[2285] Of why is bribery wrong?

Bribery is wrong. That is a given. Yet surprisingly, I am struggling to explain why it is wrong.

The best I can come up with without referring to other sources is that bribery undermines a system of rules and it gives those involved in the transaction unfair advantage against those who adhere to the rules.

This casts too wide a net however, hence an imperfect reasoning. Not all rules are good and bad rules should be broken. Without looking into what separates the good rules from the bad, the breaking of good rules is a necessary condition in making bribery wrong but it is not a sufficient condition. The determination of wrongness depends on the kind of rules being broken.

Unfairness is also only a necessary condition but the concern for unfairness is only secondary because it arises from the breaking of rules. If a rule is broken, then it is immediately unfair because there are those who follow the rules, with an exception that I will go into below near the end of this entry.

The collective necessary conditions can be construed as the sufficient condition.

Is there any other sufficient condition?

I can at least define a minimum why bribery is wrong, which I propose as another sufficient condition. This goes back to the rationale of establishment of a third party or the state to protect individual rights. If a person bribes the authority to erode the rights of others to the briber’s benefit, then the briber has committed a wrong. When the rules involve individual rights, then the breaking of these specific rules becomes the sufficient condition for bribery to be wrong.

This minimum or sufficient condition is highly unsatisfactory however. Bribery can be wrong even when it does not involve the protection of individual rights. Consider a person who wants a document be kept confidential and there is a company offering safekeeping service, much like a bank. The person engages the company. And then, a third party becomes interested in the document and bribes the company in order to access the document. Quite clearly, a wrong has been committed. Or, maybe the wrong is not due to bribery but due to a breach of trust? I do not know. It requires more thinking.

In any case, if the idea that bribery is wrong is dependent on the idea of rule-breaking, then what if there is no rule? Would bribery be wrong under that situation? Under this situation, bribery ceases to be a concern anymore because the idea of bribery ceases to exist. Any action that can be construed as bribery under rule-based environment suddenly becomes just another mundane transaction in the marketplace under no-rule environment. Bribery simply becomes a purchase of service.

Now comes to the original question that piqued my interest in the idea of bribery in the first place, that subsequently made me to question my basic understanding of why bribery is wrong. What if there are rules but everybody breaks it? The Daily Chart blog at The Economist has a chart reproducing the findings on corruption from Transparency International.^[1]

It shows that in Liberia, nearly 90% member of the public had bribed an official. Nearly ninety percent is nearly everybody. I am highlighting this because if everybody does it, it effectively takes the necessary condition of fairness out of the equation. Since nobody follows the rules, then the person who engages in bribery is not being unfair to anybody. Without the fulfilment of the necessary condition of unfairness, does bribery cease to become a wrong?

^[1] — ONE in four people paid a bribe during the past year, according to the latest Global Corruption Barometer, which is published annually by Transparency International, an anti-corruption campaign group… Among the countries surveyed, this kind of everyday corruption was most prevalent in Liberia. Britain was the cleanest. [Something for your troubles. Daily Chart. December 9 2010]

p/s — I have found two very good short pieces by Richard Posner on corruption in general. They are:

1. Economics of Corruption
2. Corruption

I especially like Posner’s distinction between corruption in the public and private spheres. In retrospect, this blog post of mine involves bribery in the public sphere, i.e. public institutions.