Thursday, August 06, 2009

So, why are Swedes not so corrupt?

Am following up on a comment in a discussion on whether liberals are more corrupt than conservatives; the comment there was this:
How much you pay your public servants matters. And culture probably matters most of all. One of my favorite studies from the last few years looked at parking tickets for diplomats in New York, who of course can get away with leaving them unpaid because of diplomatic immunity. The Kuwaitis averaged 246 unpaid tickets per diplomat per year; the Swedes averaged zero.
Naturally, I followed up on that. So, what does the study say?
The authors find that there is a strong correlation between illegal parking and existing measures of home country corruption. This finding suggests that cultural or social norms related to corruption are quite persistent: even when stationed thousands of miles away, diplomats behave in a manner highly reminiscent of officials in the home country. Norms related to corruption are apparently deeply engrained, and factors other than legal enforcement are important determinants of corruption behavior.
I am willing to buy into this idea. I suppose there is a great deal of value in "lagom"

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