GAIC: What is Corruption? (November 8)

1. "Corruption" by Seumas Miller

2. Classroom activity about corruption:

1. Materials: A bingo set (boards, numbers, and chips to cover the numbers), small candy as rewards (I suggest wrapped candy, as they will exchange hands a lot).

2. Requirements: Someone to call the numbers in the bingo game, two people to give out the reward candy

3. Explanation of the activity:

• This classroom activity is based around the explanation for bribery that says it derives from the flow between an institution (usually the government) in a liberal democracy, which provides a morally sound service through a civil service formed by people to a society that deals with unequal economic and social conditions.
• The institution/government is represented by the game of bingo, which shouldn't need to be explained to the players and which is understood to work the exact same way no matter who is playing.
• The civil service is represented by the people who make the game happen for everyone else. I did it myself with the help of three students. Two were in charge of calling the numbers, and the other two helped me give out rewards.
• Society is represented by the group playing bingo. Everyone has a bingo board, but only 10% of the class has enough chips to cover their entire board, and another 10% only have the bare minimum to cover one line on their board. The remaining 80% have more than the bare minimum, but not enough chips to cover their entire board. This represents unequal economic conditions, where only a small portion of society has access to all the resources they need to perform to the best of their ability.

4. Stages of the game:

• At first, the game of bingo is played normally. The unequal playing conditions regarding the number of chips everyone has ensures that a few students will find it easy to win rewards, while another portion will find it extremely difficult, and the majority will find it easy enough while noticing the unfair advantage of the first 10%. This should be noticeable by having the people giving out the rewards visibly celebrating the victories of the 10% with the full lottery sets.
• When the consequences of the unequal conditions are noticed, one of the people giving out the rewards should point out to individual players (preferably not the 10% with an advantage or the 10% with the extreme disadvantage) that they can obtain more chips in exchange for one of the rewards, but to keep it hush hush. This is a bribe. When a player accepts, the person accepting the bribe should take chips from another player, preferably without asking for permission or counting them, and give them to the briber without the game stopping or answering to whoever they took the chips from.
• Eventually, more players start offering bribes, and if things happen correctly, it will no longer be possible to predict who will get rewards, or to tell who is playing without bribing.

5. Reflecting on the activity

• The first point illustrated by this activity is that in liberal democracies, the governments uses its civil service to provide a service for society, who in turn justify (or legitimize) said government. This is a circular flow that simplifies the interaction between any given society and its liberal democratic government. It does not apply to non-democratic or non-liberal governments.

I call this "the government triangle".

• The second point this activity illustrates is that when bribery is different from other offenses, such as fraud or robbery. While the three (fraud, robbery, and bribery) involve people taking things that don't belong to them, giving back those things would fix the damage done by a robbery or a fraud. For example, a bank robbery would be fixed by having the crook give back the money they took. With corruption, on the other hand, there is the added damage of the entire interaction changing within an institution after it no longer makes sense for people to refuse to bribe and take the difficult way of doing things out of pure moral duty. Corruption makes this irrational, which is why it becomes pervasive and it makes it difficult to pinpoint culprits. Simply punishing those who bribe would make larger bribes more valuable, as opposed to discouraging them. In the game, the larger problem is that the rules become unclear, and giving back their initial chips to everyone won't fix it by itself. 
• Finally, this game helps explain that when bribery occurs, it means the civil service is no longer putting institutions into practice for the whole of society. Now they are using the government (or their job putting the bingo game into practice) to benefit individuals, who then focus their attention on how they may obtain further benefits from the civil service instead of justifying the government's actions. This is shown by switching the arrows in the above triangle so it can be seen that when there is bribery, society is leading the civil service to use the government to benefit individuals, as opposed to exercising their responsibility to benefit everyone equally.

(Activity designed by Francisco García González. For any questions or suggestions, please contact me at fgarciagonzalez@itesm.mx)