Corruption indicates that a state, public body, or corporation is not functioning as fully as it was intended to function. Instead of delivering appropriate levels of service, called “good governance,” if the jurisdiction is governmental, these corrupt bodies are focusing on supplying rents or emoluments to persons in charge. (Rents are any payment to an owner in excess of the costs needed to produce a certain item. Emoluments are illicit profits or fees from an office, employment, or sale.) A corrupted governmental apparatus at any level consequently thus forfeits its legitimacy as a neutral, all-encompassing, and beneficial provider of services to its citizens and taxpayers, or its shareholders and consumers, and becomes a vehicle for illicit personal enrichment.
Corruption occurs when public servants or corporate leaders disregard their obligations to operate for the commonweal, and make special arrangements for private profiteering. As Cicero long ago suggested, corruption is a betrayal of fidelity to the public interest. Or it is a “subversion” of the public interest. Biographer James Bosworth’s Samuel Johnson called corruption “wickedness; perversion of principles.” “Mankind,” opined Johnson, “are universally corrupt.” More recent commentators call corruption “a moral evil”—a breach of duty.
Public officials of all kinds, even those who run such organizations as the International Olympic Committee, have an obligation to be impartial. At least that is the common expectation. When they do not—when they behave with partiality by discriminating in favor of one person or group against others, and by gaining personal rewards or misbehaving in that manner—those officials are corrupt and corrupted. They are not observing distributional justice. As the late Singaporean prime minister and nation builder Lee Kuan Yew said, “There must be a level playing field for all.” That is what citizens regard as “fair.”
When public and private officials put their own undue personal interests ahead of the stated public interest, those norm deviations are corrupt. Doing so cheats the public, erodes the legitimacy of the polity involved, coarsens discourse between the state (or municipality or corporation) and the citizen or consumer, invites cynicism, and distorts priorities. No political jurisdiction can function on behalf of its citizens and stakeholders if its leaders and middle managers are focused on private gain rather than public enrichment. Instead, bridges collapse, roads crumble, food is tainted, organs are peddled for profit, police self-enrich at roadblocks, marriage and birth certificates become costly, and the very fundamentals of a safe and secure life are compromised.
Copyright © 2020 by Robert I. Rotberg. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
