The corruption triangle revisited
AS you read this, I am out of town as one of the lecturers in a training for some government personnel. Expectedly, my assigned topic relates to COA audits and examination. It has been more than three years since I have been out of the loop so I had to refresh, read up and update myself on the ways by which public money is converted to private gain — some ingenious, some not-so-subtle, some outright brazen.
Inevitably, I had to revisit the Corruption Triangle, a widely used theory in understanding corruption and how it may be effectively addressed. It still is in the tool kit of my present areas of work, and is applicable in both the private and public sectors.
Corruption is generally defined as the dishonest or unethical conduct for personal material gain. It always involves an impairment of integrity, values, or moral principles. It occurs when there is a CONGRUENCE of: MOTIVATION, RATIONALIZATION, and OPPORTUNITY. All three factors must be present for corruption to succeed.
MOTIVATION is the driving force or compulsion to acquire material gain, ranging from the most basic need for money to pay for the medical needs of one gravely sick, and to the most unbridled of wants for simply more money to live a life of ease and leisure. RATIONALIZATION refers to the justification for acting on the motivation. It could be plain and simple survival, the life or death of the gravely ill; it could be impunity, the well founded belief that the perpetrator will get away with it just like so many others around him/her. OPPORTUNITY is the environment or set of circumstances that allows/ enables the act to transpire and be consummated. Pakikisama, patronage, lack of internal controls, effective mechanisms for accountability, and the culture of dedma make opportunity all the more rich and plenty.
Power is most often blamed for corruption. Indeed, it could be the motivation, justification, or opportunity for corruption. Government power would be the most influential because of its coercive element, and empirical evidence points to political and financial power as the most susceptible to corruption. But power in itself is not sufficient to commit or result in corruption. Without the two other elements of the Triangle, power actually increases competence, efficiency, and effectiveness. So power alone is beneficial; with the congruence of justification and opportunity, however, it can be lethal. But we have to deal with power anywhere we are, and if it is not ours, we do not have effective control of its exercise.
What is actually controllable only is Opportunity. To break the Corruption Triangle, only one element needs to be thwarted, and in the scheme of things, it is Opportunity. In the public sector, Opportunity may be thwarted by several mechanisms, including the separation of powers, system of checks and balances, independent oversight by the Legislature and Supreme Audit Institutions (like the COA), “doing business” and ethics/anti-corruption statutes, Ombudsman, open data and freedom of information, transparent budgeting, responsible and investigative journalism, and vigilant citizen participation.
We seem to have all these, don’t we? Or are they only aspirations as yet, perhaps weak and quibbling at the least? Do we really want to shape up? Your answer is as good as mine.