Political corruption is the use of legislated powers by government officials for illegitimate private gain. Misuse of government A government is the organization, or agency through which a political unit exercises its authority, controls and administers public policy, and directs and controls the actions of its members or subjects power for other purposes, such as repression Political repression is the persecution of an individual or group for political reasons, particularly for the purpose of restricting or preventing their ability to take part in the political life of society of political opponents and general police brutality Police brutality is the intentional use of excessive force, usually physical, but potentially also in the form of verbal attacks and psychological intimidation, by a police officer. It is in some instances triggered by "contempt of cop", i.e., perceived disrespect towards police officers. Hubert Locke writes, "When used in print or, is not considered political corruption. Neither are illegal acts by private persons or corporations not directly involved with the government. An illegal act by an officeholder constitutes political corruption only if the act is directly related to their official duties.
Forms of corruption vary, but include bribery Bribery, a form of corruption, is an act implying money or gift given that alters the behavior of the recipient. Bribery constitutes a crime and is defined by Black's Law Dictionary as the offering, giving, receiving, or soliciting of any item of value to influence the actions of an official or other person in charge of a public or legal duty. The, extortion Extortion, outwresting, and/or exaction is a criminal offense which occurs when a person unlawfully obtains either money, property or services from a person, entity, or institution, through coercion. Refraining from doing harm is sometimes euphemistically called protection. Extortion is commonly practiced by organized crime groups. The actual, cronyism CDE · CEDAW · CERD · ILO C100 · ILO C111 · ILO C169 · Protocol No. 12 ECHR, nepotism CDE · CEDAW · CERD · ILO C100 · ILO C111 · ILO C169 · Protocol No. 12 ECHR, patronage Patronage is the support, encouragement, privilege, or financial aid that an organization or individual bestows to another. In the history of art, arts patronage refers to the support that kings or popes have provided to musicians, painters, and sculptors. It can also refer to the right of bestowing offices or church benefices, the business given, graft, and embezzlement Embezzlement is a kind of financial fraud. For instance, a clerk or cashier handling large sums of money could embezzle cash from his or her employer, a lawyer could embezzle funds from clients' trust accounts, a financial advisor could embezzle funds from investors, or a spouse could embezzle funds from his or her partner. Embezzlement may range. While corruption may facilitate criminal enterprise Organized crime or criminal organizations is a transnational grouping of highly centralized enterprises run by criminals for the purpose of engaging in illegal activity, most commonly for the purpose of generating a monetary profit. The Organized Crime Control Act defines organized crime as "The unlawful activities of [...] a highly organized, such as drug trafficking The illegal drug trade is a global black market, competing with legal drug trade, dedicated to cultivation, manufacture, distribution and sale of those substances which are subject to drug prohibition laws. Most jurisdictions prohibit trade, except under license, of many types of drugs by drug prohibition laws, money laundering In the past, the term "money laundering" was applied only to financial transactions related to organized crime. Today its definition is often expanded by government and international regulators such as the US Office of the Comptroller of the Currency to mean any financial transaction which generates an asset or a value as the result of, and trafficking Human trafficking is the illegal trade in human beings for the purposes of commercial sexual exploitation or forced labor: a modern-day form of slavery. It is the fastest growing criminal industry in the world, tied with the illegal arms industry as the second largest, after the drug-trade, it is not restricted to these activities.
The activities that constitute illegal corruption differ depending on the country or jurisdiction. For instance, certain political funding practices that are legal in one place may be illegal in another. In some cases, government officials have broad or poorly defined powers, which make it difficult to distinguish between legal and illegal actions. Worldwide, bribery alone is estimated to involve over 1 trillion US dollars annually.[1] A state of unrestrained political corruption is known as a kleptocracy Kleptocracy, alternatively cleptocracy or kleptarchy, from Greek: κλέπτης and κράτος (rule), is a term applied to a government that takes advantage of governmental corruption to extend the personal wealth and political power of government officials and the ruling class (collectively, kleptocrats), via the embezzlement of state funds, literally meaning "rule by thieves".
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Effects
Effects on politics, administration, and institutions
Detail from Corrupt Legislation (1896) by Elihu Vedder Elihu Vedder was an American symbolist painter, book illustrator, and poet, born in New York City. Library of Congress Thomas Jefferson Building The oldest of the three United States Library of Congress buildings, the Thomas Jefferson Building was built between 1890 and 1897. It is known for its classicizing facade and elaborately decorated interior, designed by John L. Smithmeyer who was replaced by his assistant, Paul J. Pelz, who was in turn succeeded by Edward Pearce Casey. The Library, Washington, D.C.Corruption poses a serious development challenge. In the political realm Politics , is a process by which groups of people make collective decisions. The term is generally applied to behavior within civil governments, but politics has been observed in other group interactions, including corporate, academic, and religious institutions. It consists of "social relations involving authority or power" and refers, it undermines democracy Democracy is a political form of government where governing power is derived from the people, either by direct referendum or by means of elected representatives of the people (representative democracy). The term comes from the Greek: δημοκρατία – (dēmokratía) "rule of the people", which was coined from δῆμος (dêmos) & and good governance Good governance is an indeterminate term used in development literature to describe how public institutions conduct public affairs and manage public resources in order to guarantee the realization of human rights. Governance describes "the process of decision-making and the process by which decisions are implemented ". The term by flouting or even subverting formal processes. Corruption in elections An election is a formal decision-making process by which a population chooses an individual to hold public office. Elections have been the usual mechanism by which modern representative democracy operates since the 17th century. Elections may fill offices in the legislature, sometimes in the executive and judiciary, and for regional and local and in legislative A legislature is a type of deliberative assembly with the power to pass, amend, and repeal laws. The law created by a legislature is called legislation or statutory law. In addition to enacting laws, legislatures usually have exclusive authority to raise taxes and adopt the budget and other money bills. Legislatures are known by many names, the bodies reduces accountability Accountability is a concept in ethics and governance with several meanings. It is often used synonymously with such concepts as responsibility, answerability, blameworthiness, liability, and other terms associated with the expectation of account-giving. As an aspect of governance, it has been central to discussions related to problems in the and distorts representation in policymaking; corruption in the judiciary The judiciary is the system of courts that interprets and applies the law in the name of the sovereign or state. The judiciary also provides a mechanism for the resolution of disputes. Under the doctrine of the separation of powers, the judiciary generally does not make law (that is, in a plenary fashion, which is the responsibility of the compromises the rule of law While the rule of law has been described as "an exceedingly elusive notion" giving rise to a "rampant divergence of understandings", a dichotomy can be identified between two principal conceptions of the rule of law: a formalist or "thin" and a substantive or "thick" definition of the rule of law. Formalist; and corruption in public administration Public administration is the "translation of politics into the reality that citizens see every day." Any unelected, public employee is a public administrator: police officers, municipal budget analysts, HR benefits administrators, city managers, Census analysts, and cabinet secretaries are public administrators. Public administrators are results in the inefficient provision of services. More generally, corruption erodes the institutional capacity of government as procedures are disregarded, resources are siphoned off, and public offices are bought and sold. At the same time, corruption undermines the legitimacy of government and such democratic values as trust and tolerance.
Economic effects
Corruption undermines economic development by generating considerable distortions and inefficiency. In the private sector In economics, the private sector is that part of the economy which is both run for private profit and is not controlled by the state. By contrast, enterprises that are part of the state are part of the public sector; private, non-profit organizations are regarded as part of the voluntary sector, corruption increases the cost of business through the price of illicit payments themselves, the management cost of negotiating with officials, and the risk of breached agreements or detection. Although some claim corruption reduces costs by cutting red tape "Red tape" is a derisive term for excessive regulation or rigid conformity to formal rules that is considered redundant or bureaucratic and hinders or prevents action or decision-making. It is usually applied to governments, corporations and other large organizations, the availability of bribes can also induce officials to contrive new rules and delays. Openly removing costly and lengthy regulations are better than covertly allowing them to be bypassed by using bribes. Where corruption inflates the cost of business, it also distorts the playing field, shielding firms with connections from competition and thereby sustaining inefficient firms.
Corruption also generates economic distortions in the public sector The public sector, sometimes referred to as the state sector is a part of the state that deals with either the production, delivery and allocation of goods and services by and for the government or its citizens, whether national, regional or local/municipal by diverting public investment into capital projects where bribes and kickbacks are more plentiful. Officials may increase the technical complexity of public sector projects to conceal or pave the way for such dealings, thus further distorting investment. Corruption also lowers compliance with construction, environmental, or other regulations, reduces the quality of government services and infrastructure, and increases budgetary pressures on government.
Economists argue that one of the factors behind the differing economic development Economic development is the increase in the amount of people in a nation's population with sustained growth from a simple, low-income economy to a modern, high-income economy. Its scope includes the process and policies by which a nation improves the economic, political, and social well-being of its people in Africa Africa is the world's second-largest and second most-populous continent, after Asia. At about 30.2 million km² including adjacent islands, it covers 6% of the Earth's total surface area and 20.4% of the total land area. With a billion people (as of 2009, see table) in 61 territories, it accounts for about 14.72% of the world's human population and Asia Asia is the world's largest and most populous continent, located primarily in the eastern and northern hemispheres. It covers 8.6% of the Earth's total surface area and with approximately 4 billion people, it hosts 60% of the world's current human population. During the 20th century Asia's population nearly quadrupled is that in the former, corruption has primarily taken the form of rent extraction In economics, rent seeking occurs when an individual, organization or firm seeks to earn income by capturing economic rent through manipulation or exploitation of the economic or political environment, rather than by earning profits through economic transactions and the production of added wealth with the resulting financial capital Financial capital can refer to money used by entrepreneurs and businesses to buy what they need to make their products or provide their services or to that sector of the economy based on its operation, i.e. retail, corporate, investment banking, etc moved overseas rather invested at home (hence the stereotypical, but often accurate, image of African dictators having Swiss bank accounts All banks in Switzerland are regulated by Swiss Financial Market Supervisory Authority , which derives its authority from a series of federal statutes. The country's tradition of bank secrecy, which dates to the Middle Ages, was first codified in a 1934 law). In Nigeria Nigeria , officially the Federal Republic of Nigeria, is a federal constitutional republic comprising thirty-six states and its Federal Capital Territory, Abuja. The country is located in West Africa and shares land borders with the Republic of Benin in the west, Chad and Cameroon in the east, and Niger in the north. Its coast in the south lies on, for example, more than $400 billion was stolen from the treasury by Nigeria's leaders between 1960 and 1999.[2] University of Massachusetts The system includes UMass Amherst, UMass Boston, UMass Dartmouth, UMass Lowell, and the UMass Medical School. It also has an online school called UMassOnline researchers estimated that from 1970 to 1996, capital flight Capital flight, in economics, occurs when assets and/or money rapidly flow out of a country, due to an economic event that disturbs investors and causes them to lower their valuation of the assets in that country, or otherwise to lose confidence in its economic strength. This leads to a disappearance of wealth and is usually accompanied by a sharp from 30 sub-Saharan Sub-Saharan Africa is a geographical term used to describe the area of the African continent which lies south of the Sahara, or those African countries which are fully or partially located south of the Sahara. It contrasts with North Africa, which is considered a part of the Arab world countries totaled $187bn, exceeding those nations' external debts.[3] (The results, expressed in retarded or suppressed development, have been modeled in theory by economist Mancur Olson Mancur Lloyd Olson, Jr. was a leading American economist and social scientist who, at the time of his death, worked at the University of Maryland, College Park. Among other areas, he made contributions to institutional economics on the role of private property, taxation, public goods, collective action and contract rights in economic development.) In the case of Africa, one of the factors for this behavior was political instability, and the fact that new governments often confiscated previous government's corruptly-obtained assets. This encouraged officials to stash their wealth abroad, out of reach of any future expropriation Eminent domain , compulsory purchase (United Kingdom, New Zealand, Ireland), resumption/compulsory acquisition (Australia) or expropriation (South Africa and Canada) is the inherent power of the state to seize a citizen's private property, expropriate property, or seize a citizen's rights in property with due monetary compensation, but without the. In contrast, Asian administrations such as Suharto Suharto (8 June 1921 – 27 January 2008) was the second President of Indonesia, having held the office for 32 years from 1967 following Sukarno's removal until his resignation in 1998's New Order often took a cut on business transactions or provided conditions for development, through infrastructure investment, law and order, etc.
Environmental and social effects
Corruption facilitates environmental destruction. Corrupt countries may formally have legislation to protect the environment, it cannot be enforced if officials can easily be bribed. The same applies to social rights worker protection, unionization A trade union or labor union (American English) is an organization of workers who have banded together to achieve common goals such as better working conditions. The trade union, through its leadership, bargains with the employer on behalf of union members (rank and file members) and negotiates labor contracts (collective bargaining) with prevention, and child labor Child labour refers to the employment of children at regular and sustained labour. This practice is considered exploitative by many international organizations and is illegal in many countries. Child labour was utilized to varying extents through most of history, but entered public dispute with the advent of universal schooling, with changes in. Violation of these laws rights enables corrupt countries to gain illegitimate economic advantage in the international market.
The Nobel Prize The Nobel Prizes are annual international awards bestowed by Scandinavian committees in recognition of cultural and scientific advances. They were established in 1895 by the Swedish chemist Alfred Nobel, the inventor of dynamite. The prizes in Physics, Chemistry, Physiology or Medicine, Literature, and Peace were first awarded in 1901. The-winning economist Amartya Sen Amartya Kumar Sen CH (born 3 November 1933) received the 1998 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences for his work on welfare economics. He is currently the Thomas W. Lamont University Professor and Professor of Economics and Philosophy at Harvard University. He is also a fellow of Trinity College at the University of Cambridge, where from 1998 has observed that "there is no such thing as an apolitical food problem." While drought A drought is an extended period of months or years when a region notes a deficiency in its water supply. Generally, this occurs when a region receives consistently below average precipitation. It can have a substantial impact on the ecosystem and agriculture of the affected region. Although droughts can persist for several years, even a short, and other naturally occurring events may trigger famine A famine is a widespread scarcity of food that may apply to any faunal species. This phenomenon is usually accompanied by regional malnutrition, starvation, epidemic, and increased mortality conditions, it is government action or inaction that determines its severity, and often even whether or not a famine will occur. Governments with strong tendencies towards kleptocracy Kleptocracy, alternatively cleptocracy or kleptarchy, from Greek: κλέπτης and κράτος (rule), is a term applied to a government that takes advantage of governmental corruption to extend the personal wealth and political power of government officials and the ruling class (collectively, kleptocrats), via the embezzlement of state funds can undermine food security Food security refers to the availability of food and one's access to it. A household is considered food-secure when its occupants do not live in hunger or fear of starvation. According to the World Resources Institute, global per capita food production has been increasing substantially for the past several decades. In 2006, MSNBC reported that even when harvests are good. Officials often steal state property. In Bihar Bihar (Hindi: बिहार, Urdu: بہار, pronounced [bɪˈhaːr] ) is a state in eastern India. It is the 12th largest state in terms of geographical size at 38,202 sq mi (99,200 km²) and 3rd largest by population. Close to 85% of the population lives in villages. Almost 58% of Biharis are below the age of 25. which is the highest, India, more than 80% of the subsidized food aid to poor is stolen by corrupt officials.[4] Similarly, food aid is often robbed at gunpoint by governments, criminals, and warlords alike, and sold for a profit. The 20th century is full of many examples of governments undermining the food security of their own nations – sometimes intentionally.[5]
Other areas: health, public safety, education, trade unions, etc.
Corruption is not specific to poor, developing, or transition countries. In western European countries, there have been cases of bribery and other forms of corruption in all possible fields: under-the-table payments made to reputed surgeons by patients willing to be on top of the list of forthcoming surgeries, bribes paid by suppliers to the automotive industry in order to sell poor quality connectors used for instance in safety equipment such as airbags, bribes paid by suppliers to manufacturers of defibrillators (to sell poor quality capacitors), contributions paid by wealthy parents to the "social and culture fund" of a prestigious university in exchange for it to accept their children, bribes paid to obtain diplomas, financial and other advantages granted to unionists by members of the executive board of a car manufacturer in exchange for employer-friendly positions and votes, etc. Examples are endless. These various manifestations of corruption can ultimately present a danger for the public health; they can discredit certain essential institutions or social relationships.
Corruption can also affect the various components of sports activities (referees, players, medical and laboratory staff involved in anti-doping controls, members of national sport federation and international committees deciding about the allocation of contracts and competition places).
There have also been cases against (members of) various types of non-profit and non-government organisations, as well as religious organisations.
Ultimately, the distinction between public and private sector corruption sometimes appears rather artificial and national anti-corruption initiatives may need to avoid legal and other loopholes in the coverage of the instruments.
Types of corruption
Bribery
Main article: BriberyA bribe is a payment given personally to a government official in exchange of his use of official powers. Bribery requires two participants: one to give the bribe, and one to take it. Either may initiate the corrupt offering; for example, a customs official may demand bribes to let through allowed (or disallowed) goods, or a smuggler might offer bribes to gain passage. In some countries the culture of corruption extends to every aspect of public life, making it extremely difficult for individuals to stay in business without resorting to bribes. Bribes may be demanded in order for an official to do something he is already paid to do. They may also be demanded in order to bypass laws and regulations. In addition to using bribery for private financial gain, they are also used to intentionally and maliciously cause harm to another (i.e. no financial incentive). In some developing nations, up to half of the population has paid bribes during the past 12 months.[6]
In recent years, efforts have been made by the international community to encourage countries to dissociate and incriminate as separate offences, active and passive bribery. Active bribery can be defined for instance as the promising, offering or giving by any person, directly or indirectly, of any undue advantage [to any public official], for himself or herself or for anyone else, for him or her to act or refrain from acting in the exercise of his or her functions. (article 2 of the Criminal Law Convention on Corruption (ETS 173) of the Council of Europe). Passive bribery can be defined as the request or receipt [by any public official], directly or indirectly, of any undue advantage, for himself or herself or for anyone else, or the acceptance of an offer or a promise of such an advantage, to act or refrain from acting in the exercise of his or her functions (article 3 of the Criminal Law Convention on Corruption (ETS 173)). The reason for this dissociation is to make the early steps (offering, promising, requesting an advantage) of a corrupt deal already an offence and, thus, to give a clear signal (from a criminal policy point of view) that bribery is not acceptable. Besides, such a dissociation makes the prosecution of bribery offences easier since it can be very difficult to prove that two parties (the bribe-giver and the bribe-taker) have formally agreed upon a corrupt deal. Besides, there is often no such formal deal but only a mutual understanding, for instance when it is common knowledge in a municipality that to obtain a building permit one has to pay a "fee" to the decision maker to obtain a favourable decision. A working definition of corruption is also provided as follows in article 3 of the Civil Law Convention on Corruption (ETS 174): For the purpose of this Convention, "corruption" means requesting, offering, giving or accepting, directly or indirectly, a bribe or any other undue advantage or prospect thereof, which distorts the proper performance of any duty or behaviour required of the recipient of the bribe, the undue advantage or the prospect thereof.
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under the usual challenges of poverty, unemployment, inflation and political corruption. Yet, with all its upheaval and challenges, Zimbaweans ... vimeo.com.
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Shimla, Sep 6 Himachal Pradesh Chief Minister Prem Kumar Dhumal Monday said there is no . political. conspiracy against union Steel Minister Virbhadra Singh, against whom police slapped cases for . corruption. last year. ...
