GENERAL GUIDELINES OF THE CORRUPTION CONCEPT
Introduction
As is known, corruption is a latent social phenomenon. However, it is sometimes difficult to detect, even becoming imperceptible. The trend leads us to immediately link corruption with politics, but, in theory and even in practice, this phenomenon not only occurs in politics but also in situations of the daily life of people, covering various activities.
The aforementioned is linked to the types of corruption that exist, having among them a type that consists of qualifying as corrupt acts that were traditionally recognized by society as "good" and therefore they were not badly seen and were normalized and internalizedby the actors of society.
For the purposes of this work, the focus on corruption in the political sphere will be placed, which does not mean that situations that are not closely linked to political life or the political system in particular are mentioned. Since, corruption constitutes a problem of a social nature and therefore society will be inevitably involved, mainly in the consequences caused by acts of corruption.
It will also be the issue of corruption control, handling three different positions that raise mechanisms or alternatives to eradicate corruption.
General guidelines of corruption: concept, characteristics, types.
To start dealing with the issue, it is inevitable. The term corruption comes from the corrupt Latin which means an action of destroying something healthy or damaging or perverting someone. Thinking about corruption instantly traces us to think about typically bad, negative actions that generate some kind of damage to a person or a group of people, such as a society. Synthesizing, the term means “altering, vitiating, disrupting forms and implies acts or reprehensible behaviors.”This definition must be accompanied by an intention for its own or particular benefit, since corruption also implies, overcoming private interest in public interest.
It is remarkable that corruption is not a new phenomenon, but it accompanies the development of civilizations over time, covering different areas of people’s lives. However, corruption is perceived, in general as a merely political phenomenon, tending to think that the only people capable of committing corrupt acts are the actors of the political system, of the ruling class. While corruption can have its origin in the deviation of political power to obtain a particular benefit, it is common to find situations that are not perceived as corruption and are carried out by people who are totally outside the political power of a State. As an example, let’s put the case of a traffic control carried out on an X street in the city, when stopping, the driver is informed that he has committed an infraction and that he will result in the application of a fine. When delivering the documents to the Transit Officer, the driver places an amount of money between said papers with the objective that the inspector perceives that it will be his “reward” in exchange for not applying the sanction. The person who delivered the money, many times, without perceiving it as such, has committed an act of corruption, causing the other person – transit inspector – to divert the exercise of their power for the purposes that both the driver and him obtain abenefit.
In the phenomenon of corruption four stages can be distinguished. The first stage is that of the denial of the phenomenon, in the second instance the registration of the existence of the phenomenon is given, a very important step since, at this stage there are instances of discussion focused on how to solve, attack the problem. Third, various mechanisms are put into practice to attack this phenomenon and, the fourth stage is to put under control or, eventually, maintain corruption.
The characteristics of corruption are diverse and it is necessary to mention them. First, it may seem obvious, corruption is furtive, that is, the practices that are defined as corrupt are not public. That is, people who commit these practices will try to, as long as possible, keep the phenomenon hidden. On the other hand, it is universal, since it occurs in the vast majority of civilizations and in many areas, such as politics, sport, religion, among others. Third, corruption necessarily has an ethical connotation and, in some cases, also moral. This phenomenon also has the characteristic of not being easy to control, due to the fact that it is difficult to detect, therefore, it is a difficulty to find the appropriate mechanisms to attack and combat it. Another relevant characteristic is that it is not unilateral, but always implies two or more parts. In this sense, it should be noted that corruption is not only for money, but also tends to other interests such as certain privileges or prebendas. Finally, it should be noted, as it was previously made that corruption is a social problem, which does not only affect a sector of society, instead it affects several social sectors at the same time, so it implies damage to society.
The types of corruption that exist are three and depend on the degree of perception they generate in society. In this sense, the first type of corruption is white corruption, which consists of practices that are not recognized as corrupt, that is, society does not perceive them as a problem or as an unusual behavior. On the other hand, black corruption is, the inverse of white corruption, that is, it invests the meaning in which the mentioned practices are perceived, tending to stigmatize them. In this type are acts and behaviors that are typically recognized as corruption. Finally, you can identify a more diffuse corruption type, the so -called gray corruption. It is diffuse in the sense that there are practices in which there is no generalized consensus of whether or not they are corruption. In this typology, what some perceive as corrupt practices, others do not consider them as such.
Corruption and politics
Politics and corruption are two phenomena that are highly connected. First, because the exercise of power can bring certain ambitions, which can be the cause of some of the corrupt practices.
The exercise of power, can generate in the person who holds it, feelings of ambition or hedonism, which can cause the politician to use his power to overcome his private interest in the public interest in which he was elected. These practices can range from the intervention of the private in the public – for example, an mayor who hires his own company to perform cleaning tasks in the department that governs – to the opposite, that is, the intervention of public power in the interests in the interestsprivate – for example a legislator who in exchange for some benefit is influenced by a private sector company to vote and/or propose certain issues that will result in the private benefit of one or the other – .
That said, it is possible to affirm that corruption in the political sphere is manifested in different ways and to generate various objectives.
Max Weber said that “there are politicians living for or politics."In this sense, those politicians who live" from "politics present a greater degree of ambition since they assume politics as an instrument to be used at the service of their particular enrichment. According to Weber, this is, undoubtedly, one more form of corruption.
Political parties play an important role in the detection and control of corruption, both externally and internally. On the internal part of the parties, there are the so -called ethics commissions, which are destined to judge those members of the party of those who have suspicions or have been accused of committing corrupt acts. And externally, the parties exercise control of corruption daily over the other political parties, being attentive to the activities of adversary politicians, in order to detect corruption in the exercise of their functions.
It is important to note that as more interventionist and regulation is the legislation of a State, the possibilities of corruption will increase. Corruption in the political sphere generates, in the first place, discredit, while those politicians who have committed acts of corruption and who have proven their guilt or implication, damage their image and harm themselves. Second, it generates skepticism, which has mainly impacts the public opinion that ceases to believe in the political class, generating distrust about the candidates and leaders of the political parties, particularly in those parties or leaders who exercise power, eitherFrom the National or Departmental Government.
Specific political corruption refers to the government misuse of power to obtain some advantage, which is in turn illegitimate and, as already mentioned, it is generally secret and private. For its part, the international transparency organization defines political corruption as "the misuse of entrusted power to obtain private benefits". As stated earlier, political corruption not only manifests itself in an economic benefit, but can also be constituted by practices such as: influence peddling, friend and favoritism, bribes, extortion. It may also be called prevarication that consists in the dictation of a resolution by an authority, judge or other public official, of an arbitrary nature in a judicial issue, of government or administration still aware that said resolution is arbitrary and unfairand that can harm a person or a set of them.
A common form of corruption of seeing in the political sphere is nepotism, that is, the preference for family members to designate them in some state position.
Political corruption does not necessarily originate in the political sphere, there have been several cases in which the acts of corruption begin in – for example – the business field, but then “dot” politics, in particular to system actorspolitical. We can analyze the case called "Panama Papers". The case consisted of filtration of confidential documents of the extinguished law firm Mossack Fonseca revealing financial evasion and the false operation of companies that only appeared in papers, hiding their capital. Some of these capitals were even from organized crime. In the documents were emails, listings of societies, minutes, deeds and records of offshore companies exchanged between Mossack Fonseca and its clients.
Also, in these documents, various listings were found, among which names of more than a hundred politicians from different countries appeared. Several actors in the political system are involved in this case, as is the example of the previous Prime Minister of Iceland Sigmundur David Gunnlaugsson, who deposited with his wife millions of dollars of investments in three large banks during the financial crisis that crossed his country, usingA society called Wintris Inc. On the other hand, the current president of Argentina Mauricio Macri appears as director of a firm constituted abroad, which he himself described as a "legal operation". Also, Macri said that he was occasionally appointed in the board of the company created by his father and, in a statement from the Casa Rosada it was expressed that the president "never had or have a participation in the capital of that society"
These examples clarify how what begins as corruption in a different environment of politics can sometimes reach it, influencing the power factors and weakening confidence in political parties and their leaders.
Corruption prevention and control mechanisms
In the first place, the position that mechanisms for control and combating corruption is generalized, to give the members of the company, the guarantees that their rulers will not act illegally for their particular benefit for their particular benefit is generalized.
A first control mechanism of this phenomenon is the hardening of penalties for those who commit acts of corruption. Those who defend this position argue that applying hard penalties and that the sentences are effectively fulfilled, gives the guarantees to begin to eradicate corruption. A first problem is that the current penalties are not significant and that these penalties should be increased, they can find people who argue that the death penalty could be one of the necessary consequences to combat corruption. In addition to what has been said, the defenders of this position are based on the hardening of penalties and their effective fulfill.
On the other hand, there are subjects that defend the position that corruption is a moral problem, therefore, the solution of this problem must be of the same character. They propose that the perception of what is "good" and what is "bad" has been lost, so it is necessary to teach these issues again. They also propose that the root of the problem are the individual decisions of each person, so that the degree of morality that the practice will have depending on it since, it will do so based on their own ethical and moral principles. The drivers of this mechanism believe necessary to create ethics and moral courses both in schools and universities. In this way, teaching moral and ethical values, according to this theory, it will be easier to detect corruption and therefore the punishment procedure to these practices will be facilitated.
Finally, a third mechanism for control or eradication of corruption puts the focus on the public distribution organization system. In this sense, they explain that those offices must be detected, where the way in which the activity is carried out to perform acts of corruption. Its central idea is based on the fact that there are numerous organization systems that are conducive to generating activities related to corruption, in which the possibilities of such acts are produced are higher. The solution proposed by the drivers of this option is to reform the problematic organization systems to guarantee a transparent system and that greatly limits the possibilities of committing acts of corruption, these changes – for example – could be to reform the entry mechanisms tothose offices where irregularities occur when appointing their officials.
Regarding corruption prevention, let’s take the example of the United States of America, which does not allow the president to receive personal gifts. When an American president receives a gift from a third party, said gift becomes the property of the State and, if the president wants to appropriate said good, he must wait for his mandate to end and then acquire said gift within certain limits determined by thelaw. This is a mechanism that allows, at first to prevent the president from receiving bribes or some other type of “incentive” for the purpose of achieving some particular objective.
conclusion
As a conclusion, corruption is both social and political phenomenon, because as mentioned, the social is closely linked to the political, even reaching certain problems and practices of corruption intervene in politics.
As well as, it is necessary to consider serious mechanisms to combat corruption and generate a perception of confidence and respect for legality, morality and institutionality, making the political class that use its power for their own benefit has accurate consequences when committing acts of acts ofcorruption. We must generate the necessary conditions to detect and subsequently combat corruption, both in the private and public sphere and that these practices serve as an example to prevent future cases.
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