gridlock shears

I am copying an essay that I entered into a contest sponsored by an NGO. It is about bribery.

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Bribery is always considered to be a form of moral failure. Those who give or take bribes would also commit other wanton acts. "[The bribery scandal] dragged its slimy trail through the notorious bawdy house in Jackson, kept by the octoroon, Mary Stamps," wrote a former Mississippi state senator in 1917 as he denounced a political enemy, capitalizing on racist disdain for miscegenation. When corruption is entrenched in a society, denouncements are frequent and strident, but one can never be sure whether the denouncer is truly outraged or is merely trying to mask his own shame. (Our ex-senator wrote his account in order to explain his own role in a different bribery scandal)
Not being able to trust what is said about bribery, we can only look for indirect evidence. Does a given environment have fertile soil? If the seed of corruption is planted, will its contagion spread unchecked? Once planted, there are two ways to check its growth: by uprooting the weeds themselves or by depriving them of nutrients.
Is the key to stopping bribery a change in individual attitudes, or a change in environmental factors at the society level? The debate among scholars of bribery is not unlike many debates between psychologists and sociologists. Each perspective is right in its own way, but the best model will incorporate both. The environment shapes behavior, which in turn shapes the environment. Bribery is reinforced by the effects it produces, but so is anti-bribery. Donatella Della Porta of the European University Institute in Florence calls these feedback cycles the vicious and virtuous circles.
Della Porta considered the relationship between the mafia organization Cosa Nostra and corrupt politicians in southern Italy during the early 1990s. As Cosa Nostra delivered bribes and bought votes for corrupt politicians, these politicians provided political protection to Cosa Nostra and cover for its operations. The mafia organization?s influence grew in direct proportion to the incompetence of the politicians in providing good services. This vicious circle eventually began to run in reverse once the quality of public services became a national issue. The political class, delegitimized by its incompetence, was further delegitimized by inquiries. Corruption can be quickly erased by the same mechanisms that caused its rapid growth.
During the two years I spent as a schoolteacher in Cameroon, I was able to see how even the most pervasive bribery schemes in business, education and law enforcement could be reduced (if not completely eradicated) when somebody made a sustained push in the right direction. Common practices reinforce the corrupt nature of administration while bringing down the quality of public services, but the positive behavior of individuals, even when their influence is limited, does reverse that cycle. While waiting for an iniquitous structure to be changed, people can create change by being better than their circumstances give them a chance to be.
When my colleagues at the secondary school and I organized social events, everyone gave a contribution so that refreshments could be provided. Everyone paid according to their salary: Certified teachers assigned to the school through the national administration paid the highest amount, local teachers without certification paid a smaller amount, and "ECI" teachers did not have to contribute at all. ECI (en cours d?integration, "in the process of integration") teachers are like certified teachers in every respect save one: their paychecks do not come at the start of the month. All of the administrators at the department in Yaoundé are of the Ewondo ethnic group, and they generally take two years to transfer the names of newly-certified non-Ewondo teachers to the payroll system, while expediting the process for Ewondos. (Some clever individuals have even adopted Ewondo surnames and learned to speak the language in order to secure preferred treatment)
To faithfully execute their duties, ECI teachers have to work without pay at a post that is normally distant from their place of origin. The more practical course of action is for them to bribe their principals to falsely document that they have reported for duty while they remain in their hometowns and leave rooms of children untaught as they await their integration into the payroll system.
John Noonan, Jr, in his authoritative 1984 history of bribery, wrote the following about judges in Mesopotamia: "[T]he norm against offerings made full sense only if a judge was guarded against partiality from more obvious sources . . . As long as influence more compelling than any bribe was not reproached, the operation of an offering on a judge?s mind was hard to understand as seriously sinful."
We can apply similar logic to the matter of the schoolteachers. How can we condemn the bribe given by a new teacher without first condemning the tribalism that governs administrative affairs in Cameroon? We cannot, but we must still recognize the following: teachers and principals will lack the moral capital to condemn the administration unless they are able to shield themselves from charges of bribery.
At the school where I worked, the practice I have mentioned did not occur, thanks to the attitudes of the school principal and of the local elite. Village landlords who rent rooms to ECI teachers do so on very flexible terms, allowing teachers to pay their back rent once their situation is normalized. Teachers are also allowed to farm unused land that is controlled by the school, whence they can harvest a good part of their food. For his part, the principal does not agree to falsify reports, setting the expectation that teachers are expected to report for duty regardless of their situation. Veteran teachers, who have been through the experience themselves, support ECI teachers by giving them meals and paying for their entertainment at social functions. As the support network grows, each new ECI teacher has less difficulty making it through the ordeal, and the cycle of bribery is weakened by one step.
Travel companies in Cameroon are a type of business that has consistent contact with bribery, since they have daily interactions with corrupt traffic police. There is an occasion to bribe whenever a police officer claims that a car or its passengers are in violation of the law. Formal enterprises typically pay bribes when their vehicle has too many passengers or their papers are alleged to not be in order. Informal enterprises have to pay bribes on a regular basis to stay in operation.
Riding with a company that bribes is usually to a passenger?s detriment. The drivers overload their vehicles with passengers and cargo, make frequent stops at roadblocks to pay bribes, and do not keep the vehicles in safe condition. I once rode in an unlicensed van whose brakes failed as we were climbing a steep hill. The driver managed to stop the car from falling off of the hillside by steering into a shallow ditch along the hillside lined by a thicket of bushes.
Bribing is also bad for the company in the long run, because it is unable to forecast its costs with certainty. It can also be bad for the police force, especially on routes where smugglers operate, when violations of the "unenforceable contract" between briber and bribee are remedied through violence. Why bribe then? Because it usually pays off in the short run for the individual drivers and police officers who are on the take. Bribing makes sense for those who do not expect to run a stable business or hold a steady job with good pay. Corrupt actors subscribe to Horace?s dictum, "Seize the day, and trust not tomorrow!"
The route between Dschang and Douala is serviced by a handful of registered travel companies, with unlicensed cars operating along certain stretches of it. A typical passenger along this 200km route can expect to spend six hours with her body pressed against her fellow passengers?, waiting through frequent stops where the bus queues behind other buses whose drivers are negotiating bribes at one of the many roadblocks along the way. Corrupt police officers and unscrupulous drivers enrich themselves as the passengers' experience progressively worsens. There is one company on this route, however, whose drivers do not regularly pay bribes during the trip. To avoid paying bribes, the company has to offer its drivers stable, long-term employment, keep its fleet in good condition, and not take more passengers than it has seats. The company's reputation is such that police officers rarely stop its buses, so its typical travel time is under four hours. Because it offers a speedier and more comfortable service, it has built a loyal base of customers and is able to sell out most of its seats. Its reputation reinforces its profitability and drives down the public?s tolerance for corruption in the travel sector.
Greater success still has been achieved by a union of taxi drivers operating in the suburbs of Bamenda, the capitol city of the Northwest province. The group of drivers calculated that the amount they paid in bribes when carrying six passengers (in a 1990 Toyota Corolla) was greater than the revenue they would lose by carrying only four. They then decided that no member of their union should agree to bribe an officer, no matter how hard he was pressed. Predictably, the police stopped pressing for bribes and the passengers enjoyed speedier, less-cramped rides. The virtuous circle has taken over completely in this case.
On all major travel routes in the country, bus drivers have real power to stop bribery, and the ones who do are rewarded in the long run. Whenever more than one bus company competes for passengers along a route, the one which bribes the least often is the one which attracts the most customers and the most loyal customers. Tongolo gare in Yaoundé is lined with agencies servicing the Yaoundé-Bafoussam route. The company with the cleanest reputation usually has passengers waiting at its agency for the next empty bus to return from Bafoussam, while other companies employ thugs to drag unwilling passengers onto buses that take hours to fill.
I was one of those unwilling passengers on a certain occasion. I struggled against the crowd of young men and backed myself into a corner. A soldier came to the site of the commotion. He made the gang disperse, telling them that what they were doing was not correct, that they were creating a negative image of their country for foreigners. He then escorted me to the bus of my preference, and began to angle, sheepishly, for a bribe, claiming that he himself was traveling and was a bit short of the cost of a ticket.
Many low-level officials who take bribes do not have sufficient salaries. Pierre-Etienne Will of l'École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales in Paris has noted that this problem was apparent in imperial China as early as the 10th century, when the first non-hereditary, merit-based bureaucracy was created. Local officials customarily accepted bribes needed to lead a life befitting their stature. Officials who took more than was necessary were deemed to practice tanwu ("rapaciousness"), which is the present-day term for corruption. The practice intensified when it became common for higher-level officials to make tours of the localities under their jurisdiction, collecting gifts from subordinate officials, who in turn had to collect more bribes from their population. The situation was one that is common today in certain places: political office became a means for enrichment, with the largest bribes going to the most powerful (and wealthiest) officials.
An eventual reform that enjoyed some success was the Yongzheng salary reform of the 1720s. Bureaucrats were given bonuses of 10 or more times their nominal salaries in order to yanglian ("nourish integrity", a term that is used today to describe anti-corruption-related salary increases in Mainland China). The Yongzheng bonuses were taken from local tax revenues, a source that was normally plundered by pre-reform bureaucrats. The same monies that were once obtained corruptly were now given openly and in appropriate measure. Will noted that the most important outcome of the reforms was to "reiterate and give content to the notion . . . that a civil servant was supposed to operate with the salary paid to him by the state, and nothing more." When the income of low-level civil servants became fixed, the same modesty was enforced on higher-level officials, reversing the vicious circle.
Structural reforms, since they reduce the incentive for corrupt behavior, are ideal, but they are never as numerous as the small reforms undertaken by virtuous individuals. I have mentioned how certain transport businesses in Cameroon have been able avoid paying bribes, and now I would like to talk about positive actions taken by the police officers who manage these roadblocks.
The roadblocks have the positive function of discouraging highway men, but they are a nuisance for the vast majority of travelers. The officers manning the checkpoints, a significant number of which drink on the job, impose long delays on cars as they negotiate bribes. Rural elders are often harassed and detained for not possessing identity cards. Almost all officers manning these roadblocks take bribes, but their level of greed varies widely. The ones who do not spend their bribes on alcohol or prostitutes, whose superiors do not require large commissions; in short, those who are not rapacious, are those who generally carry out their work without soiling their hands.
As I usually traveled on the weekends, I got to know many roadblocks, and learned which ones were manned by greedy, and which were manned by modest officers. I also had the opportunity to form a friendship with a police captain responsible for two large municipalities which had some of the cleanest roadblocks. Officers at roadblocks under his control were punished severely for drinking at their posts or harassing travelers unnecessarily. To be sure, he did not work miracles: bribes were accepted at his roadblocks in situations where following protocol would be cumbersome, and although he lived modestly, I cannot be sure that he never took bribes himself. But there are two reasons for which I think he is worthy of praise: his roadblocks were significantly cleaner than those of neighboring jurisdictions, and he used his office to maintain law and order, not for personal enrichment.
Of the people I have mentioned in this essay, none are saints. None has made an extraordinary effort to stop bribery. But all have slowed the progress of corruption in their respective realms by not being greedy. Few individuals can directly change the environment in which they operate, but all can change their own behavior.