Anatomy of a bribe seeker - Part 1

This is a two part series on corruption in public life and a new way of looking at it.

Bribery and corruption are rampant in most of the public institutions in developing countries. Economists call this type of transaction as ‘Opportunistic behavior’ or Rent seeking. It implies, the officer who is authorized to give sanctions and permissions, will seek personal gains by virtue of being in that place. This blog is an attempt to understand this phenomenon in terms of behavioral patterns of people who engage in these kinds of transactions.

Behaviour patterns of human being can be broadly classified based on its origin as ‘Learned’ and ‘Earned’ one. Earned behaviors are those with which we are born with and ‘wired’ in our human brains for thousands of years. Learned behaviours are those which we learn consciously from our parents, in schools, through our interaction with neighbors, friends and from other social institutions which we are part of.  Earned behaviors are generally of two broad types, ie Reciprocal altruism and Kin selection. This write-up is an attempt to understand the phenomenon of corruption from this vantage point.

Reciprocal altruism implies that co-operation between two un-related individual is conditional, based on reciprocity of give and take. It signifies that an individual in position of authority do a ‘favor’ to an another biologically un-related person only if the latter reciprocates in a particular way that is desired by the former. In simple language, he is altruistic to the extent of being reciprocated. It is like ‘I will scratch your back if you scratch mine’. It is the primary mechanism through which we interact with an ‘outsider’. In this context, he is seeking a reward, which may or may not be in the form of a bribe, as an act of reciprocity for doing a ‘favor’ like issuance of a driving licence, electricity connection, approval for some benefits etc.

This argument is not as simplistic as it initially appears. The natural question that one asks in that case would be why most of us don’t give or seek bribes in our daily transactions despite our actions are beneficial to many others. To answer this, we have to understand that, many of our actions are not necessarily framed as altruistic. Rather, they are framed as market transactions. For example, a Road transport bus conductor don’t seek bribe from us because his act of collecting money from a passenger, is framed as a market transaction, and not as an altruistic one.

A bribe seeker assumes his action as Altruistic when he has given authority to interpret rules where he can deny, delay, discriminate or disapprove a benefit. This tempts him to frame his action as altruistic. By framing it as altruistic, he creates a sense of entitlement and so seeks reciprocity and rewards. Sometimes, his discretionary power of selecting a particular beneficiary amongst many, itself is framed as he is altruistic to that beneficiary. The moment he himself frames his actions as altruistic, he is seeking reciprocity for his action from beneficiary.

However, this expectation of reciprocity will normally kick in only when the beneficiary is known, identifiable, and is in physical proximity to the authority (who ‘sanctions’ the benefit). Another criterion is that the beneficiary should himself acknowledge that the benefit he receives is an act of altruism and so has to be reciprocated. If these conditions do not get satisfied, this transaction will be considered as a ‘market oriented one’.

Even this leaves a lot of things unanswered.  We do see a lot many public officials not taking any bribes yet do altruistic work for the betterment of society at large, despite having a lot of discretionary powers and identifiable beneficiaries. They are found to be satisfied with their salary and other perks which they are legally entitled for.  If it has been an earned behaviour, all men in this earth should been behaved in similar manner. But it doesn’t happen so.

Public official want all their actions to be a rewarding experience. Without it, they neither are likely to act proactively nor perform to the expected level. Contrary to popular beliefs, rewards are not necessarily illegal nor morally distasteful. Fortunately, rewards can be either intrinsic or extrinsic in nature. Intrinsic rewards come in the form of intangibles like honor, fame, prestige, recognition, self satisfaction (by seeing the social benefits he had created through his action) etc. This sense of achievement is a reward in itself and the ‘honest’ officer would be contented with it. Human beings are endowed with a wonderful cognitive phenomenon of rewarding themselves for their own actions and hence can derive a self congratulatory message by themselves.

None will be having any objection towards intrinsic rewards. Even many of extrinsic rewards like medals; price money etc are instituted by government itself. Only those extrinsic rewards which are mostly in monetary terms, and are sought from the beneficiaries are considered illegal.

 Another way of seeking reciprocity is in the form of intrinsic rewards is by the way of expectation of building a credibility which is likely to be rewarded at the later stages. This is by creating a reputation of being an honest officer which may (or sometimes may not) be recognized and appreciated sooner than later. Remember, reputation is a fixed deposit in his ‘virtual bank’ which he believes, can be en-cashed later. This is termed as Delayed gratification.

                                                                                                                  Contd in Part 2

Anatomy of a bribe seeker- Part 2

Second dimension of our Earned behaviour is Kin selection. It refers to our preferences for own kin, which may be biological in nature (like his or her offspring, near and dears or blood relatives). However, it may also include people from own community, tribe or any other socially recognized identity such as caste. As a public servant, he may be inclined to shower benefits to his own kin and treat him as ‘more equal’ than others. Sociologists call this behaviour pattern as Nepotism and are considered as another form of corruption and so is punishable.

This kind of Nepotic behaviour is widely prevalent in almost all societies, both visible and invisible manner. Some of its manifestations are neither illegal nor prohibited by law but is considered as immoral and tasteless. For example, a father-political leader makes his son as ‘inheritor’ of his political career or film star father facilitates entry of his son in to acting. However, some of its manifestations are plainly illegal (like recruiting own son in government service or giving government contract to own men etc).

Kin selection happens because people would like to see themselves as ‘helping’ their own people. These acts are considered as a social virtue and so have a moral sanction. Recall how people despise men who did not do ‘anything for our own people’ despite being able to do so and how he ‘forgot’ his own men. People like to see their ‘own’ men in positions of authority so that he can get the ‘things done’. They refuse to trust ‘others’ and expect him to be sympathetic to his own men rather than being an impartial administrator.  

In a way, kin selection is a kind of  Nepotic altruism.  This is because; being Nepotic, is reciprocal in the sense that he is favoring a man of his own kin because he finds that the same altruism will be reciprocated in one way or other. This is also because, to reciprocate his altruistic behaviour, he needs some identifiable signals and hence kinship forms a signalling mechanism.

Both these earned behaviours, ie Reciprocal altruism and Kin selection, are hard wired in to human brain since time immemorial and was believed to be one of the prime reason for the physical survival of our Hunter gatherer forefathers. Only those men and women who could exhibit these behaviours were able to pass their gene to their next generation so these behaviours persisted over thousands of generations.

Men seek reciprocity because human beings are motivated by self interest (which is not same as selfish interest). A deeper understanding of self interest and hidden motivations will help us to tailor an incentive structure that focuses on intrinsic rewards and discourages illegal ones. In order to reduce, if not eliminate, corruption from public life, we have to understand the true nature and implication of this pre-modern behaviour pattern of human race. Based on insights from this understanding, following policy measures can be adopted in order to have more probity in public services.

a)      Introduce markets wherever feasible. We have seen how corruption got completely eliminated in Telephone allocation and Airline ticket booking. This is because, people stopped viewing these transactions as ‘altruistic’ and realized that they are market transactions and gets incentivised as such.

b)      Reducing discretions and rent seeking powers will help public authorities to see their acts not as an act of altruism but as a part of their ‘job’ for which they are paid for. For this to happen, rules and procedures may have to re-engineered and effective monitoring and supervision have to be instituted.

c)      Beneficiaries should not be made to physically present in the vicinity of public servant and all their communications should be in faceless manner. In other words, public servant should work behind a ‘veil of ignorance’. This will help public servant to see his acts as not as ‘altruistic’ but as part of his job for which he gets remuneration.

But much of the policy making aspects of governance cannot be fitted in to these categories.  A public servant has to take discretionary decisions, have to meet individuals and groups who may be benefited (or adversely affected ) by his action.  Most of the functions of the government are of the nature of ‘market failures’ and hence can’t be replaced with market forces. So how to go about under these circumstances?

Bribery as an extrinsic ‘reward’ is sought mainly because intrinsic reward mechanisms have either failed or proved inadequate. Without fixing this failure, any move towards curbing corruption would be ineffective.  Our excessive focus on disincentives and negative rewards like anti corruption watchdogs, punishment mechanisms etc are of limited impact. Primary focus of our anti corruption efforts should be on how we can institute an intrinsic reward mechanism which will obviate any temptation for seeking any extrinsic rewards. Public servants in least corrupt countries are motivated by the intrinsic rewards and recognition. These intrinsic rewards make them non- reciprocal altruists. On the other hand, officers in a highly corrupt country will be satisfied mostly by rewards in tangible forms and are not ready to be altruistic without any reciprocal (tangible) benefits.

In conclusion, I would like to summarize my argument like this. Our earned behaviours don’t make us honest to the extent we wish to see us in a modern civil society. It is our learned behaviours that help us make honest public life and efficient functioning of civil society possible. Societies differ mainly because they differ the in way which they learn new behaviours and attitudes. Key to eliminate corruption in public life lies in understanding the true nature and implications of our earned behaviour and understand the way in which this behaviour pattern can be changed by introducing learned behaviours on the top of it.