Perceptions of Corruption in Germany: a Comparative Study

SIXTH FRAMEWORK PROGRAMME OF THE EUROPEAN COMMISSION RESEARCH PROJECT: CRIME AND CULTURE Crime as a Cultural Problem. The Relevance of Perceptions of Corruption to Crime Prevention. A Comparative Cultural Study in the EU-Accession States Bulgaria and Romania, the EU-Candidate States Turkey and Croatia and the EU-States Germany, Greece and United Kingdom Dirk Tänzler Konstadinos Maras Angelos Giannakopoulos Perceptions of Corruption in Germany: A Comparative Study Discussion Paper Series No 25 2008 2 Dr. Dirk Tänzler is currently Assistant Professor at the University of Konstanz and Co- ordinator of the EU-project ‘Crime and Culture’ 2006-2009. He was Visiting Professor at Vienna University 2005, 2006, Visiting Lecturer at the University of Luzern 2005-2008, Zeppelin University, Friedrichshafen 2006, University of Salzburg 2005, Humboldt University of Berlin 1995, 1996. Director of the Sozialwissenschaftliches Archiv Konstanz (“Alfred-Schütz-Gedächtnis-Archiv)/ Zentralarchiv der Deutschen Gesellschaft für Soziologie 2000-2005, Research Fellow at the University of Konstanz 1999-2000, Research Fellow at the Science Centre Berlin for Social Research (WZB) 1993-1997, Research Fellow at the Institute for Economic Culture at Boston University 1991-1992. He earned his postdoctoral degree (Habilitation) at the University of Konstanz 2005 and his Ph.D. at J.-W. Goethe University of Frankfurt a.M. 1990. His special research and teaching interests are Sociological Theory, Social Philosophy, History of Sociology, Sociology of Knowledge, Sociology of Culture, Political Sociology, Qualitative Methods, Hermeneutics, Media Analysis, Visual Sociology. Dr. Dr. Konstadinos Maras is Lecturer at the University of Tübingen, Faculty of Cultural Sciences, Institute of Art History, Germany. Ph.D. in Philosophy and Art History, University of Tübingen. His special research and teaching interests are Critical Theory, Aesthetics and the History of American Art, European Identity and Integration. He takes part in the EU- funded research Programme, ‘Crime and Culture’ supervising the deployment of the qualitative, computer-supported content and data analysis. Dr. Angelos Giannakopoulos , Head of Office of the EU-project ‘Crime and Culture’, Department of Sociology, University of Konstanz, Germany. Ph.D. in Sociology, University of Tübingen and Master in Political Science, University of Athens, Visiting Lecturer at the Eötvös Lorand University of Budapest, Hungary (2004) and Galatasaray University, Istanbul, Turkey (2007), Visiting Scholar at the Center for International and Area Studies at Yale University, USA (2004), Fellow of the Japanese Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS) and Visiting Scholar at Waseda University, Tokyo, Japan (2007). Fields of research and teaching: modernisation of Southeastern Europe, social history of Greece, Eastern churches’ tradition and modernity, European integration and identity, cultural aspects of corruption, qualitative methods of social research. 3 1. Introduction The issue of perceptions of corruption in Germany on a general societal level as well as in the specific target groups, which had been the subject of the research, appears quite curious. Consider for example the attitude of the police officer, who was until his retirement one of the most successful investigators and a well known expert in the field of anticorruption: although he spent half of his life fighting against corruption and for the optimisation of anticorruption policies in Germany, he responded to the question about his opinion on corruption in Germany that there was no corruption at all. It was at first quite perplexing for the interviewers until we realised what he meant: that there is no petty corruption in the everyday life of German citizens. His statement confirmed a commonly shared experience. But in what followed he made quite clear that the “lack” of corruption in everyday life – for example in the relationship between a state official and a client – is only the “sunny side” of the German public sphere. On the backstage there exists a long tradition of widespread structural corruption in the German society, for example in the construction industry, in the health service and in the supplier-industry for the automobile sector. What is striking is the fact that petty and grand corruption are not only two types of the same phenomenon. On the level of perception there is a systemic correlation. 1 Against this background the apparent frivolous statement of the police officer turns out to be something more and something other than a simple ideological effect in the sense of the rationalisation of a painful reality. The statement hits the core of the problem of perceptions of corruption in Germany as we want to demonstrate in this report on the basis of the empirical data from our research. In order to find an explanation for these perceptions, we relate these attitudes to the structural constraints and determinant factors in the field of action of the different target groups. Our analysis operates on four different levels: 1. We reconstruct the semantic patterns of the perceptions of the target groups on the empirical basis of our data from the expert interviews (text analyses). 2. We determine models of the pragmatic rules guiding an ideal-type actor in the institutionalised fields of the target groups (context analysis). 3. We compare the results from both explorations and try to explain why the actors’ perceptions are the way they are. 4. Finally we compare the perception patterns of all six target groups and outline an empirical (“grounded”) theory of the perception (or culture) of corruption in Germany. 1 See Tänzler 2008. 4 2. Corruption as a Factum For positivist thinking, a contradiction seems to be a proof of nonsense, i.e. talking that “makes no sense”. From a cultural perspective on the contrary, contradictions or paradoxes make the (social) world ‘go round’, as Plato, Hegel, Marx, or nowadays, Luhmann argue. In this way the sociologist’s task is not to refute common sense, but to explain the necessity of “illogical” mental operations or perceptions, i.e. to reconstruct the “real” structural factors that determine what at first seems to be irrational or absurd. From a philosophical or ethical point of view there is a logical contradiction and it is supposed that something contradictory cannot exist, because it is self-destroying. From a practical point of view of common sense (and also from a Christian worldview), the contradiction is an inherent property of this world. Referring to our cultural approach reality is a social construction, i.e. ‘real’ for somebody is what he thinks is real. Corruption then is not simply a “fact”, but rather a factum and as such the result of a human act that in the last instance is based on a value-oriented decision. However, the assumption of the social construction of reality does not imply that there are no objective or structural factors determining people’s actions. Society itself is the objective or structural framework of human action. The substance of social objectivity or structure is not natural (that is physical, causally determined), but the sharing of knowledge (mind, motives and possibilities or objective chances). 2 Therefore we are looking for the patterns of perceptions of corruption as an expression and means of societal ordering, i.e. constructing a world on the basis of a shared social stock of knowledge. The police officers’ perception accords with the data from the Corruption Perception Index (CPI). At an international anticorruption conference in Lisbon in 2006 an American colleague interpreted the CPI exactly in the same manner as the German police officer (“Germany is clean”). This would of course be very hilarious for a German aware of all the scandals in German politics (Lambsdorff, Kohl, Kanther, etc.) and in the German business world (SIEMENS, Volkswagen, etc). As the statement of our American colleague proves, the 3 German ideology of corruption is not as unique as it seems to be. 2 See Berger/Luckmann 1968; Tänzler 2006. 3 Certain analogies to British corruption cases evoke the conjecture that the German ideology of corruption is only a variant of a general Protestant ethic model that is characterized by bigotry. Another interpretation is demonstrated in the following analysis of the perception of corruption in the target group economy. 5 3. Corruption Perceptions in the Target Groups Target Group Politics General Remarks From a historical perspective, the origins of corruption lie in the political sphere. For the ancient Greeks corruption was a form of deviation and perversion of good governance, i.e. it expressed a moral value judgement on institutional rule. On the contrary, in the course of the contemporary strict differentiation between the private and the public sphere the contemporary citizen understands corruption as a judgement on the moral behaviour of individuals. The ancient and the modern definitions of corruption are formally identical – only the causes are different: societal decadence in the one case and personal failure in the other. In both cases corruption is not a legal term (see target group justice), but a form of deviance from social norms (Höffling 2002). On the other side corruption is considered to be a crime and consequently a subject of prosecution only in reference to a legal definition. Political corruption (buying an office or votes) was a common legitimate practise in the modern democracies up to the end of the 19 th century (Beyme 1984), until the first anticorruption laws were enacted. But still today the difference between legally sanctionable corrupt conduct (for example buying votes or an office) and the illegitimate forms of granting/receiving advantages (landscape services, lobbying) still holds true. Both phenomena of political corruption are rooted in the exchange relations that make up the fabric of societies based on a market economy. These advantages need not necessarily be of monetary nature, because the nature of the action of granting/receiving advantages can be traced back to the social relations of exchange, which can take all possible forms.

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