Out of all the assigned readings for the corruption section of POL 259, my favorite was “Corruption, Norms, and Legal Enforcement: Evidence from Diplomatic Parking Tickets” by Raymond Fisman and Edward Miguel. The article investigates the social norms and legal enforcement abilities, which are both contributors to corruption, of UN employees by studying their parking behavior. The authors found that officials from traditionally corrupt countries obtain more parking violations than those from traditionally non-corrupt countries. Additionally, the paper included other variables and tests, finding notable results that include the fact that parking violations increase by each additional month that the diplomat is living in New York City and that an increase in legal enforcements led to a drastic decrease in parking violations. Furthermore, this paper cites Illyana Kuziemko’s and Eric Weker’s report, “How Much is a Seat on the Security Council Worth,” which studies bribery and corruption in the UN Security Council and was the inspiration for my final project. Tentatively, I plan on investigating corruption and bribery within the UN by looking at data that suggests that the United States increases aid to rotating members on the Security Council in exchange for votes and political favors.
Excellent summary, fascinating final project.