Corruption, Development, Chaos and Social Disorganisation: Sociological reflections on corruption and its social basis

Abstract

Corruption is now widely understood to be one of the main distorters of effective development intervention, leading to the illegal misappropriation of aid, inefficiencies and crime in local and national bureaucracies, the failure of poverty-alleviation schemes to reach the very poorest, and general lack of access to primary health care, education, housing and clean water. High levels of corruption can distort the operation of social justice and the fair distribution of resources. Corruption is also often seen as a 'local' problem—as a form of crime that requires ethical, legal or managerial mechanisms to prevent, contain or eradicate it, or as a failure of individual morality or traditional norms when vulnerable people are placed in a position of temptation. This chapter will advance the thesis that corruption is, in fact, a systemic problem in which whole social systems are implicated, and which is generated in large part by dysfunctions in systems themselves. In standard sociological parlance, the notion of social organisation implies the smooth running of a given social system. 'Social disorganisation' is therefore seen as its opposite or as the degeneration of a functional system. This term is, of course, relative and often substantially ideological. For example, the 'social harmony' ascribed to Singapore and North Korea perhaps represents control more than functionality. Yet we can identify with reasonable accuracy situations in which social breakdown or non-functionality is evident through its negative impact on the quality of life, particularly of the non-powerful, non-privileged or excluded members of a given society, and the expression of this non-functionality in rising levels of crime, violence and corruption (Jones-Finer & Nellis, 1998). This chapter should therefore be read as an exercise in social theory, not as an empirical analysis of corruption in specific cases. It is an attempt to broaden the scope and range of reference of organisational sociology in order to include within its ambit issues of development and social change, alongside its traditional preoccupation with the internal structure of organisations, particularly businesses and bureaucracies.