cheung (1996) does not hesitate to write that
this is the consequence of the bureaucrats’ human nature, considering all types
of public regulation and control as intended behavior aimed at facilitating
corruption: “I do not think corruption can exist without government regulations
or controls […] I believe all individuals, government officials and politicians
without exception, are constrained self-maximizers […] I believe each and
every politician and government official has only one priority in mind [...] how
to produce more income for themselves” (Cheung, op. cit.: 1-2).
Meanwhile, despite the mainstream claim that the state plays a central role in
corruption, some controversy still exists. Rose-Ackerman (2004: 67), while
adopting the World Bank’s definition limiting corruption to the misuse of
public office for private gain, adds that “corrupt incentives can also arise in
purely private interactions […] A public official may take a bribe in return for a
favorable decision or may simply steal from the state’s coffers. Clearly,
corporate managers can face similar incentives, and with the growing
privatization of former state enterprises, the locus of some forms of corruption
will shift into the private sector”. Also, Tanzi (1998: 564) argues that “it should
not be concluded that corruption cannot exist within private sector activities.
Especially in large private enterprises, corruption clearly does exist”.
Apart from the fact that corruption also exists in private transactions, modern
societies could not survive without a State managing externalities and
providing public goods such as security, health, education, regulations for
economic activity, etc. The skewed image of the approaches stressing the state
as the exclusive vector of corruption becomes even less satisfactory if one takes
into account the generalization of hybrid forms of regulation, in particular in
the form of private institutions in charge of controlling certain transactions or
ensuring compliance with rules. Moreover, Becker-type arguments “collide
with the reality that some of the least corrupt countries in the world, such as
Canada, Denmark, Finland, the Netherlands, and Sweden, have some of the
largest public sectors, measured as shares of tax revenue or public spending in
gross domestic product” (Tanzi, 1998: 566). Interestingly enough, econometric
investigations in the early 1980s, found some evidence that “[…] the larger the
public sector in terms of government expenditures, the lower the incidence of
corruption, with levels of political competition and economic development
controlled” (Montinola & Jackman, 2002: 169).
Another point debated in the international literature on this topic concerns the
positive impact of corruption (see also Grein & al, Olimpieva, and Popkova in
this issue). Tanzi (1998: 578) notes that “in past years, the views on corruption
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had been more divergent and some economists had even found some redeeming
value in it”. Indeed, quite a few mainstream approaches have discovered some
efficiency-enhancing qualities of corruption.
According to Rose-Ackerman (2004: 68), “scholars who favor a minimal state
and who view most state actions as illegitimate exercises of power interpret
bribes as a desirable way to avoid the exercise of government power”. Paying
bribes “may be more efficient than complying with existing rules, but
corruption is always a second-best response to government failure” (Rose-
Ackerman 1997: 56). According to neoclassical framework assumptions, state
regulations are viewed as introducing distortions and inefficiency; corruption
could thus contribute to a move back toward Pareto-optimality conditions
(Cheung 1996). It remains a second best solution, given that the state still
exists, but it could be considered a factor enhancing efficiency, removing
government-imposed rigidities. Moreover, bribes supplement low wages and
enable the government to maintain a lower tax burden, which can favor growth.
Lui (1996: 27) represents this school of thought quite thoroughly: “interference
with the free market usually induces inefficiencies […] bribes sometimes can
partially restore the price mechanism and improve allocative efficiency.
Corruption then might be viewed as people’s optimal response to market
distortions… [It] has some beneficial effects to society”. In a provocative
contribution, Tullock (1996: 12-13) even argues for the purchase and
possession of government jobs, thus converting the government to market
procedures: “Proponents of more traditional forms of governments – whether
democracy, despotism, anarchy, etc. – will be shocked at any proposal to adopt
a system of bribes. For myself [Tullock writes], I do not think such a system is
a very good idea, but I do think it deserves more careful thought than it has
received”.
Conversely, other scholars stress the negative impact of corruption on
economic growth. Econometric research (Mauro, 1995 and 1997) reveals that it
“increases public investment because public investment projects lend
themselves easily to manipulations by high-level officials to get bribes”, and
simultaneously “distorts the effects of industrial policy on investment”,
reducing “the productivity of public investment and of a country’s
infrastructure”. Corruption reduces education and health expenditure, as well as
tax revenue, thus undermining a government’s ability to carry out needed
public expenditure, and also dampens foreign direct investment because
corruption in fact operates as a tax (see also Iqbal in this issue). All these
findings undermine “the revisionist theory of corruption, which touted the
phenomenon’s efficiency-enhancing qualities” (Montinola & Jackman, 2002:
152).

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These contradictory points of view show that, as a scientific object, corruption

raises unanswered questions because of the ambiguous character of the term
and the strongly ideological content of quite a few contributions aiming to
clarify its nature and its impact on economic dynamics and interactions. Along
with the various assessments of the field and borders of corruption, some
analysts consider it to be a factor for efficiency, whereas others view it as a
source of injustice and social costs.
The state of the art requires a more in-depth theoretical discussion in order to
build a coherent analytical framework. As Jens (2006) points out, corrupt
transactions, by their very nature, cannot be observed directly, but have to be
related to a set of rules. If rules differ, so do the transactions defined as corrupt.
In this perspective, departing from the institutional framework that governs
collective action and, more specifically, the interactions of public and private
actors, this paper explores the impact of institutional determinants on the nature
and patterns of corruption.
In the following section, we propose a general definition of corruption and
focus on the impact of inequality and the state’s autonomy on private/public
interactions. Next, we point out the institutional determinants of corruption,
namely institutional structure and institutional stability. We then identify
different patterns of corruption and a general taxonomy is built up. Finally, we
discuss the limits and perspectives of our work.

Public/private corruption: the questions of inequality and autonomy of the

state
We consider corruption to be all relations and mechanisms that favor specific
interests, in a positive sum cooperative game involving a limited number of
connected and interdependent insiders, and causing damage to outside actors
or to collective interests. The public/private actors’ interactions resulting in
such practices are a particular aspect of this kind of discriminatory behavior5,
providing privileged access to rare goods controlled by public servants in
exchange for bribes and other illicit material gains.
It is important to note that private actors do not merely suffer from corruption,
but also generate it by trying to promote their own specific interests. The state
and the non-state spheres stand for an articulation of structures and
relationships, where both types of actors interact and influence each other
(Rizopoulos, 1995). The actions of public servants provide a restricted supply

5
“Bribes […] may change the order in which public officials perform the process, say, of providing
permits” (Tanzi 1998: 582); in other words, corruption implies unfair competition.
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of a useful range of rights and are a major source of potential gains and losses
for private actors, a source that the latter will therefore try to influence (Brewer,
1992). They are dependent on the public actors with whom they negotiate for
many issues crucial to their activity and endeavor to orient the political
decision-making process and the resulting resource allocation. In turn, through
these relations, state servants obtain otherwise inaccessible resources (material
gain, specific information and means of influence). Links between public
agencies and private actors are often based on this reciprocity balance and
mutual resource dependency (Rizopoulos & Sergakis, 2010). In this way, state
actors can be found remodeling and dominating private actors’ strategies and/or
being caught serving the latter’s interests6.
The subjacent questions of such a complex relation implying discriminatory
practices in public/private actors’ interactions are those of:
a) Political and economic inequality, and
b) The relative autonomy of the state and its representative agencies, compared
to specific interest groups.
Concerning the question of inequality, Dobel (1978: 961-963) stresses that
under “systematic and enduring inequality in wealth, power and status […]
certain groups of individuals have de facto or legally sanctioned priority of
access to wealth, power and status […] The focus is upon equality because of
its relation to the common good […] maintaining the common good requires
some loyalty to other people and to the policies and institutions which
guarantee the common good […] economic inequality […] must never develop
to the extent where it threatens the integrity of law or government”. Given the
above, the essence of corruption is “the decline in the ability and willingness of
the citizens to act spontaneously or disinterestedly to support other citizens or
communal institutions […] There are two types of inequality which corrupt the
state: permanent or massive inequality in wealth and exclusionary inequality in
political power and authority”.7

6
As in the liberal interventionism model developed by Bellon (1986), which qualifies the variety of
actions undertaken by the US government in the business field (e.g., allocation of administrative
services, protectionism, R&D subsidies, military industry support, tax deductions, and so forth).
7
Mainstream literature sometimes argues that the easiest solution to corruption control consists of
raising the earnings of bureaucrats that have the discretion to engage in corrupt activities. This type
of measure does not aim to attenuate social and economic inequality, but targets a narrower
important gap between salaries in the public and private sectors. The idea is to treat decisions in the
public sphere as in a private company, giving similar incentives. Meanwhile, as Van Rijckeghem
and Weder (2001) demonstrate, eradicating corruption solely by raising the income of the public
servants requires a rather large increase in their wages. Furthermore, as showed by the case of the
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Various theoretical traditions point to inequality as a decisive factor for

discriminatory practices in the social game. Public choice scholars (Buchanan
& Tullock, 1962; Olson, 1965) insist on the asymmetries affecting actors’
capacity of political action. Small organized groups with a high concentration
of interests benefit from governmental action that will therefore tend to favor
organized minorities’ interests at the expense of collective interests. Marxist
approaches also stress class structure and struggle as determinants of
institutions and political decisions favoring ruling class interests (Jessop, 1990).
In the political sciences field, the iron triangle metaphor (Lowi, 1969) also
thoroughly illustrates such inequalities – showing interest groups, bureaucrats
and politicians in one closed, secret and exclusive network, linked by common
interests in a positive sum game. In fact, powerful social groups may have
better possibilities for defending their own interests and negotiating their goals
with public servants, which mean differentiated access to collective resources.
This point leads to the crucial question of the state’s relative autonomy. Indeed,
private/public actors’ relations are characterized by a fundamental ambiguity,
stressed by Burdeau (1970): the state derives its power from the most powerful
social groups, when it is supposed to defend collective interests and act as a
conflict arbitrator. In this sense, autonomy depends on the ability to
incorporate, through appropriate intermediation mechanisms, contradictory
interests and some demands of the dominated social groups8. This ability is
related to the internal cohesion of the ruling elite9, the intensity of competition
and the coordination capacity of its various parts10.
It seems reasonable to suppose that the degree of the state’s relative autonomy
impacts the nature of the public/private actors’ relations and the intensity of
discriminatory (i.e. corrupt) behaviors. However, it is difficult to establish a
univocal relation between these variables. Indeed, different types of state
autonomy exist. For instance, it is possible that different parts of the elite share

widespread corruption in the Greek public health system (Liaropoulos & al, 2008), improving
wages does not seem to be a sufficient measure to eradicate these practices. Indeed, the best-paid
doctors in Greek public hospitals are generally those that are seeking illicit rewards in order to give
priority to wealthier patients.
8
Thus appearing as a representative of the collective interests, which also means ideological and
political control (Marx, 1852; Poulantzas, 1987; Economakis & Bouras, 2007).
9
According to Dobel (1978: 964) “one of the root meanings of corruption is literally ‘to break into
many pieces’. This is the fate of a corrupted state”. The cohesion of the ruling elite (not be broken
into many pieces) ensures the relative autonomy of the state. In this sense, the non-corrupt state
should correspond to such relative autonomy.
10
For a stimulating analysis of the state’s relative autonomy in the capitalist system, see Poulantzas,
1974.
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the collective (public) resources “fairly” among themselves, excluding other

parts of the society. Alternatively, relatively weak and fragmented elites could
also monopolize collective resources at the price of strong antagonisms and
internal conflicts, in order to control the state apparatus. In other words, a
dictatorship such as a formal democracy may be compatible with weak
autonomy, and pluralism may concern only particular social groups.
Furthermore, unimpeded political competition could ensure different types of
state autonomy, having different effects on public/private actors’ relations and
implying different degrees of corruption or various corruption patterns. This
complexity seems to be at the origin of a widespread confusion between
autonomy of the state, pluralism or democracy, and explains, in part, the
apparently contradictory results of the empirical investigations on corruption
cited in the first section.

Institutional determinants of corruption

Inequality and the state’s relative autonomy appear to be essential factors for
understanding corruption. Meanwhile, their influence and how they impact
corrupt practices depend on the specific structural and functional characteristics
of the institutional framework and the rules governing the relations between
different groups of interest. In this perspective, we argue that institutional
structure and institutional stability are two crucial parameters that enable us to
shed light on different corruption patterns.

Institutional structure
The idea that different institutional structures have different effects on corrupt
transactions is not new.
Elitist models – the so-called policy communities (Rhodes, 1988) – draw
attention to stable relations, interests in common, dense and frequently-repeated
interactions, strong ties among members integrated and isolated from external
influences, shared values, preferences, and even ideology. Recurring state
support of specific interests is also put forth, due to controlled assets,
advantages of ownership, knowledge and information asymmetries.
Conversely, pluralist models underline the diversity of interests in different
domains, the possibility of incoherence in the state’s actions and governance
difficulties. In this perspective, the state is no longer a monolithic entity,
interactions between interest groups are no longer hierarchical, and public
actors are independent and autonomous. They dispatch specific rare resources

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according to the equilibrium between different interest groups in given

situations, but counter-powers do not allow individual private interest to
dominate permanently. The interactions are characterized by weak ties among a
high number of participants, with equilibrated bargaining power and little
interdependence, without dominant or systematically favored interests.
Pluralist institutional environments are generally considered to be less
favorable to corrupt practices, and mainstream approaches to corruption control
consist of diluting the value of the distributional rights of bureaucrats by
increasing the level of competition in the economy. The fundamental idea
underlining these propositions is the supposed incompatibility of corrupt
activities with perfect market competition. Hence Shleifer and Vishny (1993)
distinguish the cases of a centralized state where a single agency is the sole
supplier of all the relevant rights, a plurality of state agencies supplying
complementary rights and a plurality of agencies, each one of which is able to
supply all the relevant rights. Their policy conclusion consists of increasing
competition amongst bureaucrats, and allowing more agencies to supply similar
rights enables to best dealt with corruption. In a different field, exploring the
impact of corruption on economic growth, Drury et al. (2006) argue that
although corruption occurs in democracies, the electoral mechanism mitigates
the detrimental effect of corruption. In other words, corruption in democracies
would have no significant effect on economic growth, while non-democracies
would suffer significant economic harm from corruption.11
According to Montinola and Jackman’s econometric findings (2002: 167),
“political competition matters, and there is an interesting threshold in this
relationship. Corruption is typically a little higher in countries with
intermediate levels of political competition than in their less democratic
counterparts, but once past the threshold, higher levels of competition are
associated with considerably less corruption. Stated differently, corruption is
likely to be slightly lower in dictatorships than in countries that have partially
democratized. But with more complete democratization (reflected in the nature
of elections and the effective power of elected legislators), countries experience
much lower levels of corruption”. The authors consider (op. cit., 151, 153) that
“one mechanism through which political competition reduces corruption is the
re-election imperative, which lowers the demand for bribes. […] The electoral
process in most democracies ensures the possibility of substantial alternation in
office for individual leaders and parties”. However, these results show that
political competition matters only beyond a threshold. Indeed, on the one hand,
a dictatorship may in some cases be as effective against corruption as full

11
Empirical investigations often undermine the veracity of such arguments given the high growth
performance of many dictatorships!
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democracy. On the other hand, unimpeded political competition does not

eliminate corruption, even though it has an impact on its nature and pattern.
From this point of view, Dobel’s (1978: 964) rejection of “the naïve […]
pluralist thesis that the conflict among factions will result in the prevention of
tyranny or the long-term maximization of all citizens’ welfare” seems sound.
Therefore, corruption could exist in both pluralist-type and elitist-type
institutional environments. The same phenomenon of discriminatory behavior
based on a positive sum game between interconnected actors is reproduced in
different conditions while various possibilities arise concerning the patterns and
intensity of these practices. Let us revisit the example of the two configurations
presented in the second section. Weak and fragmented elites characterized by
strong internal conflicts would result in generalized patron/client relations and
widespread “grand” and “petty” corruption, with all manifestations of social
life being concerned. Conversely, when different parts of the elite share
collective resources “fairly”, one could observe an overall low level of
corruption or substantial “grand” corruption, albeit without these practices
being diffused to the lower strata of society. Indeed, “petty” corruption is
linked to “grand” corruption, but “grand” corruption does not necessarily imply
“petty” corruption.12
Among the approaches that attempt to decipher the characteristics and structure
of corruption, state capture is the situation in which a few private actors are
able to shape laws, policies and regulations to their own advantage by
providing illicit private gains to public officials (Hellman & Kaufmann, 2001).
Captors receive advantages such as sales growth but also provision of public
goods, such as the protection of property rights. When politicians and
bureaucrats can privately sell public goods to a few individual actors, with
minimal political cost, they have little incentive to provide open access to these
goods.13 The elite exchange theoretical framework equally stresses that capture
occurs when private actors exercise influence over state policy while bearing
little cost for their efforts (for instance, when successful lobbyists gain
influence by providing benefits to state officials or representatives). However,
it suggests the existence of a quid pro quo between state officials and private

12
According to Tanzi (1998: 565), “Corruption can be bureaucratic (or ‘petty’) or political (or
’grand’); for example, corruption by the bureaucracy or by the political leadership”.
13
Concerning the international business field, captor MNEs are more likely to enter the market,
while foreign joint ventures with local partners are more likely to engage in state capture actions
than domestically-owned firms (Hellman, Jones & Kaufmann, 2001).
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interests. Political and economic elites weakly accountable to social control

reap gains for themselves based on mutual interest rather than capture.14
Parallel to the institutional structure, institutional stability appears to play an
important role.

Institutional stability
The institutional framework has both constraining and enabling qualities. By
establishing rigidities and by limiting individuals’ expectations, it provides
guidance for acceptable behavioral decisions or constraints (Newman 1976,
Boland 1979). Stable institutional rules provide a steady structure for everyday
life and are backed by enforcement mechanisms involving surveillance,
assessment and sanctions.
In times of institutional instability, institutional information will be of sufficient
low quality to appear worthless as a guide for decision-making. As Heiner
(1983) argues, genuine uncertainty will cause simpler and less sophisticated
patterns of behavior, easier for an observer to recognize and predict. “In a high
uncertainty situation, firms will tend to be small scale, the most profitable
business may be in trade, redistributive activities (mafia, theft...), or the black
market. Large firms with substantial fixed capital will exist only under the
umbrella of government protection, and payoffs to the policy” (North 1990:
67).
In other words, in conditions of institutional instability, uncertainty pushes
actors to establish private regulation mechanisms that may produce regressive
phenomena, such as widespread corruption. Caiden (1988: 6) argues that
“corruption is facilitated by unstable politics, uncertain economies,
maldistributed wealth, unrepresentative government, entrepreneurial ambitions,
privatization of public resources, factionalism, personalism and dependency”.
Mauro (1995) shows a “positive and significant correlation between
bureaucratic efficiency and political stability”, a possible explanation being that
“corruption and instability may result from the same coordination problem
among members of the ruling elite” (op. cit., 705). From this point of view, the
question of institutional stability is related to the question of the cohesion of the
ruling elite and to the relative autonomy of the state. As Erawan and Oyamada

14
For instance, Frye (2000) points out the political coalition between the brokers on the Russian
equity market and the regulators in the Federal Commission on the Securities Market. In exchange
for granting privileges to the brokers’ association, the bureaucrats from the Federal Commission
received support from the brokers in their struggle against the Russian Central Bank.
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(2004: 4) point out, corruption is a “symptom of political and economic

struggle”.
Institutional and economic poverty, a lack of credible enforcement of formal
rules or external dependence are some key elements of institutional instability.
“Poor societies lack sufficient resources all round, but they are especially short
of public resources. Governments are too poor to provide sufficient public
goods and services, to maintain public facilities, or to pay their employees a
decent wage. There is therefore a mad scramble to obtain whatever is going and
to make up for underpayments” (Caiden 1988: 11-12). As Tanzi (1998: 586)
notes, “corruption tends to be more common in poorer countries and in
economies in transition than in rich countries”. A shortage of public resources
and the destruction of the common-public good seem to be determinant factors
for the type of public/private actors’ relations. From this point of view,
neoliberal economic policies and a broad privatization of public assets (i.e.
expropriation by a few individuals of the common good) appear to be a source
of corruption by intensifying the misdistribution of wealth. Indeed, because of
the transformational economic crisis and the “minimal state” policies in most
transition economies, the de facto power of some interest groups were
reinforced, capturing important fragments of the state apparatus.
Institutional instability is also related to the lack of credible enforcement of
formal rules (North, 1990), which means weakening of the deterrence provided
by the legal system by diminishing the probability of detection, apprehension,
conviction and the penalties for malfeasant behavior.
Similarly, external dependence appears as a source of institutional instability
and, thus, a factor favorable to corrupt practices. The Balkan countries are a
well-known historical example. As latecomers, these states were from the
beginning relatively weak, underdeveloped and dependent on the Great Powers.
The impossibility to reproduce the phases of economic and institutional
evolution of the advanced countries organically and to create the mechanisms
of collective action typical of modern states endogenously, were at the origin of
institutional imitation and imported formal rules. As a result, “the State in the
Balkans suffers from lack of legitimacy, poor administrative performance and
lack of competences. It is viewed not as a vector of the common interest, but as
a coercion force, relay of foreign interests and of rent-seeking strategies”
(Rizopoulos, 1999). The tension between formal and informal rules is one of
the continuous characteristics of these countries, resulting in unstable
institutional combinations.

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Patterns of corruption
Given the above developments, we argue that different patterns of corruption
are related to the characteristics of:
a) The institutional structure, as it results from the historical evolution and the
structural characteristics of public/private relations (elitist or pluralist) in each
issue area15, and
b) The institutional stability, which depends on variables such as institutional
and economic poverty, the credible enforcement of rules, and external
dependence.
Figure 1 below shows four main configurations.

Figure 1. Patterns of corruption

Institutional structure
Elitist Pluralist
+ Institutionalized Marginalized
corruption corruption
Institutional
stability Hierarchically Diffused corruption
fragmented
-
corruption

Institutionalized corruption
Rich and institutionally stabilized states characterized by elitist models of
interaction in various domains generate institutionalized networks of organized
corruption at the upper political and economic levels (for example, in some

15
Elitist and pluralist configurations must not be apprehended at a global (national) level. In a
multi-centered and complex world, the state is differentiated internally. Public/private actors’
relations vary across different domains in their interactions and outcomes (Brewer, 1992).
Institutional environments are not homogeneous, given that issue areas characterized by different
institutional structures may exist in the same country (Rizopoulos & Sergakis, 2010). For example,
the elitist structure observed frequently in the energy sector of advanced countries is not exclusive
of pluralist institutional forms in other issue areas.
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 EAST-WEST Journal of ECONOMICS AND BUSINESS

strategic activities such as the energy sector, in France or in the U.S.).

Institutional stability signifies that the ruling elites are sufficiently powerful and
coherent, benefiting from a strong ideological power. Sharing collective wealth
through connivances and illicit networks inside the ruling elites do not imply
widely diffused corruption practices at the lower levels of society or, only
provisionally, in some specific issue areas (for instance, at the opening of new
competitive activities, such as the sport betting market in France).
In the past few years, revealed widespread “conflicts of interest” (government
and high-level public servants working in parallel for private interests) reflect
the emergence of new political elites, clearly subject to the globalized financial
elite, implying an extension of the institutionalized “grand” corruption
networks.

Hierarchically fragmented corruption

This situation corresponds to a fragmented elitist institutional framework in
which conflicts and antagonism between different parts of the ruling elites, are
sources of instability. Multiple and hierarchically organized corruption
networks are competing for the control of collective resources and for a share
of the rent. This type of corruption involves vertical interrelations between
strata of “grand” and “petty” corruption.
In China, the political system tends to be dominated by a powerful ruler (the
Chinese Communist Party), and policy tends to favor industry leaders and big
business. Meanwhile, mini-states within the state – especially at the regional
level – equally intervene and introduce a great complexity in the game. The
best performing firms tend to have direct relationships with local authorities,
i.e. the lowest level of government that controls all local public goods (licenses
and permits) and infrastructures. At the same time, the vertical nature of
connections may destabilize even well elaborated rent-seeking strategies. As an
example of this multilevel game, the U.S. firm McDonalds, after having used
political connections to obtain a good location in Beijing in the early nineties,
experienced the negative impact of corrupt practices when a local well-
connected entrepreneur used his more powerful personal relationships with
Chinese officials to influence the legal system in order to secure the site. Also,
the interwoven relations between the central state and tribal social affiliations in
African countries, combined with strong dependency on external neocolonial
interests (e.g. the Françafrique connections linking the French political,
economic and military elite to African elites, or Canadian networks of

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corruption16, among others) are well-known situations that generate

hierarchically fragmented corruption which often leads to violent conflicts in
order to share available resources.
Diffused corruption
A certain degree of plurality combined with a relatively unstable institutional
framework may be at the origin of corruption diffused at all levels of political,
economic and social life, but which is generally not hierarchically organized.
Greece is an example of this pattern. The upper levels of the state are involved
in institutionalized but relatively unstable patterns of corruption given the
multiple dependence links both inside and outside the country. At the same
time, widespread “spontaneous” corruption characterizes the lower levels of the
socio-economic interactions. As an example, some professional bodies give
discriminatory access to specific high-value services (hospital doctors), local
government attributes discretionary construction licenses, and public sector
administrations carry out politically affiliated recruitment, including for non-
qualified jobs.

Marginalized corruption
The combination of pluralism, institutional stability, social coherence, relative
equality and wealth limits corruption that can be observed exceptionally
without having a structuring impact on the social and economic game.
Scandinavian countries represent this configuration.

Conclusions and discussion

In this paper, corruption is defined as all relations and mechanisms that favor
specific interests, in a positive sum cooperative game involving a limited
number of connected and interdependent insiders, and causing damage to
outsider actors or to collective interests. Political and economic inequality and
the relative autonomy of the state, compared to specific interest groups are two
crucial points concerning the extent of corrupt practices. However, it is difficult
to establish a univocal relation between these variables. Different types of
inequality or state autonomy have dissimilar effects on public/private actors’
relations and imply diverse degrees of corruption and different corruption
patterns.

16
See Deneault et al. 2008
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We argue that the starting point for understanding corruption is the specific
structural and functional characteristics of the institutional framework and the
rules governing the relations between different groups of interest. In this sense,
the framework developed here explores the impact of institutional determinants
on the nature and patterns of corruption. Indeed, this paper shows that
corruption exists in both pluralist-type and elitist-type institutional
environments. The phenomenon of discriminatory behavior based on a positive
sum game between interconnected actors is reproduced in various conditions.
Structural features of the game are important explanatory factors, but in order
to understand their impact, the degree of institutional turbulence has to be taken
into account. Both institutional structure and stability differentiate corruption
patterns in each issue area and country (institutionalized, hierarchically
fragmented, diffused and marginalized corruption).
Despite the interest of this analytical framework, some limits do exist.
Regarding the conceptual framework, we consider the taxonomy developed in
this paper to be a useful initial insight into the nature and patterns of corruption.
For the purposes of our modeling, we have restricted the figure to a single
domain. However, actors’ relations and strategies implying discriminatory
behavior are more complex and multilevel. As a result, some trade-offs
between a more in-depth analysis of real-life corruption patterns and the
simplified forms of the matrix presented here would be useful.
From a methodological point of view, one important question concerns the
possible correlation between institutional structure and institutional stability. It
seems reasonable to assume that a variable of instability such as external
dependence could influence institutional structure as well. In fact, by taking
into account the institutional structure’s historical evolution, we integrate this
influence, but the matrix representation becomes more problematic in the case
of a possible co-evolution of the two variables. Future research has to clarify
this point and perhaps lead to a reformulation of the two explanatory factors
used here.
Ongoing research can be oriented in both theoretical and empirical directions.
The articulation of national, subnational and supranational levels of corruption,
and the relations existing between various corruption patterns, constitute an
interesting topic to explore. For instance, institutionalized “grand” corruption in
rich and stabilized countries may generate hierarchically fragmented corruption
in dependent countries. The organized corruption of the illicit Françafrique
networks thoroughly demonstrates the type of interdependencies between
different models of corruption. Also, case studies in specific issue areas would
reveal the structural and interaction features of the corresponding public/private
relations. Comparative approaches of corrupted practices in different domains
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inside the same country could focus on the relations between the type of
resources distributed and the corruption patterns, while the types and density of
links could be integrated into formal models issued from the graphs theory,
enabling the structural characteristics of the corresponding corruption networks
to be illustrated.

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