Empowering Agents of Change

Empowering Agents of Change

Phil Nichols

International markers and unsung heroes

The last twenty-five years have been nothing short of extraordinary for anyone interested in the study or control of corruption. We tend to mark the twists and turns of this epoch using large institutions and organizations as markers. James Wolfensohn’s 1996 ‘cancer of corruption’ speech sparked a fundamental shift in the position of the International Financial Institutions. The release of Transparency International’s first Corruption Perception Index, just a year earlier, for better or worse spawned an industry in quantitative analyses of corruption. The Organization of American States’ Inter-American Convention Against Corruption, which came into force a year after Wolfensohn’s speech, made corruption the subject of international negotiation. Virtually every law review article on corruption contains somewhere within its voluminous footnotes a reference to Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development’s Convention on Combating Bribery of Foreign Public Officials, which entered into force two years after the OAS Convention, and most now contain a reference to the United Nations Convention Against Corruption, which came into force in 2005, as well.

Among those who study or work to control corruption, James Wolfensohn is legendary. Far fewer, however, recall Mohamed Bouazizi, whose self-immolation in 2010 in protest against harassment of his street stand by police whom he could not afford to bribe helped to spark the Arab Spring. Even fewer probably recall Lin Zuluan, who led successful protests the following year against corruption in Wukan Village in the province of Guangdong in China and who was subsequently elected to and then removed from leadership of the village. And almost no one recalls John Kopchinski, who along with nine other employees exposed the bribes that Pfizer paid to doctors to induce those doctors to prescribe Bextra.

Even less heralded are the masses of people who in recent years have actively protested or stood vigil against corruption. These protests have occurred in almost all corners of the world: in Brasil (Operação Lava Jato) and in Ukraine (Maidan Square), in Russia (Bolotnaya) and in the United States (both Occupy and the Tea Party). Anna Hazare led marches of over a million in India, but protests rocked Pakistan and Bangladesh as well. Indeed, few countries have not experienced some form of protest against corruption. The anonymous masses who constitute those protests may have far more power to reduce corruption than does any leader or convention, and those masses merit both study and respect. Our research should connect with the lives of these people.

A tipping point against corruption?

Social scientists have long thought that there may be a critical mass within a population that, although in the minority, could change the social mores of a culture. Empirical research recently published in Science not only supports that theory but also finds the necessary critical mass. If less than twenty-five percent of a population supports change then change is unlikely to occur, but once the number of people within a population seeking a specific change reaches twenty-five percent then change is quite likely.

This research suggests a clear path to corruption control. The research does not answer questions that haunt all attempts at social reform. Where, for example, are the boundaries between one society and another? With respect to corruption, what are the critical referent or affined groups? Does the tipping point apply to groups, such as many of those who protest corruption, that primarily exist through social media? The political world is easily divided into nations and states, but for many people, particularly in parts of the world in which corruption is most acute, the notion of a country is abstract and has little relevance to how they actually think of the world.

But the research does present a tantalizing possibility. Perhaps it only takes the will of a quarter of any particular group to convince the entire group to avoid corruption. Perhaps it only takes a quarter of the bureaucrats in any given government office. Perhaps it only takes a quarter of the buying agents in a large business firm. Perhaps it only takes a quarter of the judges or lawyers within a judicial system, or officers within a police force. Perhaps it only takes a quarter of the population of a city, or a region or a state, or even a country.

A scholar will see almost endless research possibilities. The hypothesis that a motivated quarter of a bureaucratic office can change the entire office’s attitude toward corruption can be empirically tested, as can the hypothesis that a quarter of motivated officers can effectuate the same change within a police force. With more difficulty, the hypothesis can be tested in cities and regions and even states. This research would be invaluable in guiding future efforts to reduce corruption.

Real people and their real experiences can be the agents of change

The finding of a tipping point that may be applicable to corruption also suggests another vein of research. What motivates people to ask for change in corrupted systems? Far too much research simply refers to the motivation of a global corruption regime. Much research seems to assume an almost inhuman rationality on the part of the people it purports to study: a rational actor observes the inefficiencies of corruption and seeks to eliminate it, unless that rational actor somehow benefits from corruption, in which case she seeks to shelter it from scrutiny. The elegant quantitative treatments of corruption push the scholarly understanding of corruption even further from the human experience.

It is unlikely, however, that the inefficiencies attendant to corruption drove Mohamed Bouazizi to protest in the way that he did. It is unlikely that algorithms motivated tens of thousands of Ukrainians to endure a winter in Maidan Square. Anna Hazare did not rally millions of people to march by pointing out the direct costs imposed on a business firm when it pays bribes. If real change is to be effectuated by reaching a tipping point, then the factors and experiences that motivate, or fail to motivate, active opposition to corruption must be studied and understood.

The fact that real change in levels of corruption is made more likely by the actions of a quarter of the population carries another message, both for scholars and for practitioners. That message is humility. We are studying a phenomenon that real people actually experience. Their experience is not just a transaction for us to tease apart and study like a frog on a dissecting table: their experiences with corruption might involve degradation, frustration, perhaps a sense of powerlessness. More importantly, it is they – not we – who may hold the cure to the cancer of corruption. Rather than through a speech by a leader on the floor of an International Financial Institution, the cure for corruption may be found in the willingness of students and shopkeepers and bureaucrats and tens of thousands of other regular people to stand against corruption. They, not us, are the agents of change, and our research should empower them.

Philip M Nichols is Joseph Kolodny Professor of Social Responsibility in Business in the Legal Studies and Business Ethics Department, The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania