The different types of corrupt behavior

After analyzing surveys conducted among students and teachers in Osh it has come apparent that indeed they differentiate between different types of corrupt behavior. In general the results had mostly similarities but there were also some interesting differences.

The practices evaluated as corrupt in the first survey was similarly evaluated as the most corrupt in the second survey. The scenarios were ranked as the most, second most and third most corrupt concerned bribery. And the least corrupt/acceptable are….Some differences are worthy of being highlighted.

It is shown that indeed people can distinguish between the various definitions of corrupt and non-corrupt acts. Some of the behaviors were almost unanimously regarded as corrupt or not corrupt. But the survey also indicates that it seems rather difficult to make these judgments.

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From these findings about attitudes of corruption among student respondents, we turn to experienced aged teachers and young specialists as well and their perceptions of corruption. The experiences of corruption and improprieties either directly experienced by the interview subjects or through hearing of such reports from their colleagues, covered a broad spectrum, ranging from clear-cut examples to cases bordering on corruption, and even cases not illegal and which most people might not regard as corruption.

The answer to the research question regarding perception and narratives is that the attitudes about corruption in OshSU in general are not that different from many other most corrupt countries. Comparatively speaking, perceptions were more similar between the departments; the change is seen in those who have been working more than 20 years in the system of education. Overall, other results are consistent with the findings in the survey that I conducted and it is to this survey I now turn. I surveyed students’ attitudes about different types of corruption in the university. In the survey 5 different scenarios drawn from examples in the corruption literature were evaluated by choosing between concept pairs of corrupt/not corrupt, local/national level of government, and common/uncommon. The study shows that in general the behaviors represented in the five scenarios were judged rather softly and that it seems that there are quite faint notions of what is corrupt and what is not. It is possible to distinguish between different corrupt behaviors, but there are many indications that respondents find this difficult to do. This is a sign that, though we may see a clear distribution of how corrupt different acts are, this is something the respondents regard as being difficult to evaluate.

In the first case bribery can even be expected to be regarded as a case of white corruption. If we instead turn to the civic-culture based category the bribe can be expected to be regarded as a case of black corruption and rarely occurring. Applying this model, along with the use of the rankings from TI and interpersonal trust measures, we hypothesize that acceptance of bribes would to be higher in Kyrgyzstan than in Kazakhstan and higher in the south than the north. This chapter addresses attitudes about corruption from the viewpoints of the students and teachers of Osh state University. Does the public differentiate between different types of corrupt behavior? Are some types of illegal practices regarded more relatively acceptable than others and do people differentiate between various types of corrupt behavior? And, when we turn to students and university staff, what are their perceptions of corruption?

The first part of the chapter is based on young citizens (students) perceptions of various types of corruption, then the second part turn to perceptions of university teachers on questions also including perceptions about the proper practices and improprieties in teacher/student relations. This chapter applies a quantitative method in the first part based on the survey I conducted, and has a qualitative orientation in the second based on the interviews I carried out. Here is a humble research showing that respondents differ on their views of what is or is not corrupt. The study undertaken in Osh State University, Osh, Kyrgyzstan, the country in the most corrupt category, concluded that views of what constitutes corruption differed sharply among those two sides. In this chapter I turn to local Kyrgyz perceptions of corruption and try to deepen our knowledge one step further. In order to do, this chapter consists of two parts based on studies of two groups. First, the students’ perceptions of bribe giving are investigated through a survey conducted at Osh State University in Kyrgyzstan. The design of the survey required the respondents to evaluate each other’s behavior concerning to bribe giving/taking and to say, according to them, what is moral and what is immoral behavior in the academic student/teacher interrelations.

One department, Kyrgyz, has been more associated with corruption than has the other one, Russian, and many of the scandals revealed in this University have concerned Uzbek and Kyrgyz departments.

I point out here that these three cases are presented to provide in-depth illustrative examples.

All /some variants of behavior were regarded as corrupt or non corrupt, according to first group…. And to the second group…

One of the particular goals of this part of the study was to identify the types of corruption to which individuals had been exposed. Respondents were asked about whether they had experienced corrupt situations, such as anyone offering them gifts, or other inducements in exchange for putting grades. Two-thirds responded that they had not, with one-third indicating that they had. Similarly when asked if they had heard of colleagues being made such offers, two-thirds replied negatively, one-third affirmatively.

Overt bribery such as money offers or direct favors were also listed as having been experienced by interviewees. The first category, individual morals, concerns personal character and morality. The institutional setting concerns answers referring to such causes as inadequacies of the control system, insight into activities as well as incentives for corruption. This is the area which most of the answers fit. The culture category concerns change in norms, leadership and changed ethics in society, and the local culture of running things; little transparency, the audit is not working, weaker scrutiny at local level by media, low wage. Table # shows all the explanations given by respondents, listed and grouped into four categories of narratives. These categories are derived from the factors in my combined approach presented in the theoretical framework in Chapter Two. In many cases it is very hard to draw a distinct line between the four categories and, hence, to allocate the answers to one of the categories. However, this is an attempt to do so.

On the topic of culture, some interviewees thought that over the years morals have changed making some behavior more acceptable today than before, in particular, in the Soviet time. One teacher said that: I think taking money in illegal way depends on slackness and a change in moral. It has become generally accepted. Social control is relaxed.

Conclusion

This research, for the first time, collects, analyses, and presents the views of students and teachers, who study and work in the evidently most corrupt institutions and therefore. The most distinctive feature of this research is the employment of the ordinary students’ perceptions to see what corruption according to them is. The purpose of this study has been to map out and analyze perception of corruption in Osh State University. In addressing the research questions I have tried to examine the narratives of corruption amongst students and teachers of OshSU as far as possible, the research questions raised in the thesis: a) What is corruption in KG? b) What is razvod?

One cannot just say that it is enough for “people to simply use their common sense” definitions of what is acceptable as these may vary from person-to-person. Finally we should remember that the survey is conducted on a limited number of persons, thus the results have to be interpreted with caution.

The answers emerge from several research results about corruption in the countries undergoing transition, in particular, Kyrgyzstan, and in the academic literature on corruption throughout the world. One result is found by turning to the results emerging from the local media study, another result is developed from those interrogated. I analyze types of behavior with the help of the following categories; a focus on the narratives of corruption amongst students; what type of actor it concerns; if it concerns breaking legal or non-legal norms; if the transactions are direct or indirect; and how the acts are perceived by the public. In my description and classification of types of corruption in Higher Education in Kyrgyzstan we see that distinctions between non-legal versus legal norm transgressions and between direct or indirect transactions are important factors in the way the acts are perceived by the public.

It can be observed that the definitions of corruption as well as its perceptions differ from the general established concepts.

Missing is a better understanding of whether public perceptions of corruption are in fact connected to indicators of real educational corruption. One thing is often forgotten, or, at least, not articulated clearly enough: corruption in education might be influenced by the perception of corruption. Perception itself is the product of the sources of information about corruption, and may describe the level of corruption inadequately. This paper will provide an empirical analysis of the influence of the sources of information, narratives, about corruption on corruption perceptions and the association between perceptions and the willingness of people to give bribes in Kyrgyzstan, OshSU. In some cases corruption perceptions can reinforce corruption. High corruption perceptions make people believe that they have to pay bribes, and the officials to think that there is nothing wrong with accepting them. The perceptions might actually facilitate the negative or positive processes that take place in society. The message of the whole paper is that corruption perceptions, as any kinds of perceptions that are spread all over the population should be paid much more attention than it was done before, as suggested in the literature review section.

http://www.iiz-dvv.de/index.php?article_id=207&clang=1

The term ‘corruption’ has as many variegated shades of meaning as it has in terms of usage and is generally used for an extensive range of illegal activities. Various dictionaries offer multiple meanings or definitions of the term, ranging from physical destruction, moral perversion.

Modern usage of corruption is quintessentially associated with misuse of public position or power for private gain.

The vague general impression, which emerges with the word of corruption, is somehow related to something unholy happening to the public office or perpetrated by the public officials.

Kyrgyzstan’s Higher Education System (KHES) is perceived as one of the most corrupt sectors in the country. Thus, the quality of any education system is a key factor for a country’s political and economic performance. It influences a society’s values and attitudes, but also affects the potential for future innovation, and thus, for economic growth. As most students do not have alternatives and as corrupt behavior by university staff has never been subject of punishment, corruption has become systemic.

As discussed in more detail in the next sections, this case study has been chosen for the relevance of corruption, in general, the importance of the country and the sector: Kyrgyzstan is a relevant case as it is known for its bad governance and the Higher Education System itself is worth being examined as it is the source for a country’s human capital potential in the long term and thus relevant for innovation and progress.

In the previous section the spatial dimension of corruption was mapped out. But there is also another dynamic that was touched upon in the last section: changes over time. We have seen from general figures that corruption varies among countries. Bearing this in mind, it is important to study attitudes about corruption and in the following section this is the focus, especially attitudes about bribes among people (students and teachers) in the south of Kyrgyzstan. The data source is from the Recent Surveys conducted in June, 2010. As the empirical indicator of corruption I use razvod, the least studied form of corruption, because it is one of the clearest and most obvious types of corruption, and to some extent data is available and accessible.

We can expect different corrupt actions to be perceived differently, depending on the types of political obligation relationships in society. In a civic-oriented society, we can expect most forms of corruption to be regarded as unacceptable, while in the more traditional, less civic-oriented society;

The study concluded that indeed people are able (or not) to distinguish evaluations about the concept of corruption.”They see differences in types of corruption; they perceive some types as more corrupt, more common, etc., and the components employed in the survey seem to have meaning to people in most respects”. Additionally, the respondents generally saw corruption as common, unnecessary, important and ultimately undemocratic.

An important reason to study types of corruption is that they might vary in different contexts, I surveyed variations in attitudes towards corruption in Osh, where different types of corruption are identified from a legal-based starting point. The types of corruption that the survey is based on are related to patronage, bribery. The results show that legal distinctions and public opinion might not always go hand-in-hand.

In the literature we have seen the fruitfulness and importance of distinguishing whether an act is legally regarded as corrupt and whether an act is regarded as morally corrupt by the public. But from whose point of view is the act immoral? In this case we refer to public opinion. Despite the difficulties, this distinction is analytically useful: by not just concentrating on the legal part but also the public perception of the act as corrupt or not we are able to compare whether perceptions are in congruence with the legal norms. In analyzing different understanding of corruption, which might range from gift giving to direct bribes, it is fruitful to distinguish between indirect or direct gains from corruption. We can expect corruption in the Kyrgyz society, with highly developed traditions and customs to be hospitable, to pay a big attention to elders to respect and all of these are maintained and manifistated by giving gifts and a large number of possible ways to carry out transactions, to be indirect in many cases and it is often difficult to determine which transactions are corrupt. Different types of corruption should be categorized and analyzed in regard to attitudes about them.To clarify it I have surveyed the students and the teachers of Osh Sate University and came to the following point:

Case study: OshSU

The system of higher education of Kyrgyzstan, as it has been already noticed, is perceived as one of the most corrupt sectors in the country. This study examines corruption in this sector and focuses on perceptions of it through narratives within and outside the OshSU University. When doing empirical research on a subject as sensitive as corruption, a basic sense of trust and familiarity is required to receive as much information as possible. My background as a former student and as a current teacher allowed me first to better reach to certain issues.

I have analyzed the situation from the perspective of general public as well the academia; as discussed in more detail in the previous chapters, this case study has been chosen for the relevance of corruption, in general, the importance of the country and the sector: Kyrgyzstan is a relevant case as it is known for its being one of the most corrupt countries on the list of TI and the Higher Education System of Kyrgyzstan is the countries the most corrupt sector.

It is generally perceived that like in many developing societies, corruption in Kyrgyzstan is rampant and deep rooted. It is evident among as public and private sectors; national non-governmental organizations, big corporations, regional experts, foreign and national investors and the ordinary Kyrgyz citizens.

There is hardly any issue in Kyrgyzstan on which there is such undisputed consensus, among the people belonging to very diverse social groups and different parts of the country, than the issue of corruption in education sector, especially in higher education. These perceptions have been assessed and judged with the assistance of various surveys, reports, polls, and indices. However, there is one section of society, which is at the core being of every corruption debate and whose perspective has never been systematically evaluated or empirically analyzed. That section is the public servants, and, in our case, namely, teachers and students. This research is seminal in this regard as it will try to empirically analyze the public servant’s perceptions on two vital aspects related to corruption: what is corruption and what practice belongs to corruption.

It is important to point out here that the perceptions of public servants are not only significant because of their association or knowledge of the corrupt practices going on in their realm, but it is also important because, public servants themselves often are the target of this environment of corruption.

This chapter deals with the vital question of perception of corruption in transitional societies or developing states. Studies examining public perceptions of corruption have most often focused on the ambiguity of what corruption means in the public mind. Johnston, for example found perceptions of corruption vary across individuals and contexts, and reflect nuanced judgments as to what constitutes corrupt behavior. About ambiguity in the public meaning of corruption and that perceptions of corruption may reflect standard definitions say the evidences demonstrating in the works of several authors (Johnston 1986, Redlawsk and McCan 2005).

The remarkable factor about the available data on corruption is that all this data is tended to be perception based. Nongovernmental organizations or international organizations collect data, regarding the prevalence of corruption in any country, through surveys and interviews, based on the perceptions of mostly business people, local experts, investors and to a very limited extent the public at large. It is assumed that this data based on perception, to a certain extent, represents the true level of corruption in any country. According to Dr. Lambsdorff, founder of CPI, the data on corruption are based on subjective perceptions and expertise, but considered to be good indicators of real levels of corruption and international surveys on perceptions serve as the most credible means of compiling a ranking of nations. [1] Thus, it gives a ground to suppose these perceptions enhance our understanding of real levels of corruption from one country to another. The obvious obstacles in gathering empirical evidence regarding prevalence of corruption have pushed researchers to utilize perception of corruption as a reliable indicator for the real level of corruption.

In this chapter, I will discuss the perceptions of the civil servants of Kyrgyzstan regarding the prevalence of corruption in the public sector of the country. As perception of corruption is considered a reliable indicator of the original level of corruption in any country, this study also employs the perception of corruption as a reliable representative of the extent of corruption in Kyrgyzstan. This perception will be evaluated with the help of data collected through surveys and interviews of the students and teachers of OshSU.

Perceptions regarding what is corrupt or uncorrupt gathered during the fieldwork have been presented and analyzed in this chapter. Kyrgyzstan was taken as a model case, representing transitional societies and developing states, for the reasons explained earlier in detail, addressing questions like: cultural embeddedness of corruption as a phenomenon; role of narratives in spread of corruption.

Explanations why corruption is too widespread in transitional countries often refer to cultural factors, asserting that cultural definitions of morality as well as moral obligations of individuals differed in different societies; according to this thought, culture is a very strong factor in the prevalence of corruption in transitional societies. This explanation assumes the attitude towards the problem of corruption in the transitional countries attributing it to the traditions of gift giving and to the kinship relations widely embedded in the cultures of those societies. Different cultures have different traditions but all the cultures see corruption as an illegal and unethical phenomenon.

This chapter explained why it is difficult to measure the real level of corruption in any given state, and why perception of corruption is widely used and considered as a good proxy of the real level of corruption and briefly discussed the divergent views on the use of perception as a proxy for real level of corruption. And I have said that perception is at times as harmful as the real problem, but, nevertheless, I have tried to establish the validity of perceptions as a useful base for deeper analysis and investigation. Considering the obvious problems, associated with correct information gathering about corruption, perception of corruption is generally employed as a good proxy for the real level of corruption. Without exception, all the perception-based research regarding corruption draws on the perceptions of general public, country experts, or the views of international business associations. Though, this research also employs perceptions of corruption, yet its unique feature is that it will collect and employ, for the first time, the perceptions of ordinary students and teachers of Kyrgyzstan.

On the methodological front, this research can boast to be seminal in the usage of perceptions of the real stakeholders in the field of corruption research. Prior to this, all the perception-based research about corruption is based on the perceptions of clients, i.e., general public, businessmen, area experts, or international business organizations. For the first time the perceptions of serving civil servants regarding the prevalence, causes, and control of corruption, have been collected. This underscores the vitality of understanding, the real reasons of corruption and the methodology to control it, according to the perpetrators or the stakeholders. This opens up a new methodological route in the field of empirical research on corruption and governance. Since this research is based on the perceptions of public servants -teachers an important novelty of this research.

Conclusion This chapter discussed and analyzed the perceptions of teachers and students regarding corruption in a developing country like Kyrgyzstan. It is seen that, their perception regarding corruption in the public sector is slightly different from the general perception of the phenomenon. It also has discovered that these people assign considerably different significance to various causes of public sector corruption, when compared with the generally perceived causes of the same phenomenon forwarded by the academic world. During the process of data analysis we scrutinized and evaluated the perceptions gathered from 137 public servants belonging to 3 different departments of OshSU, Kyrgyzstan.

To my surprise I discovered that their perception regarding corruption being a cultural problem is mixed between agreement and disagreement. However, their level of agreement with corruption being an institutional problem is significantly stronger with. Cross comparison of the data also suggests that agents belonging to a well-structured institution believe more strongly in corruption being an institutional problem, than their counter parts in normal bureaucracy. Examining the societal reaction to corruption, I discovered that despite rejecting and abhorring corruption, according to most of the agents, society tolerates corrupt individuals. However, toleration implies both: behaving in one way, but suffering from it or disapproving it at the same time, we also realized that variables like: age, gender, marital status, number of dependents, or the geographical origin do not have any significant impact on the agents’ perception regarding prevalence of corruption in the country. When it comes to indexation of most and least corrupt institution, we saw that the perceptions of teachers – students are almost the same as those of the general public.

Finally, we analyzed the social causes associated with rampant corruption in the state. During the course of analysis we discovered some very interesting correlations between the various aspects of social perception of the agents. We noticed that most of the public servants tend to shift the blame to an immoral public, which induces corruption by offering them bribes for settling illicit affairs. We further discovered that lack of transparency and accountability in the civil bureaucracy induces many people to join the institution. An astonishing finding was that almost 45 per cent of the agents considered overwhelmingly corrupt surroundings to be a justification for the remaining minority to be corrupt as well.

We also discussed at the end of the chapter that despite being corrupt, public servants want to feel good about them, and forwarded this as explanation for why they tend to shift the blame on internal as well as external factors.

Approaching towards the end of this discourse we have so far learnt that despite a huge controversy about the meaning of the term, corruption signifies promotion of selfish self interest at the expense of collective good. We have also seen how various institutions in a developing state and transitional society like KG have contributed in the growth of this malice; and lastly we have discovered the causes of this widespread corruption with the help of public agents’ perceptions. In the process we have verified the one side of our institutional model and have seen how optimized decision out put of a rational actor in an unstructured environment will lead him to corruption. In the end we will empirically verify the validity of other side of our model and the neo institutional theory, developed in the start of this study, by applying it to structural institution in a developing state and transitional society like KG. The instruments of data collection consist of narratives: survey and interviews, which were conducted in 3 different divisions, departments of OshSU.

Results derived from this research are based on the archival research, personal observations of the author and the perceptions of the public servants, gathered through analysis of the collected data.

This dissertation is divided into three parts: the first part deals with the review of theoretical foundation and the existing body of knowledge; the second part extensively evaluates the concepts of corruption, and its practical demonstration in the case of KG; and the third section, corroborates the theoretical arguments with the empirical evidence collected from the bureaucracy of KG.

In the last two chapters of this dissertation, we presented the empirical validation of the theory build in the earlier sections. In Chapter 5 the empirical data based on the perceptions of the civil bureaucracy were analyzed with a focus on prevalence and causes of bureaucratic corruption, according to the perceptions of real stakeholders in the quagmire of corruption. Though, the chapter established the veracity of perception, as a valid proxy of the real level of corruption, yet it maintained that the question of validity or invalidity does not effect the scientific worth of this research, because the primary concern of this research is to investigate the causes and the control of corruption in the developing states, and not to ascertain the level or extent of corruption in any state.

Contribution of the Study

On the methodological front, this research can boast to be seminal in the usage of perceptions of the real stakeholders in the field of corruption research. Prior to this, all the perception-based research about corruption is based on the perceptions of clients, i.e., general public, businessmen, area experts, or international business organizations. For the first time the perceptions of serving civil servants regarding the prevalence, causes, and control of corruption, have been collected. This underscores the vitality of understanding, the real reasons of corruption and the methodology to control it, according to the perpetrators or the stakeholders. This opens up a new methodological route in the field of empirical research on corruption and governance. Since this research is based on the perceptions of public servants -teachers an important novelty of this research. Our data reveals that in public servant’s perception society treats the corrupt actors as normal, without agreeing to their actions. If the thesis of cultural embeddedness of corruption is taken as true, then society must accept and condone corruption; as it stems from the very basic social norms like gift giving, familial obligation, and tribal or ethnic associations. However, according to the perceptions of public servants in the traditional society of Kyrgyzstan, society does not accept or condone corruption nevertheless; it treats corrupt individuals not much differently.

subject study contributes, significantly to the existing body of knowledge, as it introduces a neo institutional theory for controlling corruption, which focuses on the institutional culture instead of the individual; second, this study obtains and incorporates, for the first time, quantitative data, based on the perceptions of the stakeholders