Bureaucracy and the Different Cures

BUREAUCRACY AND THE DIFFERENT CURES FOR GRAND AND PETTY CORRUPTION

CARL DAHLSTRÖM

WORKING PAPER SERIES 2011:20
QOG THE QUALITY OF GOVERNMENT INSTITUTE Department of Political Science University of Gothenburg Box 711, SE 405 30 GÖTEBORG February 2012 ISSN 1653-8919 © 2012 by Carl Dahlström. All rights reserved.

Bureaucracy and the different cures for grand and petty corruption Carl Dahlström QoG Working Paper Series 2011:20 February 2012 ISSN 1653-8919

Carl Dahlström, Ph.D. The Quality of Government Institute Department of Political Science University of Gothenburg [e-mail]

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Introduction
A well-structured and efficient public administration is a fundamental attribute of civilized society and essential for the state building process, which also means that it influences prosperity over the centuries (Fukuyama 2011; Mann 1986, 1993; Tilly 1985). An “impartial” (Rothstein and Teorell 2008) or “impersonal” (North, Wallis and Weingast 2009) treatment of citizens by the public administration is a basic quality in well-functioning states, and corruption being the opposite of impartiality, the role of public administration is important to understand – for its own sake, but also because the flaws of the administration are likely to spread to the society at large, with crippling long-term effects.1 Both “public administration” and “corruption” are vague concepts. This paper will therefore discuss only some elements of both concepts. I use the term “public administration” when referring generally to different ways of organizing the public sector in a nation state. When discussing the effect of the public administration on corruption, most scholars start from the way the ideal typical bureaucracy was described by Max Weber in the beginning of the 20th century (Weber 1978, chapter 11; concerning Weberian bureaucracy and corruption see for example Rauch and Evans 2000). When I use the term bureaucracy in this paper I therefore use this word

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