Corruption is something we shouldn’t accept in democratic societies. The word corruption stems from the Latin "corruptio", which means a corrupted stage, decay, or damage. The most widespread definition used today is "abuse of trusted power for private gain" or "abuse of public office for private gain". These definitions are used inter alia by the World Bank and Transparency International.
Content:
1. Corruption is a cancerous disease to be eradicated
2. Corruption prevention is one of the bright sides of nationalism
3. How did Denmark become the least corrupt country?
4. Corruption will never be completely abolished - all our democratic values are not self-evident
1. Corruption is a cancerous disease to be eradicated
Barack Obama has called corruption a cancer disease. He did this in a speech to a crowded stadium in Nairobi while he, as president, visited the country in July 2015.
The section on corruption starts begins 21 minutes inside the video.
Suggestion: See the whole speech while you read the 10 parts & my deepening’s.
Here is a Kenyan TV version of the speech (to use if the Whitehouse erases the speech):
Here follows a printout of the section where he focuses on corruption (the highlights are mine):
” … The corruption and cronyism and tribalism that sometimes confront young nations -- that's recent history. …
… civic participation and freedom is essential for rooting out the cancer of corruption.
Now, I want to be clear. Corruption is not unique to Kenya. (Laughter.) I mean, I want everybody to understand that there’s no country that's completely free of corruption. Certainly here in the African continent there are many countries that deal with this problem. And I want to assure you I speak about it wherever I go, not just here in Kenya. So I don't want everybody to get too sensitive. (Laughter.)
But the fact is, too often, here in Kenya -- as is true in other places -- corruption is tolerated because that’s how things have always been done. People just think that that is sort of the normal state of affairs. And there was a time in the United States where that was true, too. My hometown of Chicago was infamous for Al Capone and the Mob and organized crime corrupting law enforcement. But what happened was that over time people got fed up, and leaders stood up and they said, we're not going to play that game anymore. (Applause.) And you changed a culture and you changed habits.
Here in Kenya, it's time to change habits, and decisively break that cycle. Because corruption holds back every aspect of economic and civil life. It’s an anchor that weighs you down and prevents you from achieving what you could. If you need to pay a bribe and hire somebody’s brother -- who’s not very good and doesn’t come to work -- in order to start a business, well, that’s going to create less jobs for everybody. If electricity is going to one neighborhood because they’re well-connected, and not another neighborhood, that’s going to limit development of the country as a whole. (Applause.) If someone in public office is taking a cut that they don't deserve, that’s taking away from those who are paying their fair share.
So this is not just about changing one law -- although it's important to have laws on the books that are actually being enforced. It’s important that not only low-level corruption is punished, but folks at the top, if they are taking from the people, that has to be addressed as well. (Applause.) But it's not something that is just fixed by laws, or that any one person can fix. It requires a commitment by the entire nation -- leaders and citizens -- to change habits and to change culture. (Applause.)
Tough laws need to be on the books. And the good news is, your government is taking some important steps in the right direction. People who break the law and violate the public trust need to be prosecuted. NGOs have to be allowed to operate who shine a spotlight on what needs to change. And ordinary people have to stand up and say, enough is enough. (Applause.) It's time for a better future.”
A disease needs to be eradicated. The cure in this case is to change the culture.
Sources and deepening:
- Obama spoke to to a full stadium in Nairobi for 43 minutes on July 26, 2015. The speech dealt with a number of citizenship education issues and is therefore interesting to elaborate: I have divided the speech into the 10 parts, and for each part I have added deepening links, and some videos, comments and book references. The complete speech and deepening materials is found at my blog TeachGlobalCitizenship:(link)
2. Corruption prevention is one of the bright sides of nationalism
When comparing the culture of a tribe with the culture of a democratic nation state, you will find that the concept of corruption is only in use in a nation state. It is not found in a tribe where everyone knows each other to some degree and often as family or friends. Providing benefits to one's own is considered most natural throughout the world. Basically, one does not have the same responsibility to people one does not know and who does not belong to one’s own tribe, clan or family.
On the other hand, it is a hallmark of a citizen of a nation-state, that even though we do not know everyone in our own state and never will, we imagine and expect cohesion with everyone in the nation. Although the notion of cohesion is not concrete as in a tribe, we still expect the other citizens to comply with the laws of the nation state, just as we should ourselves. As citizens, we expect anyone in a position of power to not engage in nepotism or corrupt means as an expression of civic responsibility.
Yuval Noah Harari, the Israeli history professor and author, encourages us not to overlook this positive side of citizenship in a nation state at a time when the many bad sides of nationalism are also expressed:
”People often equate modern nationalism with ancient tribalism but this is a complete mistake.
The amazing thing about modern nations is that they found ways to make people care about strangers, they never met, and to care about places, they never visited, and this was mostly beyond the power of the ancient tribes.
Nationalism has a second and far more important and far more difficult component and that component is to sometimes prefer strangers over my friends and relatives.
For example suppose I am a government official maybe in the interior ministry and there is a job opening and I am interviewing people in order to decide who gets the job. I need to decide between two applicants: One applicant is a brilliant woman whom I have never met before. The other applicant is a rather mediocre person, but she happens to be my cousin.
Now what should I do? It is a difficult question!
Millions of years of evolution are screaming inside my brain: “Don't be stupid, give the job to your cousin, that's obvious!” But nationalism tells me ”No, no, no, no, no!” You should give the job to the brilliant stranger because a good Patriot places national interests ahead of family connections and the nation needs the best civil servants. To give the job to your cousin would be corruption and a betrayal of the nation!”
(Source: Yuval Noah Harari in a university lecture on 'The Bright Side of Nationalism' , May 2019. Video 0n YouTube https://youtu.be/2jz7hsqsObU)
This positive aspect of nationalism is not distributed evenly all over the world. This is documented in Transparency International´s annual "Corruption Perception Index" which ranks countries relative to their degree of corruption (see later)
Denmark, together with the other Nordic countries, has been at the top of this index for a number of years, with Denmark the country with the least corruption in the 2018 index.
3. How did Denmark become the least corrupt country?
The Danish book "Korruption" by Mette Frisk Jensen describes how the anti corruption efforts began in the 1600´s, long before parliamentarian democracy became established (1849). The Danish king, who was the ruler in an absolute and hereditary monarchy, had a huge interest in taking care that the officials around the country did not enrich themselves at the state's expense and thus the king´s, and therefore laws and organisational structures were built up gradually so the rules were clear and the penalties severe.
Even kings could, however, sometimes find themselves engaged in corruption. For example, funds for the construction the Danish state's finance ministry were provided through the sale of public positions (1701-1701 & 1715-1716). The red building at Christianborg Palace Square is still in use as the Danish Ministry of Finance:
Since the introduction of parliamentarian democracy in 1849, it is not the king /queen, but the parliamentarian system that ensures that corruption is not accepted by rule of law (the parliament, the judiciary, and the state administration).
A national culture has also gradually evolved, in which the notion of cohesion, which Harari speaks of, is a strong element. It is often reported by researchers that, traditionally, the Danish population has been an exceptionally homogeneous group, as the language and national culture have been the same for most inhabitants, excepting immigration over the last 30-40 years.
Most often, the homogeneity and the high degree of confidence in the Danish culture are explained by the influence of Danish cultural personalities and popular movements. Foremost, the priest, writer, philosopher and poet Frederik Severin Grundtvig (1783-1872) is emphasized as an inspiration for the Danish folk high schools and the Danish tradition of cooperating - and trusting each other - through cooperatives and associations.
The American professor Francis Fukuyama, however, emphasizes another reason why the population has long been a much more homogeneous group than in most other nations: He says the Danes may thank the German Chancellor Bismarck for depriving Denmark of the Southern parts of the country through several wars in the mid-1800. There was a German majority in most areas of these southern regions, and since then the Danish language and the Danish national culture have been common to almost everyone in the state of Denmark, and thus this ethnic homogeneity was established by a foreign power.
Fukuyama concludes that Denmark's borders have been created through crimes. This also applies to many other nation states, but … “This didn´t make the final outcome less democratic, but it also does not mean that the original crime was not a crime”
(Source: Francis Fukuyama (2015): Building and State Building page 29-50 in Hall, Korsgaard & Pedersen 82015): "Building the Nation. N. F. S. Grundtvig and Danish National Identity”)
In addition, the Danish school system has played a large role by virtue of the aim to educate democratic citizens:§ 1, part 3. states the following: ”The Folkeskole is to prepare the students to be able to participate, demonstrate mutual responsibility and understand their rights and duties in a free and democratic society. The daily activities of the school must, therefore, be conducted in a spirit of intellectual freedom, equality and democracy.”
The Danish school laws require that this aim is prioritized in both the Folkeskole and the Free Schools (private schools with 70 % state fundings)
Danish state laws as well as the upbringing for citizenship (which takes place both in school and through civic culture), traditionally, have created cohesion of the national community, which Harari speaks about. One indicator of civic engagement is voter turnout for elections. The participation rate in June 2019 was 84.6% - the lowest in 14 years!
The concept of lawfulness, which today is most often replaced by the English "compliance", has thus been developed in the Danish nation state over several centuries.
Sources and deepening:
-The contents of the Danish book "Korruption" can be read in an almost similar version in English with the title ” ”Getting to Denmark” – the Process of State building, Establishing Rule of Law, and Fighting Corruption in Demark 1660-1900”from 2014 written by Mette Frisk Jensen.
4. Corruption will never be completely abolished - all our democratic values are not self-evident
The organization "Transparency International" makes an annual "Corruption Perception Index" that places 180 countries and territories on a scale from zero, which means corrupt to a very high degree, and up to 100 which is defined as very clean.
(The report is 18 pages with a very high degree of visualization that facilitates the overview and the acquisition a lot)
It is easy to see that states called "failing states" are at the bottom of the index. These are countries like Somalia, Syria, South Sudan and Yemen.
It is also clear that states consisting of tribes without a common national culture are far down the list. Kenya, a country with 42 tribes, is a well-known example. The country is number 144 out of the total of 180.
On the positive side,there are states becoming less corrupt in just a few years, and interest in reducing corruption is evident in many initiatives around the world.
Improvement is possible in all countries. In the latest index, Denmark received 88 out of 100 points, showing that even Denmark can improve. For example, greater openness about donations to political parties.
Furthermore, it can´t be taken for granted in our globalized age that nations with great cohesion will continue to be characterized as such.
The Norwegian defence lawyer Gert Lippestad has written a book entitled "What we stand for", where he reflects on the cultural challenges we have today in democratic societies.
For a year, he was the defense lawyer in the trial of the extreme right-wing Norwegian terrorist Anders Behring Breivik, who in 2011 killed 77 Norwegians, most of them teenagers attending a social democratic youth camp on the island of Utøya. It was terrorism in a form and to a degree not experienced in Scandinavia since the Second World War.
In the book Lippestad asks:
"How should we deal with the emergence of the political extreme climate, whether it blows in from the east or west or emanates from religious extremists or individual egoists and fanatics?
How are we going to face the rage that comes to the surface because society is going through bigger and faster changes than most people can follow?
How should we handle that the terrorism risk management itself overshadows the basic values that our generation has grown up with and which we want to pass on to our children?
And how can we enable our children to manage this core of values in a world where an ever-growing number of extremists want to bring it down? "(My translation)
He tries to make us all recognize that all our democratic values are not self-evident (and not just the principle of a corruption-free society).
The democratic values are… ”… an equally fragile construction as life itself, and it must be maintained and developed every single day.
Do we really do that, and if so: How do we do it? ”
Establishing rule of law as well as maintaining and developing a national culture of cohesion goes hand in hand.
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Deepening and resources:
- What is Transparency International´s corruption index:”Since its inception in 1995, the Corruption Perceptions Index, Transparency International’s flagship research product, has become the leading global indicator of public sector corruption.The index offers an annual snapshot of the relative degree of corruption by ranking countries and territories from all over the globe. In 2012, Transparency International revised the methodology used to construct the index to allow for comparison of scores from one year to the next. The 2018 CPI draws on 13 surveys and expert assessments to measure public sector corruption in 180 countries and territories, giving each a score from zero (highly corrupt) to 100 (very clean).” Sorce: https://www.transparency.org/cpi2018
- "Transparency International" annual "Corruption Perception Index" measures only correction in the public sector, so the recent big case of money laundering from Eastern Europe through the Danish bank "Danske Bank” is not in focus in the index.
However, Transparency International focuses on this problem anyway. See the article "Trouble at the top: Why high scoring countries aren't corruption free".
Transparency International Denmark has submitted a citizens' proposal "Real Openness on Private Party Support" which can be read and signed by Danish citizens at www.borgerforslag.dk
Article in Danish in Globalnyt: ”Private penge hvisker i den danske valgkamp, men brøler i den afrikanske”"(Translation of the tile: Private money whispers in the Danish election campaign, but roars in the African). Link:
- "Serious about sustainability? Get serious about corruption". World Economic Forum click
- The fight against corruption is an essential part of Global Sustainable Goal 16:
