The Big Gang Theory
by Steve Weinberg Posted Wed, Dec 31 2008
Savvy international journalists understand that corruption and violence permeate everyday life in dozens of nations around the world, from the Americas to the fringes of Europe to Asia to Africa. Those same journalists understand that the corruption and violence are connected to abject poverty in many of those nations.
The difficulty for so many international journalists lies in determining the linkages among corruption, violence and poverty. Do corruption and violence usually precede poverty? Or does poverty—leaving millions of citizens within a given nation desperate—beget violence? And does the violence then beget military rule with the rulers feeling entitled to steal a nation’s resources from the starving masses?
A year ago in this same magazine (Winter 2007), I reviewed a telling book by a gutsy academic researcher who conducted high-risk field research to explain the corruption portion of the equation. She is Carolyn Nordstrom, a University of Notre Dame anthropology professor. The book is Global Outlaws, published by the University of California Press.
Now it is time to turn to university scholars again, as they explain not only corruption but also its linkages to violence and poverty. The academics revealing a heightened understanding of how the world works are Raymond Fisman, a professor of social enterprise at the Columbia University Business School, and Edward Miguel, an economics professor at the University of California.
Early in Economic Gangsters, Fisman and Miguel explain the basic argument between divergent camps of economists revolving around an issue of vast
importance to most international journalists— the issue of foreign aid. For example, have the U.S. government and other relatively wealthy governments given too much money to help Kenya out of poverty, or not nearly enough money?
“The answer,” the authors say, “turns out to hinge critically on one’s views of the roles that corruption and violence play in the impoverishment of nations. Maybe corruption and violence are just the symptoms of poverty. If this is the case, once rich-country donors finally send enough money to Kenya to jump start economic growth, its citizens will no longer have to fight one another to survive. On the other hand, if foreign aid is lost to the grabbing hands of corrupt officials or destroyed in civil strife, how could aid dollars ever lift countries like Kenya out of poverty? More aid would just enrich an already corrupt elite, and potentially make the twin problems of corruption and violence worse by giving people even more money to fight over.”
Because the corruption-violence-poverty equation varies from nation to nation, Fisman and Miguel cannot provide one-size-fits-all formulas for journalists to ferret out unambiguous truths. The economists can, however, offer understandable methods for determining such vital matters as how much smuggling across national borders harms or helps the citizenry on each side of the border. The economists can also estimate the costs and benefits of corruption embedded in government-corporate connections.
Fisman and Miguel are determined not only to offer theories that journalists can apply to their reporting, but also to make theory interesting (even fun) to learn. Those didactic goals lead the authors to tentatively gauge the corruption level in every country by studying parking tickets issued to United Nations representatives based in New York City. If Swedish diplomats, for example, pay all parking tickets despite the ability to invoke diplomatic immunity, then Sweden as a nation is quite likely to eschew corruption. If Bulgarian diplomats rarely pay parking tickets, then Bulgaria as a nation is likely to tolerate corruption.
Whenever they think their data yield knowledge suggesting effective reform, Fisman and Miguel float solutions. For example, they suggest that doubling painfully low salaries for Kenyan police officers would reduce widespread bribery. A poorly paid police officer “will inevitably be tempted to shake down passing motorists for bribes. And anyway, what’s he got to lose if he gets caught, bribe in hand—a crummy job that barely pays him more than he’d earn working on a farm. But double his police salary, and he might think twice about taking a bribe.” Why? Because the higher salary could lead to fear of losing a relatively high-paying job if police authorities discover the shakedown.
The authors say they hope their research “can give the world’s poor billions some inspiration and ammunition in their struggle.” If journalists learn the implications of the research and ground their reporting in its logical extensions, perhaps they can assist in comforting the afflicted while forcing the comfortable to discourage corruption and violence.
Steve Weinberg
Steve Weinberg reviews books regularly for Global Journalist, concentrating on journalistic technique rather than summaries of content.