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Source: (consider it)
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Thread: Bribery: not so clear cut after all?
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MrsBeaky
Shipmate
# 17663
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Posted
Prior to coming to Kenya as mission partners with CMS, my husband and I did a considerable amount of training in cross-cultural issues and ethics.
One of the topics we debated was bribery and whether or not it was ever justifiable. Needless to say there were strong opinions on both sides of that debate.
Now we are actually living in Kenya, the reality of the debate is a daily experience: corruption is truly endemic here and our Kenyan colleagues hold a wide range of opinions on the topic.
It is not nearly as clear cut as it seems when viewed from an ivory tower in the UK and the pragmatist and idealist within my head are in a continual argument about the issue.
So my question is this:
Is bribery ever justifiable?
PS I don't think this is a DH but if it is, my apologies and please move it for me.
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"It is better to be kind than right."
http://davidandlizacooke.wordpress.com
Posts: 693 | From: UK/ Kenya | Registered: Apr 2013
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Erroneous Monk
Shipmate
# 10858
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by MrsBeaky:
Is bribery ever justifiable?
As defined in the UK Bribery Act 2010, no. Neither the giving of nor the receiving of bribes is ever justifiable. It perpetuates a situation in which the poorest are disadvantaged.
To quote from the forward to the Guidance on the Bribery Act :
quote:
Bribery blights lives. Its immediate victims include firms that lose out unfairly. The wider victims are government and society, undermined by a weakened rule of law and damaged social and economic development. At stake is the principle of free and fair competition, which stands diminished by each bribe offered or accepted.
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And I shot a man in Tesco, just to watch him die.
Posts: 2950 | From: I cannot tell you, for you are not a friar | Registered: Jan 2006
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Bostonman
Shipmate
# 17108
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Posted
It's easy to agree that a world without bribery is better than a world with bribery, every time.
But given a world that requires bribery to get things done, isn't it better to be paying bribes to enable good work, rather than to enable your own enrichment? If you want to keep your hands perfectly clean, become a monk. In real work there are always unfortunate and less-than-ideal circumstances.
Saul Alinsky puts it something like this: there's no abstract question of whether the means justify the ends, only the concrete question of whether these means justify these ends.
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Erroneous Monk
Shipmate
# 10858
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Bostonman:
But given a world that requires bribery to get things done, isn't it better to be paying bribes to enable good work, rather than to enable your own enrichment? If you want to keep your hands perfectly clean, become a monk. In real work there are always unfortunate and less-than-ideal circumstances.
Could you give me a hypothetical example of a justifiable bribe?
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And I shot a man in Tesco, just to watch him die.
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Avila
Shipmate
# 15541
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Posted
I was only in Zambia a couple of months but it made me reconsider issues around this and left me in the grey middle.
An example - the theol college students and others had collected supplies to go into the local prison. Unlike here they are not provided with food and clothing during their stay, that comes from families visiting with supplies and the food they can grow in the prison grounds.
The group deliberately packaged up a proportion for the prison guards, without which the rest wouldn't get through to the prisoners. So effectively a bribe.
But bring into the mix that the guards like other public workers hadn't been paid for months (but still turn up for work, who would in most of our communities?) and then the bribe becomes not an abuse of power but the means to feed and clothe their children.
Yes we need to stand against bribery, but when it is endemic in a society can we condemn those at the lower end of the food chain whose lives are messed up by wrongs by the big boys.
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http://aweebleswonderings.blogspot.com/
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Erroneous Monk
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# 10858
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Avila:
The group deliberately packaged up a proportion for the prison guards, without which the rest wouldn't get through to the prisoners. So effectively a bribe.
What about the person who wants to take something for a relative in prison but doesn't have enough to give the guards?
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And I shot a man in Tesco, just to watch him die.
Posts: 2950 | From: I cannot tell you, for you are not a friar | Registered: Jan 2006
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Custard
Shipmate
# 5402
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Posted
The Bible is pretty clear that accepting bribes is a Bad Thing (Exodus 23:8, for example, forbids it).
However it's a lot more nuanced on whether it could be right to pay bribes. Here's Proverbs 21:14
quote:
A gift given in secret soothes anger, and a bribe concealed in the cloak pacifies great wrath.
Now that's not quite telling people to offer bribes, but it's saying that if you are working within a corrupt system, sometimes they can help.
[When I was a teacher, kids often used to ask me if I accepted bribes. I always answered "yes". The brighter ones then asked if them giving me a bribe would make any difference to the grades they would get. The answer "of course not..."]
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blog
Adam's likeness, Lord, efface;
Stamp thine image in its place.
Posts: 4523 | From: Snot's Place | Registered: Jan 2004
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Erroneous Monk
Shipmate
# 10858
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Posted
This is where definitions are important, and why I refer to the Bribery Act which makes it clear that a bribe is intended to induce or reward improper behaviour (or the bribe-payer believes that it will induce such behaviour, even if it does not).
Improper behaviour is then defined as "performance which amounts to a breach of an expectation that a person will act in good faith, impartially, or in accordance with a position of trust."
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And I shot a man in Tesco, just to watch him die.
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Evensong
Shipmate
# 14696
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Posted
quote:
At stake is the principle of free and fair competition, which stands diminished by each bribe offered or accepted.
You mean bribery is a threat to Capitalism? Good!
quote:
a bribe is intended to induce or reward improper behaviour
Where bribery is endemic, it is a system unto itself. It aint about rewarding or punishing behaviour at all. That's what people on their moral high horses call it.
It's about surviving in a completely fucked system where equality and opportunity is almost non-existent and you've also got kids to feed.
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a theological scrapbook
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Erroneous Monk
Shipmate
# 10858
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Evensong:
Where bribery is endemic, it is a system unto itself. It aint about rewarding or punishing behaviour at all. That's what people on their moral high horses call it.
I'm surprised that you think that saying it's wrong to expect to be able to get better treatment for yourself than someone with less money is getting on a moral high horse.
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And I shot a man in Tesco, just to watch him die.
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Custard
Shipmate
# 5402
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Posted
By that definition, a heck of a lot of the "bribery" that goes on in much of the world isn't bribery because often it's paying officials extra to do their job...
[ETA crosspost - above para was replying to Erroneous Monk]
It's probably worth linking to this story which includes a world map with reported frequency of bribery.
I've bribed a public official once. We'd cut a large honeysuckle off the side of our house, and it was too bulky to get into the car to take to the tip. The bin men wouldn't take it, and there was a chap working for the council with a woodchipper maintaining some council-owned trees just across the road...
[ 09. July 2013, 13:46: Message edited by: Custard ]
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Adam's likeness, Lord, efface;
Stamp thine image in its place.
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Erroneous Monk
Shipmate
# 10858
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Evensong:
It aint about rewarding or punishing behaviour at all.
I should add that, as my post said, if it doesn't meet the definition, it's *not a bribe*. So if it's not intended to induce improper behaviour, it's not bribery.
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And I shot a man in Tesco, just to watch him die.
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Erroneous Monk
Shipmate
# 10858
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Custard:
By that definition, a heck of a lot of the "bribery" that goes on in much of the world isn't bribery because often it's paying officials extra to do their job...
[ETA crosspost - above para was replying to Erroneous Monk]
It's probably worth linking to this story which includes a world map with reported frequency of bribery.
I've bribed a public official once. We'd cut a large honeysuckle off the side of our house, and it was too bulky to get into the car to take to the tip. The bin men wouldn't take it, and there was a chap working for the council with a woodchipper maintaining some council-owned trees just across the road...
Of course, if he worked five minutes longer to make up the time he'd spent off the council's clock and on your clock, then he hasn't really behaved improperly, has he? You might argue that he ought to pay the council 5p for fuel/maintenance related to your honeysuckle, rather than the council work, but I think you'd be within reason not to ![[Smile]](smile.gif)
But would you have thought it right to pay him to get the use of council equipment for you for, say, half the day? Or would you have felt bad about that?
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And I shot a man in Tesco, just to watch him die.
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MrsBeaky
Shipmate
# 17663
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Posted
Originally posted by Erroneous Monk
quote:
I should add that, as my post said, if it doesn't meet the definition, it's *not a bribe*. So if it's not intended to induce improper behaviour, it's not bribery.
I would not feel it right to accept a bribe myself but the challenge I'm facing is when trying to get good things done.....Often here, the "bribe" is something requested by someone to do something which they are meant to do anyway.
It's an ethical tightrope and I lose sleep over it!
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"It is better to be kind than right."
http://davidandlizacooke.wordpress.com
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Evensong
Shipmate
# 14696
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Erroneous Monk:
quote:
Originally posted by Evensong:
Where bribery is endemic, it is a system unto itself. It aint about rewarding or punishing behaviour at all. That's what people on their moral high horses call it.
I'm surprised that you think that saying it's wrong to expect to be able to get better treatment for yourself than someone with less money is getting on a moral high horse.
I was seeing it from the other end of the stick actually: the person receiving the bribe.
As for your end of the stick, expecting better treatment if you have more money is fairly standard par for the course ideology in countries that claim they do not have corruption problems but are Capitalistic (e.g. The USA). I suppose it's just legalised corruption.
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a theological scrapbook
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Erroneous Monk
Shipmate
# 10858
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by MrsBeaky:
Originally posted by Erroneous Monk
quote:
I should add that, as my post said, if it doesn't meet the definition, it's *not a bribe*. So if it's not intended to induce improper behaviour, it's not bribery.
I would not feel it right to accept a bribe myself but the challenge I'm facing is when trying to get good things done.....Often here, the "bribe" is something requested by someone to do something which they are meant to do anyway.
It's an ethical tightrope and I lose sleep over it!
Yes. I bet it's really hard for you. I'm sorry. And I'm certainly not able to say that I would never do it, more than any other wrong. But to be a bribe, it has to be about securing an advantage to yourself, because you have the means to do so, and others do not. At best, that is unfair.
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And I shot a man in Tesco, just to watch him die.
Posts: 2950 | From: I cannot tell you, for you are not a friar | Registered: Jan 2006
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Custard
Shipmate
# 5402
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Posted
EM - It seems that the definition in the Bribery Act is quite specific, and actually excludes a lot of what we normally call "bribery".
It might be worth trying the following definition:
"Bad bribery" is bribing someone in the expectation they will act improperly or give you an unfair advantage. It's illegal in the UK and the Bible is against it.
"Potentially acceptable bribery" includes paying corrupt officials to do what they should have done anyway, or not to do things they shouldn't have done anyway. It isn't illegal in the UK, and the Bible doesn't worry much about the ethics of paying such a bribe, though it's very against asking for them.
Anyone want to argue that this potentially acceptable bribery is wrong?
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Adam's likeness, Lord, efface;
Stamp thine image in its place.
Posts: 4523 | From: Snot's Place | Registered: Jan 2004
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Erroneous Monk
Shipmate
# 10858
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Evensong:
quote:
Originally posted by Erroneous Monk:
quote:
Originally posted by Evensong:
Where bribery is endemic, it is a system unto itself. It aint about rewarding or punishing behaviour at all. That's what people on their moral high horses call it.
I'm surprised that you think that saying it's wrong to expect to be able to get better treatment for yourself than someone with less money is getting on a moral high horse.
I was seeing it from the other end of the stick actually: the person receiving the bribe.
As for your end of the stick, expecting better treatment if you have more money is fairly standard par for the course ideology in countries that claim they do not have corruption problems but are Capitalistic (e.g. The USA). I suppose it's just legalised corruption.
Yes, there is lots of corruption in countries that allegedly don't have a problem, including the UK.
In the course of my work, I've heard plenty of blokes in suits who want their companies to break into "emerging markets" try to claim that "it's just the way *they* do business over there" to excuse the fact that they are using their relatively enormous financial power to take business away from local firms in those countries. ![[Frown]](frown.gif)
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And I shot a man in Tesco, just to watch him die.
Posts: 2950 | From: I cannot tell you, for you are not a friar | Registered: Jan 2006
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Erroneous Monk
Shipmate
# 10858
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Custard:
EM - It seems that the definition in the Bribery Act is quite specific, and actually excludes a lot of what we normally call "bribery".
It might be worth trying the following definition:
"Bad bribery" is bribing someone in the expectation they will act improperly or give you an unfair advantage. It's illegal in the UK and the Bible is against it.
"Potentially acceptable bribery" includes paying corrupt officials to do what they should have done anyway, or not to do things they shouldn't have done anyway. It isn't illegal in the UK, and the Bible doesn't worry much about the ethics of paying such a bribe, though it's very against asking for them.
Anyone want to argue that this potentially acceptable bribery is wrong?
OK.I'm not sure where we draw the line yet, but I accept that there are - possibly - two different kinds of behaviour here. Hmmmmm>
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And I shot a man in Tesco, just to watch him die.
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Marvin the Martian
Interplanetary
# 4360
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Posted
People who are known to tip well in restaurants get better service than people who are known to tip badly.
Could the tip therefore be seen as a bribe in order to get better service?
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Hail Gallaxhar
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Bostonman
Shipmate
# 17108
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Posted
The prison example is precisely what I mean. It is a bribe paid to do good for someone else. If others cannot afford to pay the bribe to feed their own family members, that is a horrible result of the injustice of that system; it does not, however, imply that because some prisoners will go hungry, all should.
A definition of bribery that requires undue advantage to oneself and excludes the case of bribing officials simply to do their jobs is a definition that excludes what I would guess to be the overwhelming majority of extra-legal payments to officials (just to avoid calling them "bribes" and being circular) in the world.
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no prophet's flag is set so...
Proceed to see sea
# 15560
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Posted
It depends. Specific example. I took a flight in 1975 from New York to Port of Spain Trinidad (Piarco Airport). The BWIA flight was cancelled. I was stuck (like Eric Snowden is currently in Moscow) in the "in transit" "lounge" for 24 hours. I bribed the customs guard with American dollars, I think about $15, and left him my passport (I had some others in transit witness it), and went to the airline counters and bribed my way onto an Air France flight to Timerhi Airport, Georgetown Guyana for, if I recall, about $15.
Was I wrong to bribe my way on to the flight?
Further, was I wrong, in those days, to have a collection of things which I gave to customs officials so that they would not steal things in front of me from my baggage? Mostly cigarettes.
Posts: 11498 | From: Treaty 6 territory in the nonexistant Province of Buffalo, Canada ↄ⃝' | Registered: Mar 2010
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Wesley J
Silly Shipmate
# 6075
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Posted
Transparency International is being quoted in a recent Grauniad article on a global corruption survey. Perhaps this will help for the present discussion.
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Be it as it may: Wesley J will stay. --- Euthanasia, that sounds good. An alpine neutral neighbourhood. Then back to Britain, all dressed in wood. Things were gonna get worse. (John Cooper Clarke)
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Kaplan Corday
Shipmate
# 16119
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Posted
I know from experience exactly what you are talking about, Mrs B.
Once in India, a very lowly peon sent up from a government department after we inquired about removing a tree, assured us of favorable treatment if we gave him - a raincoat!
There are no neat theological or ideological solutions, but neither is it true, as those who have never lived and worked outside the West sometimes imagine, that "it's all exactly the same everywhere".
Posts: 3355 | Registered: Jan 2011
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Leorning Cniht
Shipmate
# 17564
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Custard:
Anyone want to argue that this potentially acceptable bribery is wrong?
I will quite happily argue that it is wrong, in the sense that it's basically a transaction tax on each and every interaction with officialdom, and such frictional costs have fairly bad economic consequences.
I will also argue that the lack of certainty usually associated with bribery (how much is enough) acts as a further disincentive for ordinary people to engage in desirable economic activity.
So in that sense (that the existence of a bribery system is a generally bad thing for the country), every act of bribery is "wrong".
On the other hand, Cnut knows what power he does and doesn't have. If you are in a country where bribery is the accepted way of dealing with every petty official you encounter, you can certainly try to hold the moral high ground by not paying bribes, but all that will happen is that you won't get anything done. Reform has to come from people not accepting bribes, rather than the relatively powerless not offering them.
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Dave W.
Shipmate
# 8765
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Posted
Here's the website of a grass-roots campaign to fight corruption in India:
quote:
I Paid A Bribe is Janaagraha's unique initiative to tackle corruption by harnessing the collective energy of citizens. You can report on the nature, number, pattern, types, location, frequency and values of actual corrupt acts on this website. Your reports will, perhaps for the first time, provide a snapshot of bribes occurring across your city. We will use them to argue for improving governance systems and procedures, tightening law enforcement and regulation and thereby reduce the scope for corruption in obtaining services from the government.
Posts: 2059 | From: the hub of the solar system | Registered: Nov 2004
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Jengie jon
Semper Reformanda
# 273
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Posted
May I suggest that bribery or something quite close to it is rife in western society. Ask if there are freebies going who normally gets them, the person on benefits or someone with influence?
Why? Because it makes sense for the business to give to a person who may look favourable towards them when a decision is being made.
The only difference is that the decision is not specified.
Jengie
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"To violate a persons ability to distinguish fact from fantasy is the epistemological equivalent of rape." Noretta Koertge
Back to my blog
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MrsBeaky
Shipmate
# 17663
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Posted
I agree that accepting a bribe is the slippery slope that leads to injustice and all sorts of social ills....
But the challenge remains that in order to address some deep rooted injustices here, my colleagues have had situations where officials needed to be "given" something to oil the wheels. One of the priests here did his MA In the USA and spent a lot of time studying situational ethics and his position is he'll play the game for the greater good of the work he is doing here (which involved rescuing people from being murdered during the 2008 post-election violence.
I also think culture has a big part to play in all of this, especially the fact that we are very often blind to things in our own culture and how they might be viewed elsewhere and that goes both ways:
I've never forgotten the story of the western missionary trying to persuade someone to stop offering food to his dead ancestors and asking "When do you think your dead grandfather will eat it?" and the old man replying "Perhaps when yours smells the flowers you put on his grave?"
Oh, this is such a moral minefield for me!
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"It is better to be kind than right."
http://davidandlizacooke.wordpress.com
Posts: 693 | From: UK/ Kenya | Registered: Apr 2013
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chris stiles
Shipmate
# 12641
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by MrsBeaky:
I agree that accepting a bribe is the slippery slope that leads to injustice and all sorts of social ills....
Doubly so as you are doing so using economic resources that have been brought in from elsewhere. You don't want to create the situation where guards actually end up expecting more from everyone as a result of your actions.
A few discarded clothes may seem a trivial matter - but I remember working with an organisation that had done a lot of relief work for a particular minority in country X - after a while the news from the field was that it was better not to send old clothes, as they tended to be of better quality than what was available locally, and the minority was being mistreated because there was a perception that their 'fancy dress' was the results of crime and corruption.
Posts: 4035 | From: Berkshire | Registered: May 2007
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no prophet's flag is set so...
Proceed to see sea
# 15560
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Posted
Is it a bribe when someone invites me to dinner at a nice fancy restaurant, tries to get me golfing because they want to facilitate a business deal? Or I am considering the adoption a textbook for a class I teach and the company tells me that they will give me free copies of the text, electronic versions, and additional books additionally. Maybe a backpack to hold it all, or a mug to remember them by. There's bigger swag than this also. Will the value of the all the swag influence my decision? Probably.
Posts: 11498 | From: Treaty 6 territory in the nonexistant Province of Buffalo, Canada ↄ⃝' | Registered: Mar 2010
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Russ
Old salt
# 120
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Posted
Seems to me that there's a spectrum. At the harmless end is where other countries have systems where you pay at point of use for services which are paid for by taxation in the UK. Slipping the binman a tenner to empty the rubbish bin instead of paying the council an annual fee by direct debit. That's not a crime, that's a cultural difference.
At the other end, there's various forms of protection racket where bad things will happen to you - your stuff will be stolen, you will be detained - unless you pay up. That's simply criminal, and the payer of the bribe is the victim who does not sin thereby.
There' may also be a different sort of sin involved, where officials are granted by the State a measure of power for use in fulfilling the purposes of the State, and they betray that trust by using the power instead for personal enrichment. That ISTM is what the Bribery Act is about, and it's primarily a sin against the person or office who appointed the official.
Best wishes,
Russ
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Wish everyone well; the enemy is not people, the enemy is wrong ideas
Posts: 3169 | From: rural Ireland | Registered: May 2001
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Leorning Cniht
Shipmate
# 17564
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by no prophet:
Is it a bribe when someone invites me to dinner at a nice fancy restaurant, tries to get me golfing because they want to facilitate a business deal?
Yes. (Unless the business deal is with you personally.)
Pens, mugs and similar corporate tat aren't bribery - they're advertising. Nobody actually believes that I am going to favour you over your competitor because you gave me a better mug, or because you took me to lunch whilst I was inspecting your production facility, but anything of significant value is a bribe.
quote:
Or I am considering the adoption a textbook for a class I teach and the company tells me that they will give me free copies of the text, electronic versions, and additional books additionally.
Ah, textbook publishers. Yes, loading up the professor's bookshelf to persuade him to require his students to spend an absurd sum of money on the most recent textbook is exactly bribery.
[ 11. July 2013, 21:20: Message edited by: Leorning Cniht ]
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