Summer Reading: Corruption and American Politics III - John Parrish's Essay

The third essay in Corruption and American Politics, a collection edited by Michael A. Genovese and Victoria A. Farrar-Meyers (Cambria, 2011), is by John M. Parrish, a professor at Loyola Marymount University. The essay, which has the intriguing title "Benevolent Skulduggery," starts out by asking the question, Is corruption ever justified? My short answer is that there are moral dilemmas where one must choose the least of two or more bad ways of handling a matter. But in most cases, this should be done openly and after consultation with neutral and knowledgeable individuals.

But Parrish's focus is more on "accepting a shady deal to facilitate one's chances of winning an election with vital public policy consequences." The problem with this formulation is that the average candidate believes that, if she loses the election, something dire will happen to the community. Few people can honestly make this judgment themselves, nor can those around a candidate. Once a candidate or her advisers put a matter in these terms, I think they're well on their way to justifying ethical misconduct.

Fortunately, Parrish moves beyond this example to make some very valuable observations about preferential treatment and institutional corruption.

The case study Parrish considers was originally formulated by Michael Walzer, but Parrish looks at it in light of Mark Warren's definition of corruption as duplicitous exclusion. A "pure-hearted" politician finds that, in order to win an election, he must make a deal with a ward boss regarding a school construction contract. Parrish finds three types of corruption in this case. One, citizens as voters and deliberators are duplicitously excluded from knowing about the candidate's commitment and, therefore, his character; knowing about it, they might choose to vote for someone else or, at least, provide less support to the candidate. Two, citizens are duplicitously excluded from influence in the contract matter; if they knew about the deal, they might complain about the contractor's interests being given special consideration. And three, citizens are duplicitously excluded from getting the best possible price for the public project (and other contractors are also being duplicitously excluded from a fair competitive bid).

For Lack of a Reason
Democracy theory in recent years has emphasized the importance of government officials providing honest reasons for their decision. Without this, it is impossible for the public to participate effectively, in deliberation or in voting.

Parrish applies this idea to government ethics. "[I]t is the lack of any ethically respectable reason for the inequalities it produces that provides the prima facie argument against discriminatory corruption. In Walzer's case, the corrupt contractor asks to be treated differently from other bidders and to receive special preferences in comparison with other members of the community. Yet neither the contractor nor the candidate can give an appropriate reason for this unequal treatment, at least not one that will stand the test of public scrutiny. As a consequence ... inequalities without reasons must be hidden or at a minimum glossed over in some way."

Institutional Corruption
Parrish also notes how this ties in with institutional corruption:  "Discriminatory corruption is easier to justify, easier to keep beneath the surface of public discourse, when it exists systematically amidst practices that are at once pervasive and hypocritical. When one public servant depends abjectly on the financial favor and political muscle of a private person or interest, his corruption is easy to spot; when practically every public servant shares a similar dependence — and when they are able to pass this off as a benign practice unworthy of attention or critique — their actions somehow come to require less justification than in the individual instance."

Finally, Parrish notes something very important about this sort of corruption, which I will be dealing with at further length in my next book review:

Citizens are entitled to the ear of their representative, but when listening becomes a commodity rather than a privilege of citizenship we have entered into the territory of discriminatory corruption.

Robert Wechsler
Director of Research-Retired, City Ethics

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