What I found most interesting in the readings for this week was the notion that in some cases, corruption could serve as an aid to effective governance. I wonder if we never focus on this because political scientists and researchers tend to view corruption through the lens of being from a core/highly developed country. Therefore, corruption is seen as a hinderance to global development and therefore not great for multinational corporations, which are typically found in the same countries where research on corruption is done.
Therefore, are our measures of corruption too heavily centered on development indicators and not on governance indicators? How might we study corruption in a way that doesn’t automatically favor core countries?
And if we calibrate our indicators of corruption to its effects on governance, would there be situations where corruption aids the efficiency of bureaucracies and their policy implementations?
Good question. Sand in the wheels or grease in the wheels?