I argue that, although education should have positive effects on students’ epistemic character, it is often actually damaging, having bad effects. Rather than cultivating virtues of the mind, certain forms of education lead to the development of the vices of the mind - it is therefore epistemically corrupting. After sketching an account of that concept, I offer three illustrative case studies.

I frame my argument by way of Hayek's tendency to treat Hume and Smith as central articulations of the rule of law. The rest of the paper explores their defense of clientelism. First, I introduce Hume’s ideas on the utility of patronage in his essay, “Of the Independency of Parliament.” I argue that in Hume clientelism just is a feature of parliamentary business. It seems ineliminable. I then contextualize Hume’s account by comparing it to Montesquieu’s account of this system of (...) patronage in Book XIX, chapter 27 of The Spirit of the Laws. Montesquieu primarily treats it as a species of bad corruption. However, he also sees some benefits to it. I then turn to Smith and I show that he echoes Hume’s analysis of corruption in an easily ignored passage in Wealth of Nations. I then show that for Smith one argument in favor of a kind of federal parliamentary union between Great Brittain and her American colonies lies in its ability to facilitate and make more efficient the system of patronage by the Crown. While Smith’s account of these matters is quite Humean, one can discern in Smith a distinct cost-benefit argument for the acceptance of the necessity of a system of patronage in the service of the peaceful expansion and entrenchment of the rule of law in his proposal for parliamentary union. (shrink)

Corruption Prevention Measures Recommended by Kautilya -/- Author / Authors : Dr. Priti Pohekar Page no. 107- 113 Discipline : Political Science/Polity/ Democratic studies Script/language : Roman/English Category : Research paper Keywords:Corruption, remedies of corruption, Kautilya Arthashastra.

Contemporary epistemologists of education have raised concerns about the distorting effects of some of the processes and structures of contemporary academia on the epistemic practice and character of academic researchers. Such concerns have been articulated using the concept of epistemic corruption. In this paper, we lend credibility to these theoretically-motivated concerns using the example of the research impact agenda during the period 2012-2014. Interview data from UK and Australian academics confirms the impact agenda system, at its inception, facilitated the (...) development and exercise of epistemic vices. As well as vindicating theoretically-motivated claims about epistemic corruption, inclusion of empirical methods and material can help us put the concept to work in ongoing critical scrutiny of evolving forms of the research impact agenda. (shrink)

While most discussions of corruption focus on administration, institutions, the law and public policy, little attention in the debate about societal reform is paid to the “internalities” of anti-corruption efforts, specifically to character-formation and issues of personal and corporate integrity. While the word “integrity” is frequently mentioned as the goal to be achieved through institutional reforms, even in criminal prosecutions, the specifically philosophical aspects of character-formation and the development of corporate and individual virtues in a rational and systematic (...) way tend to be neglected. This paper focuses on the “internalities” of anti-corruption work with special emphasis on the pre-requisites that need to be ensured on behalf of the social elites in order for proper individual and collective character- formation to take place throughout the society. The author argues that a systematic pursuit of socially recognised virtues, both those pertaining to society as a whole and those specific to particular professions and social groups, is the most comprehensive and strategically justified way of pursuing anti-corruption policy, while institutional and penal policies can only serve an auxiliary role. The pursuit of institutional and criminal justice policies against corruption in a society that is subject to increasing relativism with regard to values and morality is at best ineffective, and at worst socially destructive. Thus the paper suggests a re-examination of the social discourse on the level of what the author calls “value strategy” and the gradual building of a plan to create and solidify specifically designed features of “corporate character” for key sectors of the society. This approach can serve as the main long-term strategy to improve the public profile of integrity and reinforce morality in both the public and civil sectors. (shrink)

This paper presents a conception of corruption informed by epistemic democratic theory. I first explain the view of corruption as a disease of the political body. Following this view, we have to consider the type of actions that debase a political entity of its constitutive principal in order to assess corruption. Accordingly, we need to consider what the constitutive principle of democracy is. This is the task I undertake in the second section where I explicate democratic legitimacy. (...) I present democracy as a procedure of social inquiry about what ought to be done that includes epistemic and practical considerations. In the third section, I argue that the problem of corruption for a procedural conception of democracy is that the epistemic value of the procedure is diminished by corrupted agents’ lack of concern for truth. Corruption, according to this view, consists in two deformities of truth: lying and bullshit. These deformities corrupt since they conceal private interests under the guise of a concern for truth. In the fourth section, I discuss the difficulties a procedural account may face in formulating solutions to the problem of corruption. (shrink)

This article is concerned with choices that parents or guardians make about the food they give to their children. Those with primary responsibility for the care of young children determine the set of foods that their children eat and have a significant impact on children’s subsequent dietary choices, both in later childhood and in adulthood. I argue that parents have a morally significant reason not to feed meat to their children, which stems from their fiduciary responsibility for the child’s moral (...) development. This should, at a minimum, be factored into parental decisions about their children’s diet. In the absence of compelling countervailing reasons, it will mean that parents should not, in an all-things-considered sense, feed meat to their children. This claim does not rely upon the obviously contentious claim that it is morally wrong to eat meat. Instead, the fact that children, when adults, may reasonably themselves come to believe that consuming meat is wrong gives parents morally compelling reasons to avoid acting in ways which may have the predictable consequence of corrupting the moral character of those for whom they are responsible. (shrink)

I discuss the relationship of epistemic corruption to non-ideal epistemology. A symposium on Robin McKenna's book "Non-Ideal Epistemology".

Corruption deprives people of access to health care and can lead to the wrong treatments being administered. Drug counterfeiting, facilitated by corruption, kills en masse. Cases are recorded of water being substituted for life-saving adrenaline and of active ingredients being diluted by counterfeiters, triggering drug-resistant strains of malaria, tuberculosis and HIV. The poor are disproportionately affected by corruption in the health sector, and cannot afford to pay for private alternatives where corruption has depleted public health services. (...) Analysis of corruption in the health sector of the UK can redress the information imbalance between UK government and service providers and patients. Health is a major global industry, a key responsibility and budget expense for governments and businesses. Corruption deprives people of access to health care and leads to poor health outcomes. (shrink)

This paper describes a neglected aspect of the critique of academic ‘cultures of speed’ offered by Maggie Berg and Barbara Seeber in The Slow Professor. I argue internalisation of the values and imperatives of cultures of speed can encourage the erosion of a range of academic virtues while also facilitating the development of a range of academic vices. I focus on the ways that an internalised ‘psychology of speed’ erodes our capacity to exercise the virtues of intellectual beneficence – excellences (...) of character which advance the intellectual needs of others – by radically distorting our experience of time. (shrink)

I offer a working analysis of the concept of 'epistemic corruption', then explain how it can help us to understand the relations between epistemic vices and social oppression, and use this to motivate a style of vice epistemology, inspired by the work of Robin Dillon, that I call critical character epistemology.

This review is republished to illustrate how important this book is to us today, with legislation and caselaw additions as follows: UK Anti-terrorism, Crime and Security Act 2001; UK Contempt o Court Act 1981; UK Obscene Publications Act 1964; UK Perjury Act 1911; UK Police Misconduct Regulations 1999; UK Prevention o Corruption Act 1996; UK Fraud Act 2006; UK Bribery Act 2010; UK Prevention o Corruption Act 1926; UK Public Bodies Corrupt Practices Act 1889; and UK Terrorism Act (...) 2000. Case law includes: R v Bellum [1989]; R v Dryden [1995]; R v Kiin [1994]; R v Loosley [2002]; the Steven Lawrence murder case; and Tsang Ping-nam v R [1981]. (shrink)

Speakers are confused about identity if they mistake one thing for two or two things for one. I present two plausible models of confusion, the Frege model and the Millikan model. I show how a prominent objection to Fregean models fails and argue that confusion consists in having false implicit beliefs involving the identity relation. Further, I argue that confused identity has characteristic corruptive effects on singular cognition and on the proper function of singular terms in linguistic communication.

Kant’s account of “the radical evil in human nature” in the 1793 Religion within the Bounds of Reason Alone is typically interpreted as a reworking of the Augustinian doctrine of original sin. But Kant doesn’t talk about Augustine explicitly there, and if he is rehabilitating the doctrine of original sin, the result is not obviously Augustinian. Instead Kant talks about Stoic ethics in a pair of passages on either end of his account of radical evil, and leaves other clues that (...) his argument is a reworking of an old Stoic problem. “Radical evil” refers to the idea that our moral condition is — by default and yet by our own deed — bad or corrupt; and that this corruption is the root (radix) of human badness in all its variety, ubiquity, and sheer ordinariness. Kant takes as his premise a version of the Stoic idea that nature gives us “uncorrupted starting points” (Diogenes Laertius 7.89). What sense can be made of the origin of human badness, given such a premise? Kant’s account of radical evil is an answer to this old Stoic problem, which requires a conception of freedom that is not available in his Stoic sources. (shrink)

This essay examines some of the institutional arrangements that underlie corruption in democracy. It begins with a discussion of institutions as such, elaborating and extending some of John Searle’s remarks on the topic. It then turns to an examination of specifically democratic institutions; it draws here on Joshua Cohen’s recent Rousseau: A Free Community of Equals. One of the central concerns of Cohen’s Rousseau is how to arrange civic institutions so that they are able to perform their public functions (...) without being easily abused by their members for individual gain. The view that Cohen sketches on behalf of Rousseau offers a clear framework for articulating institutional corruption in democracy. With this account of democratic institutions in place, the essay turns the discussion to the role of transparency in deterring institutional corruption. The basic thought here is perhaps unsurprising: to ensure that a democratic institution is serving its public function and not being manipulated for self-interested gain, its activities must be subject to public scrutiny, and so these activities must be transparent to the public. Saying this makes the role of transparency in a well-functioning democracy clear, but it does not settle how transparency is to be realized. The essay argues that transparency can be realized in a democracy only by an extra-governmental institution that has several of the familiar features of the press. If this is correct, it follows that in its design and in many, though not all, of its activities, WikiLeaks provides a contemporary example of such an institution. (shrink)

The problem of trickster leadership is discussed in this chapter in the context of the Romanian experience of modernity. This experience has emerged as a Post-Byzantine condition; it was strongly marked by the forty years of communist regimes and was loaded with a high amount of duplicity and ambivalence. The chapter argues that the communist type of trickster leadership in Romania was the outcome of a clash between two types of corruption: a domestic one and a global one. The (...) idea of ‘forms without substance’, coined in 1868 by the historian Titu Maiorescu, is shown to be indicative of the exilic condition in which Romanians remained caught even after their country became independent. The description of this paradoxical condition is followed by a review of the main eras of Romania as a modern state, arguing that this condition has led to an accumulation of disharmony and the absurd in the social fabric of the people. (shrink)

Institutions play an indispensable role in our political and epistemic lives. This Chapter explores sympathetically the claim that political institutions can be bearers of epistemic vices. I start by describing one form of collectivism - the claim that the vices of institutions do not reduce to the vices of their members. I then describe the phenomenon of epistemic corruption and the various processes that can corrupt the epistemic ethoi of political institutions. The discussion focuses on some recent work by (...) Miranda Fricker and select examples from recent British political experience. The Chapter ends with suggestions for further work on the corruption and repair of the epistemic ethoi of political institutions. (shrink)

The literature contains two concepts of corruption which are often confused with one another: corruption as twisted character (pollution), and corruption as disloyalty. It also contains two sites for corruption: the corruption of individuals, and the corruption of entire institutions such as a state or a legislature.This paper first draws a clear distinction between the pollution and disloyalty concepts of corruption in the individual context, and then defends a conception of disloyalty corruption (...) according to which the distinguishing feature is an agent who uses powers delegated to her from her principal as her own. Then, the paper shifts gears to the institutional context, arguing that the best account of institutional corruption in the extant literature is of the pollution kind. It then fills the remaining logical space by laying out a conception of institutional corruption as disloyalty and explaining its moral significance for the political legitimacy of a democracy. (shrink)

In a number of papers, Liu Qingping has critiqued Confucianism’s commitment to “consanguineous affection” or filial values, claiming it to be excessive and indefensible. Many have taken issue with his textual readings and interpretive claims, but these responses do little to undermine the force of his central claim that filial values cause widespread corruption in Chinese society. This is not an interpretive claim but an empirical one. If true, it merits serious consideration. But is it true? How can we (...) know? I survey the empirical evidence and argue that there is no stable or direct relationship between filial values and corruption. Instead, other cultural dimensions are more robust predictors of corruption. As it happens, China ranks very high in these other cultural dimensions. I conclude that if the empirical research is correct then Liu’s claims lack support. (shrink)

A polemical account of Australian philosophy up to 2003, emphasising its unique aspects (such as commitment to realism) and the connections between philosophers' views and their lives. Topics include early idealism, the dominance of John Anderson in Sydney, the Orr case, Catholic scholasticism, Melbourne Wittgensteinianism, philosophy of science, the Sydney disturbances of the 1970s, Francofeminism, environmental philosophy, the philosophy of law and Mabo, ethics and Peter Singer. Realist theories especially praised are David Armstrong's on universals, David Stove's on logical probability (...) and the ethical realism of Rai Gaita and Catholic philosophers. In addition to strict philosophy, the book treats non-religious moral traditions to train virtue, such as Freemasonry, civics education and the Greek and Roman classics. (shrink)

At the root of the corruption problem is its moral and economic nature. The economic problem is a moral problem. Modern theories of corruption are usually empirical in nature. However, they are not without their ideological dimensions though in the modern scheme of things, a normative framework is usually not rationally entertained. Empiricism combined with materialism takes on the reins of economies; however, disregard of the spiritual will not bring any lasting solution. A vision of the absolute is (...) needed. There are various ideologies and religions that provide some kind of a vision or the other. The biblical vision is both historical and prophetic as well. And, the Church is called to be the model of that vision in this pervert and corrupt world. (shrink)

Cet article se propose d’étudier la question de la corruption démocratique à partir d’un cas précis, celui de la crise du traitement des déchets à Naples, communément nommée « crise des ordures ». En analysant trois formes ou niveaux de corruption démocratique lors de cette crise, l’article souhaite souligner que le terme de corruption démocratique, loin de désigner un mécanisme précis, qualifie, au contraire, des actes, des pratiques et des phénomènes très divers.La crise napolitaine est marquée, d’une (...) part, par l’implication du réseau mafieux local – la Camorra – et, d’autre part, par de graves problèmes environnementaux. L’article analyse donc, dans un premier temps, le phénomène de corruption démocratique lié à la présence d’un réseau mafieux et s’attache ensuite à montrer que ce phénomène n’est pas uniquement lié à la présence de la Camorra. En montrant que la mise en place des commissariats extraordinaires est une réponse gouvernementale technocratique à la crise napolitaine, l’article met ensuite en exergue le lien peu évident existant entre corruption démocratique et environnement. Il démontre la difficulté pour nos démocraties libérales et représentatives de répondre démocratiquement à l’enjeu environnemental contemporain et soutient que cette difficulté relève d’une forme de corruption démocratique. (shrink)

The study examined personnel management and corrupt academic practices in universities in Cross River State, Nigeria. In achieving this objective, two research questions and two null hypotheses were posed and formulated respectively, to guide the study. The study adopted a factorial research design, while the population of the study included all the academic staff and students from University of Calabar and Cross River University of Technology. A purposive sampling technique was employed to select 1200 students and 200 lecturers from both (...) Universities, resulting in a sample of 1400 respondents. The instrument used for data collection was a 25-item rating scale that was designed by the researcher to assess both students and lecturers respectively. The collected were analyzed using descriptive statistics, while the null hypotheses were tested at .05 alpha level, using multiple regression analysis. The results of the analysis revealed that; discipline and remuneration of lecturers influenced lecturers’ corrupt academic practices in the universities, with remuneration having the most influence. The findings of the study also revealed that discipline and supervision of university students have a joint significant influence on university students’ corrupt academic practices, with students’ supervision having the most influence on corrupt academic practices. Based on these findings, it was recommended among other things that university lecturers should be properly remunerated through frequent payment of salaries, and other wages in order to ensure that they do not lack food and other resources to manage and take proper care of their families; students should be supervised properly during examinations and in other academic/ co-curricular activities of the universities. (shrink)

Corruption is a ubiquitous problem. As Gillian Brock notes early on, it exists to one degree or another in all societies, no matter their stage of development, and is regularly identified by the public as one of the top problems in the world (2–3). Despite its importance and frequency, it hasn’t been a central topic for philoso- phers working on normative moral and political theory. This isn’t to say that it has been ignored, but it has mostly been seen (...) as a specialty topic in areas such as business ethics, criminal law theory focusing on white-collar crime, or certain sub- areas in democratic theory. However, as Brock points out, corruption has particular importance for questions of global justice, given that “corruption plays an enor- mous role in sustaining global injustice and hinders efforts aimed at remedying global deprivations” (17). This comes not only from the sort of large-scale corrup- tion by government officials that starves developing countries of funds needed to provide necessary services but also from more day-to-day corruption in the provi- sion of water, leaving many people without access to clean drinking water; in con- struction, where people must make do with substandard and unsafe buildings; in the provision of education and medical services; and so on. Despite the massive size of the global justice literature, Brock’s book is one of the first—perhaps the first— to focus specifically on corruption in relation to global justice. It would be an im- portant work for this reason alone, but it also has many other virtues which should make it the touchstone of the topic going forward. (shrink)

This paper seeks to determine the extent of anti-corruption information disclosure in the sustainability reports originating from Gulf countries. Focus primarily on the fight against corruption, this study utilizes a deeply-rooted content analysis technique of corporate sustainability reporting, covering 66 Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) firms during 2014. Strengthened by the application of institutional theory, insight into the results points to a state of limited maturity regarding the disclosure of anti-corruption procedures in the region. More specifically, the results (...) highlight the compliance in the reporting of conduct code, while reporting information on whistle-blowing was significantly less in comparison. Firms in Qatar and UAE ultimately release better informed reports; inclusive of detailed information on internal anti-corruption practices. (shrink)

Satirical cartooning in Vietnam is subject to a complex dynamic: an increasingly liberalised and internationalised economy, and the rise of social media in a one-party state. This article examines what state-sanctioned satirical cartoons can reveal about the representation and management of political criticism in such a context. We find a growing trend of depicting corruption as a systemic problem, which is present in 45 per cent of the sample and in 70 per cent of the 20 most-viral cartoons in (...) one of Vietnam’s most popular magazines, Tuoi Tre Cuoi (Youth Humour). This trend can be interpreted as a change in the sensibility of audiences and a shift toward a more tolerant media landscape. The trend, however, may also be a worrying sign of the dual dangers of cynicism in Vietnamese politics: the development of apathy among audiences and the cynical use of art by authorities. Despite these concerns, we argue, political cartoons in Vietnam provide an important public avenue for collective political reflection and everyday social solidarity. (shrink)

This thesis examines the relationship between character and intellectual or epistemic vices. The philosophical study of epistemic vices is called vice epistemology. To date, much of the work in this emerging field has focused on the nature and epistemological significance of particular intellectual vices such as close-mindedness or dogmatism. Far less has been said about how it is that people come to acquire and develop these intellectual vices. My aim in this thesis is to fill this lacuna by articulating how (...) this phenomenon occurs. Specifically, this thesis develops an account of epistemic corruption. (shrink)

This essay argues not just that literature can corrupt its readers—if literature can improve, it can also corrupt—but that some of that is our fault: by telling people to extract moral lessons from fictions, we’ve set them up to be led astray by writers like Ayn Rand. A global attitude of message-mining sets readers up to be misled, confused, or complacent (because they “gave at the office”), as well as to reject some excellent books. Ironically, the best way to make (...) sure that literature sometimes corrupts is to pretend that it always improves. So maybe we should be more careful about ascribing universal moral value to literature, whether via empathy, training, or propositional content. We should be equally wary of a second kind of aesthetic corruption, one that leads people to judge ideas true merely because they are delightful. Aesthetic Pollyannas subscribe to optimistic theories because they're beautiful (literature always improves! how lovely!); aesthetic Eeyores subscribe to pessimistic theories because they're sublime (literature always fails! how cool!). Our only hope of getting it right about literature depends on us all resisting aestheticized cognition. As we saw above, there may be real-world consequences if we don't. (shrink)

Cet article analyse le risque de corruption que les arrêts Citizens United de 2010 et l’apparition des Super-PACs font peser sur le système électoral états-unien. Lors de la dernière campagne présidentielle, plus de 730 millions de dollars ont été investis dans des publicités électorales par de riches contributeurs et des entreprises privées regroupés en Super-PACs. Nous montrons que cet afflux d’argent consacré à des publicités politiques expose la démocratie américaine à trois formes de « corruption grise », en (...) favorisant la banalisation de pratiques contestables et en troublant la frontière entre ce qui est licite et ce qui ne l’est pas. (1) Déplafonné, le soutien financier aux candidats risque de s’apparenter à de la subornation; (2) certaines des techniques publicitaires employées semblent réduire l’exercice de conviction démocratique à une tentative de corruption de l’électeur; (3) enfin les immenses inégalités d’influence politique que ce système de financement induit participent de la corruption des affaires démocratiques en favorisant leur captation par un petit nombre d’individus fortunés. Nous mettons en évidence que le refus systématique de la Cour Suprême d’envisager ces phénomènes comme des vecteurs de corruption se fonde sur une conception discutable de la démocratie comme système de libre concurrence pour le pouvoir politique. Comprendre la démocratie à partir de son impératif d’égalité permet à l’inverse de rendre visible la corruption à laquelle son système de financement électoral expose la démocratie américaine. (shrink)

The study involved analyzing the causes and consequences of corruption in Vietnam. Some research findings were similar to those of other low- to middle-income countries. However, there were some differences since Vietnam was a socialist republic country. The study used regression analysis to determine the correlations between government expenditure, governance indicator and corruption as well as between corruption and the economic development in selected countries. Data gathered from various sources over 18 years, from 2000 to 2017, were (...) used to answer the research questions. The study uses the corruption perception index and the shadow economy index as proxy variables of corruption. The study’s findings were then contributed to the corruption and economic development literature and used to propose a number of recommendations to policymakers and future researchers. (shrink)

This chapter offers a character-based criticism of ‘the culture of speed’ condemned by the Canadian literary scholars, Maggie Berg and Barbara Seeber in their influential polemic, The Slow Professor. Central to their criticisms of speed and praise of slowness are, I argue, substantive concerns about their effects on moral and intellectual character. I argue that a full reckoning of the wrongs of academic cultures of speed must include appreciation of the ways they promote a host of accelerative vices and failings (...) while also impeding exercise of a range of the virtues vital to enactment of our core academic commitments to teaching, scholarship, and collegiality. (shrink)

The Handmaid’s Tale depicts a United States taken over by a fundamentalist dictatorship called Gilead that also resembles Plato’s ideal city. Attempts to explain Gilead’s debt to Plato face two challenges. First, aspects of Gilead that recall Plato also contain features that differ, at times dramatically, from the Platonic original. Second, Gilead invokes distorted versions of ideas from philosophies other than Plato’s. I explore two ways of making sense of Gilead’s distorted philosophical appropriations. The explanations differ over whether such distortions (...) are best explained by the nature of the philosophies they misrepresent, or by the nature of Gilead. The explanation that emphasizes Gilead’s own agency is ultimately best able to make sense of how illiberal regimes misappropriate philosophical concepts, both in the novel and in reality, in order to limit the political imagination of their subjects. (shrink)

Corruption has assumed a new turn in 4th Republic Nigeria, particularly where non-human animals are alleged by human animals to deep their hands into the public tilt for their selfish non-human animal purposes. This is a clear case of hypocrisy on the part of human animals in that, at one instance we contend that non-human animals are inferior to human beings and at the other instance, we affirm though inadvertently that non-human animals are not inferior but equal since they (...) have the capacity to steal: we, therefore, are unable to steer ourselves out from the dilemma of our ambivalence to arrogate to ourselves a god-like status over non-human animals. We contend that this is another profound inhumane case of violation of non-human animals which is condemnable. We have suggested that the solution to this quagmire is first to admit that non-human animals have basic rights like human animals especially when we understand this notion of Rights going beyond its parochial conception. The method we have employed in showing moments of human's inhumanity to non-human animals is what has been conceived as Ibuanyidanda Philosophy according to which we aver that ihe di nwereisinaodu (anything that exists serves a missing link of reality). We have argued in favour of the thesis that the federal government should allow justice prevails against acts of theft by either civil or public servants. -/- . (shrink)

Corruption is one of the major problems of present day world, that is intangible in itself, but, plays a major role in our daily life, which either, directly or indirectly, is effecting our lives. Through this paper, we have tried to classify the types of corruption under five major headings.

How can institutional corruption be combatted? While recent years have seen a growth in anti-corruption literature, examples of countries rooting out systemic corruption remain few. The lack of success stories has sparked an academic debate about the theoretical foundations of anti-corruption frameworks: primarily between proponents of the principal-agent framework and those seeing systemic corruption as the result of collective-action problems. Through an analysis of current principalagent and collective action anti-corruption literature, this article adds two (...) additional arguments to the debate: (a) the need to specify what one talks about when talking about systemic corruption and (b) the necessity to move beyond the principal-agent versus collective action frameworks dichotomy towards a policy-centered approach for how to combat institutional corruption. Having outlined how institutional corruption can be seen as one type of systemic corruption, this article shows how a policy-centered approach such as strengthening the appearance standard through an independent public commission can address theoretical mechanisms emphasized in each anti-corruption framework–thus arguing that the frameworks complement rather than rival each other. The article ends by arguing for an anti-corruption discourse acknowledging that a multifaceted problem such as corruption requires multiple frameworks rather than attempts for silver-bullet explanations. (shrink)

In Plato’s Philebus, Socrates’ second account of ‘false’ pleasure (41d-42c) outlines a form of illusion: pleasures that appear greater than they are. I argue that these pleasures are perceptual misrepresentations. I then show that they are the grounds for a methodological critique of hedonism. Socrates identifies hedonism as a judgment about the value of pleasure based on a perceptual misrepresentation of size, witnessed paradigmatically in the ‘greatest pleasures’.

If I am confused, and I think two people are one and the same, that may impair my ability to refer to either of them. This is combinatory confusion. What if I am confused, and think that one person is actually two people? This is separatory confusion, and it seems quite different. After all, even in my confusion, my thoughts and my referential devices seem to track back to a single individual. Elmar Unnsteinsson has recently argued that both types of (...) confusion corrupt, i.e. they may prevent us from referring the right way. In this paper, I examine the four arguments he offers for this conclusion, and I argue that the intuitive view that separatory confusion does not corrupt can withstand his challenge. (shrink)

Corruption prevention can be more effective if it does not rely merely on legal enforcement. This theoretical review aimed to propose a hypothetical psychological model capable of explaining the behavior of corruption. Moral disengagement is a variable that is considered ontologically closest in “distance” to the variable of corruption behavior. Counterfeit self, implicit self-theory, ethical mindset and moral emotion are taken into account as the pivotal factors of the corruption behavior and its mechanism of moral disengagement. (...) Counterfeit self along with some moderating variables are regarded to “set” one’s future corrupt behavior based on his/her past/prior ethical or unethical behavior and moral emotions. This review discovered a conjectural-theoretical model of the corruption psychology. It can be used to design a social intervention and training for individuals to manage the mindset and emotion that can buffer counterfeit self effect. In addition, the users of these research findings are recommended to be aware of the surroundings that consist of groups of people with particular ethical mindset, moral emotion proneness and self-theory. (shrink)

Broadly defined, government corruption is the abuse of public power for private gain. It can assume various forms, including bribery, embezzlement, cronyism, and electoral fraud. At root, however, government corruption is a problem of trust. Corrupt politicians abuse the powers entrusted to them by the electorate (the principal-agent problem). Politicians often resort to corruption out of a lack of trust that other politicians will abstain from it (the collective action problem). Corruption breeds greater mistrust in elected (...) officials amongst the public. The problem of trust is compounded where a lack of transparency and asymmetric information impede effective control over the exercise of public powers. (shrink)

The concept of moral corruption has been pointed at as the root cause of our failure to make progress with acting towards a sustainable future. This chapter defines moral corruption as the agent’s strategy not to form the intentions needed to overcome the motivational obstacles of sustainable action. Moral corruption is considered similar to Kant’s radical evil; it causes our practical identities to be divided. The question then arises: how could we possibly strive for moral integrity, while (...) simultaneously being infected with the ‘disease’ of moral corruption? It is argued that we have an indirect motive for sustainable action in wanting to prevent our practical identity from falling apart. (shrink)

This paper aims to show the necessity of development ethics. For this purpose, I discuss two of many moral issues of development policy – poverty and corruption. I argue that reducing poverty and curbing corruption are the two moral issues that should be considered seriously, because poverty and corruption prevent people from getting any access to development. But in order to reduce poverty and to curb corruption value-neutral measures of economics are not enough. They are also (...) involved with ethical assumptions. I show that if any development policy maker wants to reduce poverty and corruption to some extent, he has to resort not only to value-neutral strategies of development, but also to the ethics of development. And this opens the door for development ethics that can contribute to the creation of a sane and judicious development policy. (shrink)

African cultural values connote core principles and ideals that maintains good, right, fair and just in African societies. This culture is developed over a long period of time, preserved and promoted by all members of a given group or society. Corruption as a phenomenon on the other hand has been variously described as a societal vice. Though research shows that some levels of corruption exist in almost every human society, it is over accommodated in some societies or nations (...) and as such it has notoriously continued to destroy such societies/nations. This is particular to a number of African nations, with Nigeria being among (if not) the worse corrupt nation(s) in the continent. It is not difficult to understand that the value placed on corruption in Nigeria is synonymous to the way cultural values are cherished by people in some nations of the world. In view of this, there is a serious and immediate need to educate the Nigerian public about the consequences of developing a culture of corruption in the country. It seems that some Nigerians take corruption to be a normal way of life, thereby, equating the vice to acceptable cultural values. Today, many Nigerians are not interested in developing and/or preserving amiable cultural values for the nation. Rather, more attention is focus on the promotion of corrupt practices that enables the destruction of even the good cultural values of the nation that were left behind by our forefathers. Therefore, this paper seeks to unmask the importance of developing and preserving good African cultural values that will guarantee unity, patriotism, social cohesion and sustainable development in Nigeria. (shrink)

Along with the promulgation of 2008 Law on Anti-Corruption, thanking to the comprehensive solutions and determinations of the whole governmental apparatus, there are signals of a positive change in the fight against corruption in Vietnam’s market economy. However, compared to other countries around the world, the corruption in Vietnam is still a national problem. The number of corruption cases may decline, but the scale and severity has been increasing. Many cases has involved high-ranking officials in the (...) government with more than 20 general officers in the armed forces to be sentenced. On the basis of analysing the current situation of corruption in recent years, the author hereby recommends some synchronous solutions to improve the effectiveness of anti-corruption. (shrink)

In July 1759 the French philosopher Andre´ Pierre Le Guay de Prémontval (1716-1764) published in Berlin a diatribe against the excessive and incorrect use of French in the Prussian capital. Far from being a mere guide to linguistic style, the Préservatif contre la corruption de la langue françoise generated a heated debate, attested by an official threat to ban its publication. The personal animosity between Prémontval and the perpetual secretary of the Berlin Academy, Jean Henri Samuel Formey (1711-1797) was (...) amply demonstrated over the pages of the Préservatif, offering a rare insight into the complex web of social and intellectual tensions in mid eighteenth-century Berlin and its Academy of Sciences. At stake were the social status and the philosophical outlook of local Huguenots, compared to that of French philosophers who were granted asylum in Prussia by Frederick II. The debate also concerned the issues of academic freedom in an absolutist regime, the material production and distribution of texts, conduct and etiquette in the Republic of Letters and the formation of group identities in eighteenth-century Germany. Drawing on manuscripts preserved in Berlin, Göttingen and Krakow, this article traces the development of the controversy and the reception of Prémontval’s work by both French- and German- writing authors at the Berlin Academy and beyond its confines. (shrink)

The higher education sector in Indonesia is currently confronting a concerning issue. Corruption and poor management plague various universities in this country, creating an unfavorable work environment for the academic community. The university management system, which should be an essential pillar in enlightening the nation, has instead become a source of problems troubling professors, staff, and students. This essay argues that urgent reform of the corrupt and ineffective university management system is necessary for the academic community's well-being.

This book is a new scholarly edition of Lincoln Steffensâ classic, â oemuck-rakingâ account of Gilded Age corruption in America. It provides the broader political background, theoretical and historical context needed to better understand the social and political roots of corruption in general terms: the social and moral nature of corruption and reform. Steffens enjoyed the support of a multitude of journalists with first-hand knowledge of their localities. He interviewed and came to know political bosses, crusading district (...) attorneys and indicted corruptionists spanning a cast of hundreds. He also benefited from the support of a large-scale, nationally prominent network of anti-corruption specialists and luminaries, including President Theodore Roosevelt. Steffens explored in detail the high Gilded Age corruption of New York City, Chicago, â oecorrupt and contentedâ Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, St. Louis and Minneapolis. His work culminated in a well-documented record of Gilded Age corruption in the cities; and, with the addition of the editorial annotations, Chronology and Introduction of this edition, the reader is placed in a position to gain an overview and considerable insight into the general, moral and social-political phenomenon of corruption. This book will be of interest for students and professionals in political philosophy, political science, American history and American studies. (shrink)

It can be said that Rousseau is one of the most acute thinkers of the corruption of civilisation. In fact, the Second Discourse and the Essay on the Origins of Languages could be read as elaborate analyses of advancing social and cultural decline inasmuch as mankind is continually moving away from the original state of natural innocence. But Rousseau’s idea of corruption is not straightforward. I try to show that in the Essay, Rousseau emphasizes the natural causes for (...) corruption. I argue that an opposition between necessity and contingency, which more accurately represents the two modes operating in Rousseau’s doctrine, should replace the standard nature/culture divide. The contingency of natural catastrophes is found to be ultimately responsible for the corruption in the social realm, which is therefore largely driven by natural causes. (shrink)

The phenomenon of corruption is a cancer that affects our country and that it is necessary to eradicate; This dilutes the opportunities for economic and social development, privileging the single conjunction of particular interests, political actors in non-legal agreements for their own benefit, which lead to acts of corruption. Recent studies indicate that the level of corruption present in a political system is directly related to the type of institutional structure that defines it (Boehm and Lambsdorff, 2009), (...) as well as the ineffectiveness of the control organisms (Casar, 2015; Cárdenas, 2010, Rojas, 2010, Carbonell, 2009, Restrepo, 2004), which requires citizen action to combat corruption (Sandoval, 2010, Villanueva, 2006). This work, focuses our attention on the federal public administration, presenting as a proposal to empower the citizen action in the fight against corruption and in the National Anticorruption System; the figure of Whistleblowers or generator of citizen alert, based on two fundamental principles: i) recognizing the citizen's obligation to report acts of corruption and ii) the granting by the authority of witness protection. These two actions will result in two important results: i) Consolidate the citizen's complaint to inform society about acts of corruption and ii) and the exercise of freedom of information so that society is able to be informed about acts of corruption. These actions will allow promoting and consolidating a culture of reporting acts of corruption that may constitute a crime as a fundamental pillar in the National Anticorruption System in Mexico. (shrink)

Can taxation and the redistribution of wealth through the welfare state be conceived as a modern system of circulation of the gift? But once such a gift is institutionalized, regulated and sanctioned through legal mechanisms, does it not risk being perverted or corrupted, and/or not leaving room for genuinely altruistic motives? What is more: if the market’s utilitarian logic can corrupt or ‘crowd out’ altruistic feelings or motivations, what makes us think that the welfare state cannot also be a source (...) of corruption? To explain the standard answers to the abovementioned questions as well as their implications I will first re-examine two opposing positions assumed here as paradigmatic examples of other similar positions: on the one hand, Titmuss’s work and the never-ending debate about it; on the other, Godbout’s position, in-so-far as it shows how Titmuss’s arguments can easily be turned upside down. I will then introduce and reinterpret Einaudi’s “critical point” theory as a more complex and richer anthropological explanation of the problems and answers considered herein. Through the analysis of these paradigmatic positions I will develop two interrelated arguments. 1) The way these problems are posed as well as the standard answers to them are: a) subject to fallacies: the dichotomy fallacy and the fallacy of composition; b) too reductive and simplistic: we should at least try to clarify what kind of ‘gift’ or ‘corruption’ we are thinking about, and who or what the ‘giver’, the ‘corrupter’, the ‘receiver’ and/or the ‘corrupted’ party are. 2) The answers to these problems cannot be found by merely following a theoretical approach, nor can they be merely based on empirical evidence; instead, they need to take into account the forever troublesome, ambiguous and unpredictable matter of human freedom. (shrink)