Public and Nonprofit Management Curbing Corruption, Enh.docx

Public and Nonprofit Management: Curbing Corruption,
Enhancing Efficiency
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A Chain Is As Strong As It’s Weakest Link
Behind The Mask Of Our Governance
Public and nonprofit management is the development or
application of methodical and systematic techniques that are
designed
to analyze and make the operations of governments and public-
service nonprofit organizations more efficient and effective.
The majority of public management’s key methods was initially
established, in large part and occasionally in whole part, as
a reaction to corrupt governance, and each still is used to curb
it.
Corruption’s causes are structural, cultural, and, of course,
personal.

Corruption’s Causes
Governmental Structure and Graft
A large number of administrative units in a country lowers
corruption. Illegal, tax-evading, “shadow economy is smaller in
federal countries than in unitary states, although an increase in
the income tax rate will unambiguously increase the taxpayer’s
level of evasion.
Fiscal decentralization, a corollary of federal systems, also
appears to reduce corruption in countries, even in those that are
highly politicized.5
Culture and Corruption
National cultures that are poor and rural, and which have
centralized governments, politically disengaged citizenries, a
repressed press, citizens who are distrusting of each other,
greater regulatory activity, and poorly paid public officials
associate with high rates of corruption.
Note: An agency’s culture also can encourage graft when: there
is no “clear integrity policy”; colleagues are loyal to one
another; and supervision is too lax or too oppressive.
The Corrupt Public Official
Money is the leading reason why public officials become
corrupt followed closely by love, friendship, and status.
Corrupt officials often have domineering personalities, are
popular, and are viewed as effective, characteristics that give
them “space to maneuver.”
In fact, large physical spaces, such as disproportionately big
desks, can cause the people occupying them to feel “more
powerful,” which, in turn, leads to “increases in dishonest
behavior.”
They slowly “‘slide down’ toward corruption” and maintain “a
long, institutionalized relationship” with their corruptors.
Corrupt officials rarely think of themselves as corrupt,

even though they commit multiple corrupt acts.
Lord Acton’s famous phrase, uttered in 1887, that, “Power tends
to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely,” is not
really accurate.
Gaining power merely reveals its owner’s already-existing
character, for good or ill.
Note: Moral power holders do not misuse their power, but less
moral ones do.
Why Does Corruption Endure?
The continuance of those governmental and cultural conditions
that produce corruption also ensure its persistence.
It appears that the more centralized the government, the more
“fused” that political power is within it,
and the less access that the press has to the government,
Democracies are largely free of these conditions, and the more
vibrant the democracy—that is, large numbers of citizens voting
regularly in competitive elections—
the more honest the government.
By contrast, in democracies where there is low voter turnout
corruption often
is deeply entrenched.
Regrettably, some voters prefer corrupt democracies to honest
ones. In democratic jurisdictions, graft often associates with
reduced public spending.
If citizens’ demands for services are “relatively elastic,” then
this association sometimes leads to lower taxes.
“Under this condition,” some citizens who favor low taxes may
“hold their noses and vote” for continued corruption.
Fraud in the Independent Sector

There are three kinds of corruption in the independent sector:
nonprofit organizations that defraud governments,
or defraud their donors,
and nonprofit employees who defraud their organizations.
Confronting Corruption In American
What is the extent of political graft in the United States,
and what is being done about it?
Annually, fewer than 3,000 public officials and “others
involved” are charged, convicted, or awaiting trial for public
corruption.
The leading charges are
theft and bribery in programs involving federal funds;
high ranking or elected officials are found in only 2 percent of
these corruption cases, and most cases involve low-ranking
federal or local officials. Happily, overall corruption is in
decline.
Typically, from more than 300 to over 400 of these prosecutions
involve federal officials in any given year.
American Cultural and Structural Inhibitors
Cultural Inhibitors American culture, with its premium on
openness and access discourages corruption.
Relative to large power distance cultures, open and accessible
countries “have a very high proportion” of public employees
who report unethical or illegal conduct in their agencies;
Structural Inhibitors Americans enjoy a relatively prosperous
economy; live mostly in urban areas; and their governments are
bombarded unrelentingly by a robust, sometimes rabid, press.
These factors inhibit corruption.
In addition, Americans are governed by a decentralized and
diffused public sector, a condition that discourages graft on a

global scale.
An unexpected structural factor is population:
In those American states with isolated capitals in sparsely
populated regions, corruption is considerably more common.
This seems to be attributable, in part, to less media coverage
than the capital.
Political Ways Inhibit or Suppress The Vote
Political Factors Incumbent public officials have been known to
make it difficult to vote, sometimes to protect their fraudulent
shenanigans,
and this pays off, at least for a select few.
Cities that discourage voter turnout through such devices as
holding local elections on dates that differ from the dates of
national or state elections,
not mailing polling place locations, or requiring voters to
register one month before the election,
among other inhibitors, correlate with larger proportions of city
council members who both run for re-election and who win.
The good news is that, when there is a high incidence of
corruption in the American states, voter turnout increases,
a tribute to the honesty and common sense of Americans.
When it comes to corruption, voting counts.
Curbing Corruption: The Case for Balance and Will
The field has come a long way in discovering devices that can
lead to cleaning up corrupt governance.
Old, New, and a Balanced Approach
Traditional corruption controls—such as audits, inspections,
and civil service reform—work, but often only up to a point.

Let us not be too quick to dismiss these practices because “a
strong case can be made to remain sharp” in using traditional
controls, which account for “approximately one-third” of all the
origins of corruption cases.
No other method of exposing public misconduct, such as whistle
blowing, remotely approaches this level.
The key to curbing corruption is one of flexibly and
continuously mixing methods in a balanced and sensitive
manner.
Exposing Is Not Disposing We are not implying that the many
methods of public management can, in and of themselves,
actually eliminate graft.
Rather, they were designed only to discourage corruption by
making its entry less easy and its discovery more likely.
Even to merely discourage graft, however, corruption controls
must first be used. Otherwise, they are irrelevant.
Prosecuting Corruption: The Crucial Federal Role
State and local governments investigate and prosecute fraud,
some quite successfully. New York City’s Department of
Investigation, founded in 1873, is exemplary;
in just one decade, its officers arrested on corruption charges
half of the city’s taxi, building, and plumbing inspectors.
But there are difficulties when grass-roots governments pursue
grass-roots graft.
State attorneys general and district attorneys “are generally not
equipped with the resources needed for a political undercover
investigation”;
most are elected, which can lead to their reluctance to
investigate corrupt officials in their own parties;
and “they often are hampered by state laws that are less
expansive than federal ones.”
As a consequence, the federal government is central to the
curtailment of corruption at every governmental level,
initiating “perhaps as many as 80 percent” of all prosecutions

for public corruption in the United States.
Big Graft: Deep, Systemic, and Legal
There are far deeper and more systemic forms of corruption.
Regrettably, at least in Washington, these forms are entirely
legal—but are no less corrupt for it.
Washington’s Corrupt Perpetrations One such form is
Washington’s revolving door, which arguably has rendered
Congress and federal regulatory agencies the handmaidens of
special interests;
Wall Street is particularly notorious in this regard, but there
are many additional examples.
The other is the Supreme Court, which has effectively ruled that
money displaces people in politics, and that corruption must be
defined in such a limited way
that the Court’s definition verges on the inaccurate, or is, at
best, incomplete.
Money Is Speech Congress first regulated money in politics in
1907, when it passed the Tillman Act, which banned corporate
political contributions. Over the next sixty-seven years,
Congress enacted laws that further restricted money’s political
role.
Congress’s rationale throughout was consistently the same: the
outsized influence of a wealthy few could cause corruption and
greater political inequality, and undermine public trust of
government.
In 1976 in Buckley v. Valeo, the Court held seven-to-one that
political donations were a form of expression,
and thus were protected under the First Amendment (the
Freedom of Speech Clause).
The Court also rejected Congress’s longstanding position that
political contributions from the rich could lead to political
inequality.
Corporations Are People—Just a Different Sort of People Who

Never Die In 2010, in Citizens United v. Federal Election
Commission, the Court confirmed, five-to-four, split along
partisan lines, the Orwellian notion that money is speech, and
further ruled that
the Constitution protects not only political donations from
individuals, but also contributions from associations of
individuals, such as corporations and unions
Purchasing Public Policies
The consequences of Buckley and Citizens United? “There is
quite possibly more money in American politics today than at
any point in the country’s history.”
Both decisions have rendered the United States tax code, at
nearly four million words, the world’s longest. Why?
Because “America is unique among democracies in requiring, at
all levels of politics, that vast amounts of cash be raised from
the private sector” to win elections.
To raise this money, legislators sell amendments to the tax code
to special interests, which may account for the fact that, since
2001, Congress has made, on average, one change to the tax
code every day.
Buying an advantageous line in the tax code is “the world’s
ultimate ‘pay for play’ setup.”
Understandably, four-fifths of Americans, “regardless of their
political philosophy, party identification, age, education, sex, or
income level,”
would vote to limit the amount of campaign money that
congressional candidates could spend.78
Graft as a Quid-Pro-Quo Microdot
In 2014, the Court plopped the cherry on this soured sundae in
McCutcheon v. Federal Election Commission, decided five-to-
four, again along partisan lines.

The ruling defined corruption in the most microscopic and
narrow terms conceivable: as a quid pro quo (in essence, a
direct bribe for a specific service), even though corruption
almost never operates as a quid pro quo, and, when it rarely
does so, it is
confined largely to the lower levels of the food chain.
To expand the power of the rich in elections in which each
citizen supposedly is involved as an equal with every other
citizen, and then to limit the prosecution of those who unduly
influence policymakers to a form of graft that is almost never
present in actuality,
is very deep and systemic corruption indeed.
From Anticorruption To Efficiency
A cruel irony of corruption controls is that, through their
increasingly labyrinthine fiscal systems and time-consuming
and enervating checks, rules, and red tape, they can
stymie efficient and productive governing.
Public administration, like any other phenomenon, is subject to
W. Ross Ashby’s law of requisite variety, which states that
regulatory (or, in our case, governing) mechanisms must equal
in their complexity those of the systems that they are meant to
control.
In its public plumage, Ashby’s law pertains not only to more
tangled forms of corruption, but also to increasingly convoluted
problems of more efficient governing.
Note: new approaches for anticorruption programs can result in
improved administration, if administrators are both confident
and discerning enough to pick and choose among techniques —
or even parts of techniques, old as well as new—that would
improve the performance of their agencies and nonprofit
organizations.
It is an approach that works.
Although many of the methods of public management “have

ended up being castigated and even ridiculed, these methods
have provided an ever-improving series of public management
techniques that can, and indeed are, improving government
performance.”
Lock Them Up!
Corruption in the United States
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corruption_in_the_United_States
List of United States federal officials convicted of corruption
offenses
List of United States state officials convicted of federal
corruption offenses
List of United States local officials convicted of federal
corruption offenses
Convictions of government officials
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_federal_political_scandals
_in_the_United_States
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_federal_political_sex_sca
ndals_in_the_United_States
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Political_scandals_in_th
e_United_States_by_state_or_territory
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_American_state_and_local
_politicians_convicted_of_crimes
Crime in the United States
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_in_the_United_States
Week 8 CCC: Part 8 Template
8A. Topic Selection Reflection
8B. Implementation Analysis: Satisfaction

8C. Implementation Analysis: Dissatisfaction
8D. Implementation Analysis: Additional Changes
8E. Project Reflection
Week 8 Course Project: Part 8 – Evaluating Your Progress
Submit Assignment
· Due Saturday by 11:59pm
· Points 100
· Submitting a file upload
Required Resources
Read/review the following resources for this activity:
· Link (Word doc): Week 8 CCC Part 8 Template (Use this
template to complete the assignment.)
· Minimum of 4 scholarly sources (This can include all course
materials and your previous research.)
Introduction: Communication Change Challenge (CCC) Part 8
Part 8 is where you will evaluate the impact of the project as it
relates to interpersonal communication and the course
objectives (COs). It is important here that you clearly
demonstrate your understanding of many of the course concepts
through application to your course project.
Instructions
Remember that your patterns for communicating interpersonally
have been developed over many years. Therefore, you should be

neither surprised nor discouraged to find that changing your
interpersonal communication behavior takes time. In order for
you to take this project to its fullest potential, you may need to
continue to modify, implement, and reinforce these new
behaviors for far longer than the duration of the project. It is
possible, however, to modify the way you communicate, and
because the payoff is improvement to our communication and
relationship outcomes, changing interpersonal communication is
worth the effort. You have now implemented your target
behaviors for about two weeks, write a final evaluation
addressing the following:
8A.Topic Selection Reflection
What was the course material that suggests that this particular
communication behavior was an appropriate target for change?
8B.Implementation Analysis: Satisfaction
Consider the implementation of your new behaviors in Part 7,
and address the following:
· Which of your behaviors particularly please you?
· What was the course material that suggests that this new
communication behavior is a positive change?
8C.Implementation Analysis: Dissatisfaction
· Were there any situations in which you were dissatisfied with
your approach to improving your interpersonal communication?
· What was the course material that suggests that this particular
communication behavior continues to be less than ideal?
· If you were not dissatisfied with your approach, why do you
think this happened?
8D.Implementation Analysis: Additional Changes
· What changes would you still like to make?
· What was the course material that suggests that this
modification would complement or enhance your
communication outcomes?

8E.Project Reflection
Consider the entire course project, and address the following:
· How have your interpersonal relationships changed as a result
of this project?
· What is the course material that suggests that these particular
relationship changes are positive or negative?
Note: For each question, be detailed and specific. You need to
use several course materials from different chapters, course
outcomes, videos, assessments, articles, etc.
Your course project evaluation will be graded for
comprehensive content, analysis evaluation, application of the
course material, organization, and so forth. Please consider its
weight when you place value on its importance to your final
course grade.
Writing Requirements (APA format)
· Length: 2-3 pages (not including title page or references page)
· 1-inch margins
· Double spaced
· 12-point Times New Roman font
· Title page
· References page (minimum of 4 scholarly sources)
Grading
This activity will be graded based on the W8 CCC Grading
Rubric.
Course Outcomes (CO): 1, 2, 4, 5, 7
Due Date: By 2 p.m. EST on Friday
Big Democracy, Big Bureaucracy
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“The true test of a good government is its aptitude and tendency
to produce a good administration.”
Alexander Hamilton,
The Federalist Papers
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AN UNPROMISING PRECIS
The roots of Americans’ profound suspicion of executive
authority are deeply sunk, and are apparent in the nation’s
earliest formats of governing.
One such format was Articles of Confederation, which, from
1781 to 1789, provided the first framework for the new nation
and exemplified Americans’ contempt for princely prerogatives.
There was no chief executive.
The states reigned supreme under the Articles.
At about the same time that the Articles of Confederation were
being written, eleven states were busily drafting their own
constitutions and they also reflected the Articles’ anti-executive
paranoia.
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Governing in a Distrusting Culture
Distrust of Government Americans’ distrust focuses on
government’s size, direction, performance, and power.
They reserve their deepest distrust for those parts of

government that house elected officials,
and display their highest trust for agencies with public safety or
military missions, findings that “are consistent to a large extent
with findings in other Western countries.”
Over thirteen years, the number of Americans who thought that
the federal, state, and local governments have a “negative
impact” on their day-to-day lives grew, on average, by more
than three-fifths, a startling increase,
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Why Trust Matters
High levels of trust in government correlate, positively and
internationally, with: less political corruption (public esteem, a
corollary of trust, for government also associates with lower
corruption);
better “government performance on the economy”; greater
economic growth and opportunity; superior “perceived
outcomes” by networks of governments;
less “negative” popular evaluations of the performance of the
entire political system; and even with lower rates of street
crime.
In the United States, high levels of trust in government not only
associate with lower levels of corruption and street crime,
but also with energetic and widespread public policy
innovation.
Indeed, trust trumps public participation in agency decision
making, accessibility of services, and even equality of treatment
as a correlate with higher public performance.
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Hobbled Governments and their Growth
Constraining the Federal Government The American founders
created a Constitution that divides power between the national

and state governments,
and checks and balances federal power among its executive,
legislative, and adjudicative branches.
Constraining State Governments Perhaps the least direct device
of direct democracy is the referendum,
or a legislatively authorized popular vote to approve or
disapprove proposed policy.
Constraining Local Governments Local governments use most
of the devices of direct democracy
even more liberally than do states.
Constraining the Grass Roots The people have imposed on their
state and local governments the devices of direct democracy, or
the use of specially called elections to approve or disapprove
policy proposals or to retain or remove elected officials.
“Every state has some form of legislative process which allows
the government to place issues on the ballot.”
Though direct democracy clearly constrains governments, it also
associates with some good things:
it likely renders governments more responsive to the electorate,
and it correlates positively with lower levels of corruption;
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Are Bureaucrat’s to Blamed for Government’s Failures?
Do Americans really believe that their public administrators are
against them?
Evidently not. Overall, “the American public does not appear as
disdainful of bureaucrats as the projected media image would
indicate.”
Why do Americans like public administrators in spite of their
deepening distrust of elected leaders and government, and the
unremitting bombardment fired by politicians, professors,
reporters, and entertainers blasting bureaucrats?
Because bureaucrats deliver.

The high regard that Americans have for agencies with which
they have dealt is significant because “the impact of a negative
experience with a public agency is much more pronounced than
the effect of a positive one ….
Decreasing the number of disappointed clients will have a
stronger effect on increasing trust in … government than
increasing the number of already well-pleased clients.”
A Paradox of Power
So what does all this mean for the American public
administrator? It means that the United States has produced a
paradoxical public administration characterized
by cultural, institutional, and legal limits on executive action,
and by a nonetheless powerful public administrative class.
“The fragmented managerial climate of government” actually
grants public administrators more opportunities for
acquiring power than are available to their corporate
counterparts.
Note: The importance of staying power by bureaucracies
permits them to wait out elected officeholders and the policies
that they push.
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Discretionary Power
Discretionary power refers to a public administrator’s authority
to make and administer regulatory and bureaucratic policies,
and to interpret and implement legislative policies.
Discretion counts. In the American states, for example, “greater
managerial discretion,” in tandem with deregulation, “drove
reforms” in the critical areas of budgeting, procurement.
Legislatures frequently enable bureaucratic discretion.

For instance, Congress, in 1988, effectively granted the Federal
Emergency Management Agency total authority to determine not
only how much assistance is needed in a disaster, but even how
much aid is desirable.
For fifty years, Congress battled bureaucratic discretion by
imposing on agencies the legislative veto, or the repeal by the
legislature of an executive action.
In 1983, the Supreme Court declared the practice to be
unconstitutional.
In 2017, Congress remembered its Congressional Review Act of
1996, which allows Congress to review how agencies fill in the
blanks in a law,
but only when Congress specifically grants such an authority to
the agencies in that law.
The objective is to assure that agencies closely to the spirit of
the law
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Knowledge is Power
Question: How has the bureaucracy grown so in political
importance and independence?
Answer: Because the old saw, “knowledge is power,” has never
been more salient than it is today.
Public administrators work in bureaucracies, and bureaucracies
are more likely to be found in big, complicated systems and
societies, where knowledge is critical to success and often to
survival.
The more economically and socially complex states, for
instance, also have the more advanced, informed, and well-
developed legislative bureaucracies.
The larger the city, the likelier the city manager will be
intensely involved in municipal policymaking.

When forces external to the executive branch do gain
knowledge, they also gain power at its expense.
When governors, legislators, or lobbyists informational
advantages over estimated program costs” relative to state
agency heads, they “significantly affect agency budget
requests.”
The more “have highly professionalized the state legislature,
and the larger its staff, the lower the influence of the executive
agencies in their own policy areas.
As a matter of course, bureaucracy and knowledge reside most
frequently in the executive branch.
Potentially, however, any branch of government, and any
special interest, can create its own bureaucratic knowledge
base, and when it does, power follows.
As we all know, power can be misused, and, because knowledge
is power, knowledge sometimes is deliberately distorted to
serve the powerful.
Questions
How do you know when to trust or not to trust your
government?
What is fake news and how does it shape and impact your
opinions of people you depend on for doing their job?
It’s easy to distrust the people you dislike, but do you verify the
information from the people you trust?

System’s Thinking and Public Administration
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Theories, Principles & Practice of Public Administration
System’s Thinking and Public Administration
Big Democracy, Big Bureaucracy
Historical Paradigm Shifts of Public Administration
The Threads of Organization: Theories
The Fabric of Organizations: Forces
The Fibers of Organizations: People

Managing Human Capital in the Public and Nonprofit Sectors
Intersectoral Administration Intergovernmental Administration
All solutions are tomorrow’s problem,
Redefine the problem as a challenge,
Then look for opportunities.
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Beware of Sweeping Generalities
Generalization is the formulation of general concepts from
specific instances by abstracting common properties.
“I think women are really good at making friends and not good
at networking. Men are good at networking and not necessarily
making friends. That's a gross generalization, but I think it
holds in many ways.”

Madeleine Albright
“Even the recognition of an individual whom we see every day
is only possible as the result of an abstract idea of him formed
by generalization from his appearances in the past.”
James G. Frazer
“The word generalization in literature usually means covering
too much territory too thinly to be persuasive, let alone
convincing. In science, however, a generalization means a
principle that has been found to hold true in every special case.
… The principle of leverage is a scientific generalization.”
Buckminster Fuller
“All generalizations are false, including this one.”
Mark Twain
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What is Public Administration?
It’s a System
It’s Power
It’s a Business
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What’s a System?
Systems thinking is the process of understanding how things,
regarded as systems, influence one another within a whole.
In nature, systems thinking examples include ecosystems in
which various elements such as air, water, movement, plants,
and animals work together to survive or perish.
In organizations, systems consist of people, structures, and
processes that work together to make an organization "healthy"
or "unhealthy".
Systems thinking has been defined as an approach to problem

solving, by viewing "problems" as parts of an overall system,
rather than reacting to specific part, outcomes or events and
potentially contributing to further development of unintended
consequences.
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Systems thinking is not just one thing but
a set of habits or practices within a framework that is based on
the belief that the component parts of a system can best be
understood
in the context of relationships with each other and with other
systems, rather than in isolation.
Systems thinking focuses on cyclical rather than linear cause
and effect.
The several ways to think of and define a system include:
A system is composed of parts.
All the parts of a system must be related (directly or indirectly),
else there are really two or more distinct systems
A system is encapsulated, has a boundary.
The boundary of a system is a decision made by an observer, or
a group of observers.
A system can be nested inside another system.
A system can overlap with another system.
A system is bounded in time.
A system is bounded in space, though the parts are not
necessarily co-located.
A system receives input from, and sends output into, the wider

environment.
A system consists of processes that transform inputs into
outputs.
A system is autonomous in fulfilling its purpose.
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What’s Power?
Can do….
The ability to accomplish a goal…
A series of interacting systems that enable’s one with the ability
to accomplish a goal…
Power is the Key factor that allows:
the follower to accomplish their task,
the leader to influence others,
and the manager to accomplish organizational goals.
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What’s a Business?
A business is a System that’s called an Enterprise that provides
a product [ goods or services] for a consumer that resolves a
problem and or satisfy a need.
As rumor has it, Abraham Lincoln said the purpose of
government is to provide those services that the individual is
unable to provide for themselves.
Types of Businesses‘
Volunteer
Non-profit
For-profit
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DO WE NEED GOVERNMENT?
Not everyone agrees that bureaucracy and government are basic
to society.
Some contend, in a distorted extension of Thomas Paine’s
dictum “that government is best which governs least,” that the
very best government is no government at all.
As a prominent conservative explains, “What holds together the
conservative movement” is that conservatives “want the
government to go away.”
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The Wrecking-Crew View
It has been argued that, when those who want the government to
go away are in power,
they deliberately delegitimize government in the eyes of the
public.
Restrained by only what is politically infeasible, these “no-
government conservatives” act as a “wrecking crew” that
sabotages governmental competence;
tolerates, even encourages, corruption; and privatizes or sheds
altogether core public responsibilities.
It is this perspective that has encouraged the founding of
roughly a thousand extreme anti-government groups (the
number varies widely from year to year),
such as those that influenced the bombers of a federal building
in 1995, that killed 168 adults and children, and the armed
takeover and trashing of federal facilities in Oregon, in 2015,
resulting in one death by shooting.
Americans do not subscribe to the wrecking-crew view.
Most Republicans and Democrats agree that Washington should
play a prominent role in controlling terrorism, responding to
natural disasters, and managing food, medicine safety,
infrastructure, and even immigration.

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IS GRAFT GOOD?
Graft, or corruption, is the conduct of dishonest practices.
This is the nicest definition; standard dictionaries also offer
such nouns as “putrefaction,” “perversion,” “depravity,” and
“debasement” in their several definitions.
Defying even the basic definition of corruption is the contention
that graft-ridden government can be good. It has two
components:
the political and the economic.
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Fighting for Fraud: Corruption Improves Public Services
The political argument for corruption is an old chestnut
originated by a distinguished political scientist who studied
corruption in Chicago.
Graft, as understood in American English, is a form of political
corruption, being the unscrupulous use of a politician's
authority for personal gain. Similarly, political graft occurs
when funds intended for public projects are intentionally
misdirected in order to maximize the benefits to private
interests.
Political justification for graft is that corrupt political machines
“work,” and perform “many important social functions.”
In exchange for votes and the public’s tolerance for politicians
and their toadies who plunder the public till, ward heelers fix
their constituents’ traffic tickets, get them jobs, lower their tax
bills, waive zoning and building codes, and attend their
funerals, among a slew of other services, some more licit than
others.
Unfortunately, corruption slashes governments’ legitimate
revenue by as much as half, and, with it, public services,

and adds from 3 to 10 percent to the cost of legitimate services
because citizens must bribe officials to acquire them.
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Question
Is government the problem or the solution?
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PUB 503 ML:Theories, Principles, & Practice of Public
Administration Questions & Key Terms [Day One]
Critical Thinking Questions
1. What is a sweeping generalization and why should one be
concern about its use? Give at least two examples of how some
folk’s misuse them.
2. What is systems thinking and how does it help folks
understand how things influence one another within a political
or non-political environment. Give at least two personal
examples that you have experience at home or at work.
3. What is power? Does the organization empower us to
accomplish a goal? If yes how is this accomplished? Give at
least two examples.
4. How does the misuse of power corrupt the values and
objectives of the organization and reduces their ability to
satisfy the stakeholders that depend on them. Is corruption good
or bad? Explain your answer
5. What is a business? Is government a business and what type
of business is it? Are all governments the same? Explain
6. Why does trust matter in government?

7. Identify some of the political ways that can inhibit or
suppress the vote.
Key Terms: Please define and give one example
1. Discretionary power
2. wrecking-crew view
3. Cultural Inhibitors
4. Structural Inhibitors
5. quid pro quo

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