Petty corruption in the public sector: A comparative study of three East African countries through a behavioural lens

ABSTRACT

This article presents comparative evidence about the relevance of behavioural drivers in relation to petty corruption in three East African countries. It discusses the potential to incorporate behavioural insights into anti-corruption policy-making. Persistently high levels of bureaucratic corruption prevail in many countries across the African continent. This along with the limited effectiveness of conventional anti-corruption prescriptions call for a contextualised understanding of the multiple factors determining corruption-related decision-making. Adopting a behavioural lens involves accounting for the human factor as it relates to the effects of sociality and social constructs on propensities for corruption. As such, this novel approach complements the literature that has sought to understand corruption on the basis of political, economic, and institutional drivers and constraints. Field research conducted in Tanzania, Uganda and Rwanda found evidence for such behavioural drivers, showing that citizens are swayed by social pressures and beliefs that ultimately spur petty corruption by endorsing associated maladaptive practices. Sustained by social norms of group solidarity and reciprocity and legitimised by commonly shared perceptions of corruption as the norm, the research points to a problematic overlap of the public (formal) and the socio-cultural (informal) spheres. By adding a behavioural dimension to the study of the drivers of corruption, this article seeks to contribute towards the development of more effective anti-corruption policy formulation that acknowledges the pitfalls attached to behavioural factors that conventional anti-corruption prescriptions have largely failed to address.

KEYWORDS:

• petty corruption
• East Africa
• behavioural drivers
• behavioural insights

Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the UK Department for International Development (DfID) through the East Africa Research Fund Initiative of the Research for Evidence Division (RED).

Notes on contributors

Claudia Baez-Camargo is head of governance research at the Basel Institute on Governance, University of Basel, Switzerland.

Paul Bukuluki is an associate professor in the department of social work and social administration, Makerere University, Makerere, Uganda.

Richard Sambaiga is a senior lecturer in the department of sociology and anthropology at the University of Dar es-Salaam, Tanzania.

Tharcisse Gatwa is a research professor of ethics and missiology in the department of arts and social sciences at the Protestant University of Rwanda in Butare.

Saba Kassa is a public governance specialist at the Basel Institute on Governance at the University of Basel in Switzerland.

Cosimo Stahl is a public governance specialist at the Basel Institute on Governance at the University of Basel in Switzerland.

Notes

1 Although definitions abound, corruption is generally conceptualised as instances where an individual performing a public function breaks a rule for private gain (Hanna et al. 2011). Arguably the most used definition is that of Transparency International, which defines corruption as the abuse of entrusted power for private gain.

2 In the developing and transitional countries of Africa and beyond, scholars have addressed the effects of ‘culture’ and ‘sociality’ on corruption from an anthropological and sociological perspective (de Sardan 1999; Hydén 2005; Hydén 2014; Torsello 2016), from the viewpoint of public administration and cultural communication (Yeboah-Assiamah et al. 2016), and following a socio-cultural and criminal psychological approach (Agbo and Iwundu 2016).

3 See Leena Hoffmann and Raj Patel (2017) for the case of Nigeria; and Ladislas de Coster, Cheyanne Scharbatke-Church and Kiely Barnard-Webster (2017) for the case of the Central African Republic. See also Scharbatke-Church and Russell Hathaway (2017), and David Jackson and Nils Köbis (2018) for overviews.

4 The FGDs followed a protocol of prioritised topics relevant for the research and validated by the research projects’ expert advisory group. The protocol was adapted and translated into the local language and administered by two local researchers in each country. The evidence emanating from the FGDs were recorded, transcribed, translated to English and thereafter coded and analysed using the qualitative data analysis computer software NVivo. The findings from the FGDs were subsequently used to revise and refine the survey instrument.

5 For Mongolia, see for instance, Beatrice Jauregui (2014) and David Sneath (2002). For Russia and China, see Arild Ruud (2000); Chan Sup Chang, Nahn Joo Chang and Barbara Freese (2001); Ase Grodeland, Tatyana Koshechkina and William Miller (1998); and Alena Ledeneva (1997).

6 Following Hoffmann and Patel (2017), are also interchangeably referred to as the reference group, or cliques. See Robert Hanneman and Mark Riddle (2005).

7 See Hoffman and Patel (2017) for a similar discussion on the case of Nigeria.