Accounts of Honesty: Refuting Allegations of Bribery

Abstract

This article investigates the stories told by Swedish men charged with bribery. The interviews are drawn from a study of court cases relating to bribery. White-collar criminals often justify their actions with reference to business culture: “Everyone's doing it.” In this study, when refuting allegations, interviewees also invoke a “folk logic of bribery,” thus making use of mainstream cultural resources. Received ideas of a “real” bribe include the act itself, but also the moral character of the people involved. Accordingly, interviewees tailor a version in line with these ideas to refute the allegations against them.

Acknowledgments

The author thanks Joakim Thelander, David Wästerfors, and Malin Åkerström for scrutinizing previous versions of this article; and thanks to Oskar Engdahl, Robert M Emerson, and the anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments and suggestions. Research support for this project was provided by The Swedish Council for Working Life and Social Research.

Notes

¹One interviewee differed from the rest in presenting himself as quick-witted, and more than happy to engage in sharp practice for financial gain. Despite this, he was still keen to present himself as morally blameless, claiming, for example, “no one was hurt or lost out by what I did.”.

²Scott and Lyman (1968) draw on what earlier was termed “neutralizing techniques” (Sykes and Matza 1957) when they suggest a typology of justifications.

³The initial plan was to include and analyze the media coverage of each specific case. Due to matters of anonymity I had to abandon this idea since even a very short quote from a newspaper easily can be “googled” and thus reveal what cases (and ultimately what persons) I am referring to.

⁴In fact, a bribe does not have to have any financial value at all. When Göran Persson, then prime minister of Sweden, was awarded an honorary doctorate by a Swedish college that aspired to university status, he drew accusations of bribery (he was suspected of favoring this particular college's application to become a university). Such an award or, as in another example, membership of an exclusive club, may very well be defined as a bribe under Swedish law (Cars 2001:50).

⁵One example is a local council head gardener who was convicted of bribery for accepting a retirement gift from a supplier when he was pensioned off, when obviously he was no longer in a position to do them any favors.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Katarina Jacobsson

KATARINA JACOBSSON is an Associate Professor in the Department of Social Work at Lund University. Her current research interests are in the area of deviance, social control, medical sociology, and qualitative methodology. Recent articles have appeared in Qualitative Sociology Review and Journal of Scandinavian Studies in Criminology and Crime Prevention.