CRITICALLY EXAMINING THE IMPACT OCORRUPTION ON THE AFRICAN ECONOMIES: PUBLIC COICE THEORY
INTRODUCTION
Africa is perceived as the `Eden garden` because of its abundant wealth in copper, aluminium, gold, diamond, crude oil, but it is one of the most underdeveloped regions world-wide due to corruption, which is a major constraint to wealth creation and African economic growth. Public choice is all about applying the methods of economics to the study of politics. Corruption can be resolved by incorporating insights from the theory of public choice into the design and execution of the new anti-corruption programs. The insights include the introduction of relevant rules, reforming existing laws and institutions, providing more effective and relevant incentive structures and enforcement mechanisms to reduce the probability of opportunism.
Nye (1964:419) defines corruption as the behaviour which deviates from normal duties of a public role because of status gains. Alam (1989:442) looks into corruption as a deviation from norms or practices of modern bureaucracy. A lot of people in developing countries, more especially in Africa, see corruption in more practical terms. They find it synonymous with theft of public resources by civil servants; illegal taxes on economic activities; nepotism; embezzling public funds and differential treatment of business owners expecting bribes from the entrepreneur being granted preferential treatment (Rashee 1995:44).
By the early 1960s, Gordo Tullock and James M. Bichana who studied the political dimension of wealth creation and economic growth introduced the public choice model as a more effective paradigm for the analysis of public policy. Public choice theory provides relevant recommendations on how ...
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...r draining funds. According to the two schools of thought afore mentioned, corruption can either enhance economic development or jeopardize it. In the case of surmounting corruption, public choice theory can be used as a remedy as it recommends ways to aid corruption predicament. In a nutshell, of course corruption can bring about both advantages and disadvantages to the economy of the nation, but since the disadvantages outweighs the advantages because only the elites benefits, while the rest of the many citizens of the nation suffers, corruption is one major issue that African nations should highly look into if they want to be categorized as developed nations. This issue of elites benefiting more from corruption than the rest of the citizens is emphasized by the Nigerian case of “serving a few and starving many”, which makes the affected citizens rebellious.
Corruption is defined as the dishonest conduct one performs for illegitimate private gain (Paskal). To determine where corruption
The United Nations Convention against Corruption as a way of life. Ed. Passas, Nikos and Dimitri Vlassiss.
When dealing with corruption, first question to ask or to clarify is what corruption is. NSW Research (2002) describes corruption anything from gaining materialistically by virtue of position (for eg. getting a special discount at stores) to engaging in ‘direct criminal activities’ (eg. selling drugs). Newburn (1999) believes that there is a thin line between the definition of ‘corrupt’ and ‘non-corrupt’ activities as at the end, it is an ethical problem. For common people, however, bribery generalises corruption.
The word integrity is defined in the dictionary as “adhering to moral and ethical principles” or simply, “honesty.” It is having a state of mind where a person believes in doing the right thing even if no one is paying attention. These are the people who have set morals for themselves, and they stick to them no matter how tempting it may be to disobey them. It’s all about self control and making sticking to your morals a habit. Making habits starts when people are young and impressionable, such as in high school.
The development of a country depends generally on the work and values of its society. The image of a country can be severely damaged by certain actions and behavior of their citizens, like bribery. When a country is known as a corrupt nation, not only will the facade of the country be affected, but also the economy. Establishing measures to eradicate corruption are urgently necessary. Corruption has been around since the begging of time, but currently is more common in business, more specifically, international business. Although some organizations have been formed, and conventions have been signed in order to end it, corruption is still one of the mayor problems around the world. An ethical view might bring more insight to why bribery and corruption is not a moral act and why more severe measures should be taken into consideration.
According to Transparency International, corruption is defined as “the abuse of entrusted power for private gain.” The different types of corruption are: grand, petty and political. Grand corruption is made up of acts that are committed at a high level of government and that twist policies or the central functioning of the state, allowing leaders to benefit at the expense of the public good. Petty corruption is the everyday abuse to citizens by low and mid-level public officials who often try to access basic goods or services in places like hospitals, schools, police departments and other agencies.
Government corruption can generally be defined as a misuse of public power for private gain. Grand, Petty, and Political are all different forms of corruption within a government. Grand corruption occurs at the highest level of power within a government and helps a few while hurting the country’s citizens. Although this happens at the highest level of a government, and it seems as though it should be something that is noticed easily, grand corruption regularly goes unnoticed and unpunished. Petty corruption occurs in
A reason why Sierra Leone is probably more corrupt that any other diamond evident country is that Sierra Leone has an unstable government, and things such as law enforcement, poor leaders and poor overall structure of government has made this the weak nation it is today. The way this country has resided in diamonds to quickly fix poverty, caused the laws of the nation to suffer from it. However, in a country such as America, we tend to have strict laws regarding everyone from government officials, to everyday citizens. If a government official is not enforcing or abiding by the rules of a country, these Political leaders are held accountable, and it will reflect onto them. This is not the case in Sierra Leone, as to to where their dictator-like rule has no such penalty.
...rd but in the sense of Nigeria the corruption is amongst the elites and found at the highest level of federal power.
The pocketing of profits by corrupt government officials shows characteristics of patrimonialism, which not only hinders the economy because these profits are the sole source of revenue for the nation, but also harms the democratic stability of the nation and can to some extent cause the regime changes of the nation. The civic conflicts of the nation are not handled by the government and not only do these conflicts drain revenue from the government, but shows the lack of mobilization in the government, possibly due to a lack of taxation, due to the resource curse. These claims show that the resource curse has affected the government and economy of Nigeria greatly as it leads to an ineffective and corrupt government with a hindered chance of democratization, with civic conflict that cannot be controlled by the civic government.
Many unsolved problems in many African countries, but the issue of the rise of corruption are disturbing, and the amends it has done to the polity are vast. The fear of fraud leads to restrict movement of documents in offices, slow traffic on the highways, port congestion, ghost workers syndrome, queues at passport offices, police extortion tollgates and gas stations, vote irregularities among others. Even the nutty people on the road remember the devastation caused by bribery - the funds allocated for their success disappear into some people pockets. Thus, some people believe corruption is the bane of many African countries. Corruption is the main obstacle to slow down, and knock African economy growing. The problem keeps happening in Africa, and the issue will hardly be solved.
Corruption can be defined as the use of entrusted power to accumulate public wealthy for personal benefit. Corruption is not peculiar to any country, continent or state; it is sure a global issue which is an endemic to all government all over the world. However, corruption is prevalent in the Niger delta region of Nigeria; public officers in this oil producing state of Nigeria are corrupt. Consequently, it has defied the Niger delta from developing politically and economically which has left the states reputation in a mess. Radicalization of youths, abject poverty and -political instability are the three leading effects of corruption in the Niger delta region of Nigeria.
This essay will attempt to explore the relationship between the two from the definitions, causes, consequences and the solutions. Corruption can be defined as the abuse of public power for private gain. (World Bank, 2004) Corruption is attracting a lot of attention around the world, and is a growing international and regional concern. According to Corruption Around the world (Tanzi, 1998), in its end-of-year editorial on December 31, 1995, The Financial Times characterized 1995 as the year of corruption.
In simple terms Public Corruption can be defined as the misuse of public office for private gain.Corruption is an outcome and reflection of a country’s economic,legal,cultural and political institutions. Transparency International(2005,2008) found that more than 65% of Indians had a first hand experience of paying bribes and nearly 45% used contacts to get job done.Institutionalised Corruption has long been prevalent in India.Big Business and individuals dictate bureaucratic norms by breaking law,paying off public servants just to gain access to elements of governance.
Conceptualizing Corruption in South Africa Conceptualizing Corruption in South Africa Amr Taha El Baba Lebanese American University SPECIFIC PURPOSE: To persuade my audience that corruption could cripple the progress in South African societies. Crime and corruption are not relevant to the degree of poverty present in a country as some of you might think. Corruption is a social phenomenon that every society deals with, regardless of the level of development in the country. What makes corruption a dangerous social phenomenon is its ability to adapt to the conditions present in any country.