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Corruption erodes social trust more in democracies than in autocracies
41–50 of 414 posts
Re: Corruption erodes social trust more in democracies than in autocracies
#42Earlier quoted context omitted.
> China's pretty corrupt politically but the social trust is quite high, the highest outside of northern europe as far as I can tell There are a few reasons for that that I can imagine: - China is one of very few autocracies that has managed to significantly improve the standard of living of most of its population. - The public trials and (sometimes) executions of allegedly corrupt individuals might help improve the…
>The same harsh penalties mentioned above might influence people to declare a higher level of social trust than they actually have. This 100%. Political imprisonment and reeducation camps are antithetical to any definition of a high trust society that I would subscribe to.
Doesn't matter too much what you subscribe to.
Eg Nazi Germany still benefited from a high-ish level of social trust, despite numerous atrocities.
Re: Corruption erodes social trust more in democracies than in autocracies
#43Earlier quoted context omitted.
No, it just means that in autocracy everyone assumes institutions are corrupt, so no trust is broken. If you don't have trust, it cant be broken.
Perhaps ironically, there are still institutions that to some extent rely on social trust in autocracies. For example, the black market is an institution. As is the "bribe economy" – the general understanding that getting X done generally costs you around Y, where Y is not arbitrary. Then there's the whole thing about criminal organizations that typically rely on social cohesion and upholding all kinds of rules.
The 'bribe economy' you described is one of the conjectured reasons PR China grew faster than India.
Re: Corruption erodes social trust more in democracies than in autocracies
#44Corruption is rife in the West. Wealth managers wine and dine with governments and essentially order policies that nobody voted for that continue to be developed regardless of which party won the elections. Same faces meet with new cohorts of politicians and continue to get their way whilst security services supposed to protect democracy hide their heads in the sand.
See things like Digital ID, censorship, surveillance - nobody voted for this, but certain wealth managers want this to happen and so it takes priority over issues that actually people would want to be resolved (housing, healthcare to name a few).
Re: Corruption erodes social trust more in democracies than in autocracies
#45> From V-Dem, we use two measures of democratic quality: the Regimes of the World (RoW) classification and the Liberal Democracy Index. The RoW (Lührmann et al., 2018) is a categorical measure distinguishing closed autocracies (no multiparty elections), electoral autocracies (multiparty elections that are not free and fair), electoral democracies (free elections but limited liberal protections), and liberal democraci…
Yes. In this sense the cold war never ended.
The country I live in consistently ranks as rather non-corrupt but I would disagree with this assessment since I know that our biggest party (where I was a member for some years) is slavishly loyal to one of our main 'stock market owner families', and would consider a lot of legal practices and regulations highly corrupt. Clearly this is also outside of the scope of this study.
Re: Corruption erodes social trust more in democracies than in autocracies
#46Earlier quoted context omitted.
Are we living in the same reality? Look at how business works in the rich west works. Everything is formalized with contracts, risk is portioned out and offloaded to every party under the sun. You bring in people with licenses and accreditation, 3rd party consultants, etc, etc. All of this work and expense is incurred so that if things go wrong then the parties all have precisely defined ways in which they can (expen…
Your response just proves his point. All of that paperwork, all of those contracts- that assumes you can trust the government to fairly enforce the law. In a society where corruption rules, you have no reason to spend time and money on any of that because you know you’re one bribe away from it all being kindling for your next bonfire. So yes, in areas with high corruption they don’t bother. They either just set aside…
Lawyers in the west are a high status career, because we trust the rule of law. In China, its considered a joke career. What is the point of being a lawyer, when relative position, influence and power within the CCP is the lone factor in winning a case? Big companies all end up with shadow positions that are there just to pay money out to CCP honchos and their kids. Board positions and executive positions go to the CCP.
Re: Corruption erodes social trust more in democracies than in autocracies
#47Earlier quoted context omitted.
Are we living in the same reality? Look at how business works in the rich west works. Everything is formalized with contracts, risk is portioned out and offloaded to every party under the sun. You bring in people with licenses and accreditation, 3rd party consultants, etc, etc. All of this work and expense is incurred so that if things go wrong then the parties all have precisely defined ways in which they can (expen…
Your response just proves his point. All of that paperwork, all of those contracts- that assumes you can trust the government to fairly enforce the law. In a society where corruption rules, you have no reason to spend time and money on any of that because you know you’re one bribe away from it all being kindling for your next bonfire. So yes, in areas with high corruption they don’t bother. They either just set aside…
In places where you can’t trust courts, you see organized crime fill the gap - goons start enforcing rules for the bad guys and there are no individual good guys big enough to stop an army of well paid goons. With tech enabling every kind of surveillance in the US, that could be a very dangerous combination (bad guys get privacy, while normal people can be ripped out of their homes).
Re: Corruption erodes social trust more in democracies than in autocracies
#48Corruption makes things more democratic in an autocracy by providing a mechanism of soft power by people not directly in the autocratic office. Corruption makes things less democratic in a pure democracy by granting more soft power to some individuals' 1/N office ( N= population size).
> Corruption makes things more democratic in an autocracy...
Technically, maybe yes? But autocrats tend to use "de facto authorized" corruption as a carrot for their loyal supporters, and "arrested for corruption" as the corresponding stick. Which leads to outcomes little different from an absolute dictatorship.
Except the autocrat now has a convenient scapegoat for problems affecting the populace - corrupt officials - and a nice narrative for explaining the sudden removals of officials whose loyalties or performance were not to the autocrat's liking.
Re: Corruption erodes social trust more in democracies than in autocracies
#49Earlier quoted context omitted.
>The same harsh penalties mentioned above might influence people to declare a higher level of social trust than they actually have. This 100%. Political imprisonment and reeducation camps are antithetical to any definition of a high trust society that I would subscribe to.
Doesn't matter too much what you subscribe to. Eg Nazi Germany still benefited from a high-ish level of social trust, despite numerous atrocities.
That’s actually the example I was thinking of.
You can’t honestly say that a country where citizens inform on each other and put each other in forced labor camps based on rumor is a society where trust is high.
> The Deutscherblick ("German Look") was a tense, habitual glance over the shoulder used by citizens in Nazi-era Germany before speaking about sensitive topics like food rations, Hitler jokes, or the war’s progress
Re: Corruption erodes social trust more in democracies than in autocracies
#50Well yeah. In a democracy you have a constitution with the government on what to trust them on. Inalienable rights that are agreed upon that they will not violate. With an autocracy there was no agreement and therefore no trust to begin with.
So yes, you'll be more pissed if someone violates the contract with you vs never having one in the first place.