Institutional Corruption: The Presentist Social Functionalist Account

Abstract

This chapter considers systemic corruption. Corruption is widely recognized to be a major social problem, but its characterization continues to be very controversial. Indeed, it is now commonly noted that what is being corrupted need not be an individual person at all but can be an entire social institution. This kind of institutional corruption has, especially in the last few years, come to be seen as ever more central and important. In this chapter, I advocate for a novel theory of this phenomenon, according to which it is the result of an individual or collective agent acting in ways that prevent a social institution from partially or fully fulfilling its function. In turn, the function of a social institution is spelled out in line with presentist social functionalism. The chapter shows that this new theory of institutional corruption is a useful addition to the literature, as it situates the study of this phenomenon in a wider functionalist approach toward the social sciences and does justice to the complexity of institutional corruption—both when it comes to its inherent nature and its moral evaluation.

5.1 Introduction

Corruption is widely recognized to be a major social problem, but its characterization continues to be very controversial. So, while it is frequently noted that corruption is “the abuse of power by a public official for private gain” (Nye 1967), not all corruption needs to involve public officials (doctors need not be public officials but can be corrupt if they prescribe medicine in accordance with who pays them to do so, rather than with what is best for the patient) or involve a private gain (when a county clerk grants wedding licenses in line with their personal moral or religious convictions and not the law, it can be a case of corruption but need not involve any private gain whatsoever).

Indeed, it is now commonly noted that what is being corrupted need not be an individual person at all but can be an entire social institution (Thompson 1995; Lessig 2013; Miller 2017; Ferretti 2018). This kind of institutional corruption has, especially in the last few years, come to be seen as ever more central and important (Thompson 2018; Miller 2017). Many of the major contemporary social problems appear to center on the undermining of institutions like voting, the free press, policing, or health care: instead of every citizen being equally able to influence political decision-making, to be informed about what is going on in the wider society, to be secure, or to be healthy, the institutions meant to provide these goods often seem to fail in their task (Thompson 1995; Lessig 2013; Miller 2017). This form of corruption thus deserves—and has seen—significant amounts of scrutiny in the last few years.

However, it continues to be a challenge to specify exactly what makes something a case of institutional corruption (Thompson 2018; Ferretti 2018). Exactly which actions subvert the relevant institution, and exactly why is it the case that these actions subvert the institution? What, specifically, is an institution’s purpose? This chapter seeks to further the debate surrounding institutional corruption by answering these questions. After all, without a clear characterization of the nature of institutional corruption, fighting or avoiding it is difficult—for it is then not clear precisely what is to be fought or avoided (Rothstein and Varraich 2017).

The chapter, therefore, presents a general, philosophically and social scientifically well-grounded theory of institutional corruption that is centered on the idea that institutions have a social and not inherently normative function that is being subverted in cases of institutional corruption. While this theory shares some superficial components with some of the existing ones in the literature—especially those of Lessig (2013) and Miller (2017)—it is, in fact, quite different from the latter. In particular, by being built on the most compelling form of social functionalism—presentist social functionalism—the theory presented here has a solid theoretical foundation, does justice to the complex ethical nature of institutional corruption, and is in line with work in the social sciences more generally. Moreover, this theory is shown to have several important novel features: it is graded (institutions can be more or less corrupted), general (it can be applied to political contexts, but also many other social phenomena, from social media to private corporations and non-governmental organizations like the International Federation of Association Football [FIFA]), and unifying (it makes clear why highly corrupt societies tend to become unstable, whatever exactly the cause or moral status is of the corruption).

The chapter is structured as follows. Section I lays out the nature of institutional corruption and, following the lead of chap. 2, develops desiderata for its compelling characterization. Section II uses presentist social functionalism to develop a new non-normative teleological theory of institutional corruption that satisfies the desiderata of sect. I. Section III brings out some further novel benefits of the resulting treatment. Section IV concludes.

5.2 Institutional Corruption

Institutional corruption concerns cases where people engage in actions that undermine a particular social institution. These actions need not involve a private gain or quid pro quo exchanges of favor; indeed, these actions need not be inherently immoral or illegal. However, these actions still prevent the institution from operating as it is meant to. Such cases have come to be seen as being of major importance when it comes to ensuring that societies function in ways that benefit all their members (Miller 2017; Lessig 2013; Thompson 2018; Ferretti 2018; Ceva and Ferretti 2018; Della Porta and Vannucci 2012).

For example, in a given democracy, elections might be won only if candidates can obtain vast amounts of funding from major sponsors: only this ensures that they get heard or seen by voters. In that case, though, the only candidates who have a chance of obtaining office are those able to attract the necessary funds to finance their campaigns. This gives big political donors (businesses or wealthy individuals) an outsize influence on the running of the democracy. In turn, this can cause ordinary voters to feel like their voices do not matter, so they cease to participate in the political process. Thus, decisions are made in line with who can pay for access to these lawmakers, not who voted for them. At its extreme, this can spell the end of the relevant democracy. Similar points can be made about other examples, such as the privatization of prisons—which incentivizes incarceration rates and can thus decrease public security, in opposition to what prisons are for—and the mass dissemination of misleading or false information—which can undermine belief in public information of any kind (Satz 2013; Tsfati et al. 2020).

Cases like these have come to be seen to be of major importance: they are at the heart of some of the most widely discussed issues afflicting many contemporary societies (Satz 2013; Miller 2017; Lessig 2013; Thompson 2018). A number of theoretical proposals have been put forward to make the nature of institutional undermining that underlies them more precise (for helpful surveys, see e.g. Thompson 2018; Ferretti 2018; Brock 2014).

So, Thompson (1995) argues that institutional corruption concerns cases where public officials—especially legislators—receive political gains for providing services that are “procedurally improper” and which have a tendency to damage the political process (see also Philp 1997). Services are procedurally improper when they are not determined on the merits of the case, and/or they fail to follow the rules that ensure the political process is fair. If done systematically, such services can erode the public confidence in the political process—i.e., corrupt political institutions.

Not unrelatedly, Warren (2004, 2006, 2015) characterizes institutional corruption as instances where public officials claim to respect the egalitarian idea that all individuals affected by the collective decisions of the public officials should be able to influence these decisions, but where these officials in fact make their decisions so as to favor those who have provided benefits to these officials, and thus have privileged access to them. In other words, according to Warren’s account, institutional corruption is at heart about duplicitous violations of democratic egalitarian ideals: public officials pretend to uphold these ideals, but do not actually do so, and that in a way that is in fact harmful to some members of the public.

There is no question that both of these characterizations of institutional corruption have allowed for many useful insights and advances. Most obviously, the problems caused by some forms of campaign finance for contemporary US democratic processes are well illuminated by both of these accounts: such campaign finance can be procedurally improper and in violation of egalitarian ideals of democratic political decision-making. Beyond this, the abstractness, especially of Warren’s account, also makes clear what is wrong with other ills afflicting contemporary (representative) democracies, such as gerrymandering and voter suppression. These are cases that violate the egalitarian ideals at the heart of a genuine democracy—and they do that in a way that is surreptitious and thus hard to notice, avoid, and combat.

However, both of these proposals also struggle to go beyond this socio-political context and analyze institutional corruption more generally. It is not clear that these two proposals can be used to understand the institutional corruption of, say, prisons, the press, corporations, and not just that of political decision-making in representative democracies (and the US specifically). For example, the privatization of prisons is not obviously procedurally improper or done in a way that is democratically duplicitous. The issue with this privatization is not how it came about, which may have been entirely proper, or that it is inegalitarian, which it need not be, but that it undermines the institution it concerns. Much the same is true when it comes to the mass dissemination of misleading or false information (the source of which need not even be a public official at all). What matters is just that it concerns an undermining of the public press, not how it was decided on. In short: since institutional corruption is widely seen to comprise cases other than those of campaign donation in representative democracies, the proposals of Thompson and Warren appear insufficiently general—whatever other virtues they have.¹

The account of Lessig (2013) is, therefore, a step in the right direction.² According to Lessig (2013, p. 553), “[i]nstitutional corruption is manifest when there is a systemic and strategic influence […] that undermines the institution’s effectiveness by diverting it from its purpose or weakening its ability to achieve its purpose.” This influence need not be illegal, immoral, or procedurally improper; the key is just that it thwarts the function of the relevant institution. In this way, this account is significantly more general than the ones of Thompson and Warren. While it remains the case that the account in Lessig also tends to focus on the kind of (“dependence”) corruption of the democratic political process that Thompson and Warren focus on, there is no reason that it cannot be easily extended to cover the corruption of the prison system, the press, and other public or even private institutions; indeed, it has been applied to the pharmaceutical industry with much success (see especially Lessig 2018; Fields 2013).

The main challenge the account faces is that it leaves open exactly what the function of a social institution is. What are prisons, or the press, or the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) for? Because of this, it also remains somewhat unclear exactly how this function can be undermined. Is the rise of social media undermining the press? Why? Without spelling this out, the account lacks a thorough theoretical grounding (see also Amit et al. 2017; Thompson 2018). Now, given that Lessig’s focus also is the institutional corruption of the US political system—whose function may be relatively clear—this need not be greatly problematic for many of the uses Lessing has put his account to (see also Thompson 2018). However, as a full account of institutional corruption, Lessig’s account falls short; while it has a sufficiently general overarching structure, this structure is not spelled out in enough detail to be able to make sense of institutional corruption in all of its different facets.

The account of Miller (2017) attempts to fill this lacuna. Like Lessig’s, the account is teleological and general in nature; however, unlike that of Lessig, it is more fully spelled out.

According to Miller, social institutions are organizations—i.e., sets of structurally related functional roles (Miller 2017, p. 26)—that provide “collective goods by means of joint action” (Miller 2017, p. 23). That is, on this account, the purpose of a social institution is the provision, through the joint activity of the members of the institution, of objectively moral goods that are made available to all members of the relevant society (Miller 2017, p. 106). These goods comprise aggregated (needs-based) moral rights, freedoms, or well-being (Miller 2017, p. 23). Note that it is not sufficient that an organization provides collective goods that are thought to be moral goods; only organizations that provide collective goods that are in fact moral goods qualify as genuine social institutions (Miller 2017, pp. 23, 28, 34–45). In this way, the account of Miller (2017) makes it possible to provide a precise and systematic statement of what makes it the case that a given social institution has whatever function it has: namely, the fact that the collective intentions and actions of the members of the relevant society create institutions whose end is the obtaining of a collective, objectively moral human good. In turn, this also allows for a clear and general account of institutional corruption. Institutional corruption occurs when members of an institution intentionally engage in actions that tend to have the foreseeable and/or avoidable effect of undermining the function—spelled out as above—of the relevant institution (without, though, destroying that institution) (Miller 2017, pp. 82–88).

The account of Miller (2017)—like that of Lessig (2013)—is appropriately general. Since it makes the teleological nature of institutional corruption central to its characterization, it is not restricted or tied to the corruption of the democratic political process (important as that may be). Instead, it can be straightforwardly extended to other phenomena—such as the corruption of prisons or the press—for these two are instances where the provision of the collective moral goods (security and transparency) is thwarted (Miller 2017, pp. 217–218). Furthermore, the account of Miller (2017) improves on the one of Lessig (2013), as it spells out this teleological nature of institutional corruption in detail (a point also noted by Thompson 2018). The function of social institutions is not left open as something to be filled in by the whims of the relevant researchers, but it is underwritten by a philosophically well-grounded treatment. However, Miller’s (2017) account also faces three key drawbacks.

First, the theory does not speak to (what Miller calls) institutional corrosion (where actions are done that happen to slightly undermine the function of an institution but which fail the conditions for institutional corruption set out above), institutional destruction (where the institution is fully destroyed), or externally perpetrated institutional corruption (Miller 2017, pp. 66, 70). However, this restrictive focus of the analysis is not greatly compelling. Institutional corrosion, destruction, and external institutional corruption all lead to the same kind of failure of the provision of the relevant collective good as institutional corruption in its proper sense according to Miller (2017). While the source and exact nature of the prevention of the provision of the relevant collective moral good are different, the fact that there is this prevention is not. In this way, the account is overly limited. This is an important point to which I return below.

Second, the account of Miller (2017) needs to make strong commitments to highly contentious philosophical doctrines, such as a strong moral realism and methodological individualism. Now, it is of course true that it is not possible to settle large claims about moral realism and the like within the space of a book focused on an issue in social philosophy. However, what matters here is just that it is at least far from clear that these commitments are justified. For example, it is not obvious that the existence of objective moral facts—such as which collective goods are in fact morally good—can be made plausible (Mackie 1977; Joyce 2001; Street 2006). This makes it reasonable to see if there are other treatments of these issues that can avoid these commitments.

Third and most importantly, Miller’s (2017) account is made problematic by the fact that it is fundamentally normative. On this account, institutional corruption must be morally bad (at least pro tanto): the moral appraisal of institutional corruption (and of social institutions in general) is built into the nature of institutional corruption (and institutions in general).³ However, this fails to do justice to the moral complexity of institutional corruption (Lessig 2013; Thompson 2018). When it comes to the moral status of institutional corruption, everything depends on the details of the case and should not be built into the characterization of the nature of institutional corruption. People can engage in actions that lead to or constitute institutional corruption, but these actions can be morally neutral or even morally good (e.g., when the relevant social institutions are morally problematic).⁴

Put differently, the normative focus of Miller’s account makes this account arbitrarily limited. From the point of view of the underlying causal mechanisms—i.e., from the perspective of what is happening to the relevant institutions—the institutional corruption of the Mafia or the Nazi Party may be identical to that of US representative democracy or the press. While our normative evaluation of the former two cases may be different from the latter two, the social phenomenon underlying the four cases is the same: they share the crucial feature of thwarting the purpose of a social institution. They should thus be treated in the same way, too.⁵ This is an important point to which I return in sect. III.

The point is further strengthened by the fact that the normative focus of Miller’s account does not fit the long tradition of functional ascription in the social sciences more generally. As noted in chaps. 1 through 3, functional ascription in the social science is not normative in the way that Miller’s (2017) account is. Importantly this is true independently of exactly which version of social functionalism we accept (including, in particular, presentist social functionalism). Of course, functional ascription in the social sciences is normative in the sense that all functional ascription is: it describes what a social institution ought to do, and not just what it, in fact, does do (Millikan 1984, 1989, 1990; Fodor 1990). Functional ascription in the social sciences may furthermore of course also be normative in the sense that that it says something which how social institutions contribute to the well-functioning of society and about how they do so—though this will depend on the account of social functionalism adopted (it is e.g. true for structural functionalism, but not necessarily on the other accounts laid out in chaps. 2 and 3).

However, functional ascription in the social science is not normative in the thickly moral sense that is presupposed by Miller’s (2017) account. It does not rest on seeing social institutions as dedicated towards a specific set of objectively moral ends—partly for the reasons mentioned earlier that justifies what these ends would be and that they are, in fact, objectively moral has proven difficult. Hence, Miller’s picture of functional ascription does not match that of the social sciences more generally—which is problematic, as the investigation of institutional corruption is a part of the social sciences.

Putting all of this together, it becomes clear that what is still needed is an account of institutional corruption that has the following three features:

• 1. General: The account needs to focus on the teleological nature of institutional corruption generally and not be restricted to the undermining of the (US) political process only.

• 2. Spelled out: The account needs to ground the function of social institutions in a plausible theoretical treatment and not leave it open to the intuitions of a researcher.

• 3. Non-normative: The account needs to spell out the function of social institutions in a way that does not presuppose that this function aims at some human good; rather, the moral valence of the social institution needs to be assessed depending on the details of the case.

An account that satisfies these three desiderata is able to combine the best features of the existing characterizations of institutional corruption while avoiding their drawbacks.

To make headway in developing such an account, the next section uses the framework of presentist social functionalism to lay out a novel account of institutional corruption that satisfies desiderata (1)–(3) and which has some further useful implications.

Before doing this, though, it is important to note that implicit in desiderata (1)–(3) is the idea that institutional corruption is, in its nature, quite different from individual corruption. As just noted, this is a common assumption in many views of institutional corruption (notably those of Thompson and Lessig), but it is not without controversy. For example, Ceva and Ferretti (2018) and Ferretti (2018) argue that institutional corruption reduces to individual corruption and that strongly separating out individual from institutional corruption obfuscates the mechanisms by which corruption spreads from one institutional context to another (see also Philp 1997). Relatedly, it is implicit in desiderata (1)–(3) that institutional corruption is to be analyzed teleologically (in terms of what the purpose is of the relevant social institutions) and not, say, deontologically (in terms of what it is our duty to do as members of a certain institution) or in terms of virtue (in terms of what virtuous members of the social institution are like) (see e.g. Rothstein and Varraich 2017).

Without question, there is a lot that could be said about these alternative, individualistic treatments of institutional corruption. However, instead of engaging in these debates directly, the approach here is the reverse. The chapter shows that adopting a teleological and non-individualist perspective on institutional corruption is coherent and has several advantages. In turn, this provides a reason for adopting this kind of view of institutional corruption. Of course, no pretense here is made that this has settled all the issues surrounding this issue (or, indeed, institutional corruption in general). Rather, the aim is more modest: it is just to show that a compelling, teleological, and non-individualist perspective on institutional corruption is available. If an alternative treatment is to be adopted, it would have to be shown to be superior while taking these benefits into account. (I return to these points below.)

With this in mind, consider applying presentist social functionalism to this case. As will be made clearer in the next two sections, this provides for a highly compelling basis for an account of institutional corruption.

5.3 Institutional Corruption: A Presentist Social Functionalist Account

With the presentist theory of social functionalism in the background, a novel characterization of institutional corruption can be developed that satisfies all of the desiderata laid out in sect. II and which has several further useful beneficial implications. In particular, given the plausibility of presentist social functionalism, institutional corruption can be characterized as follows:

Institutional corruption: The extent to which the actions of a set of agents prevent a social institution N from fulfilling its function F, where F is the set of features of N that increase N’s expected survival or reproductive success.

Several aspects of this characterization are important to note.

First, it is worthwhile making explicit how this characterization satisfies all of the desiderata laid out in sect. II.

It is general: The present characterization of institutional corruption applies to all kinds of social institutions and is not restricted to the context of representative democracy (in the US or more broadly). This is due to the fact that the characterization is teleological and sees institutional corruption as the thwarting of the purpose of a social institution. Hence, it applies to any social institution with a function—which includes the prison system, the press, as well as the NCAA, corporations, or even such social institutions as the Mafia (among many others).

It is spelled out: The present characterization of institutional corruption is based on a well-grounded theory of the function of social institutions. Indeed, this is one of the two reasons why the defense of presentist social functionalism in chap. 3 is important here. This defense ensures that the characterization of the functional ascription of social institutions underlying institutional corruption has a strong theoretical basis and is not left to the intuitions of the relevant researchers.

It is non-normative: The present characterization of institutional corruption does not inherently see the purposes of social institutions as moral and, therefore, does not see institutional corruption as inherently normative. In this way, the present account of institutional corruption avoids the challenges faced by Miller’s (2017) account: by making the ethical status of institutional corruption dependent on the details of the relevant institution, it can do justice to the ethical complexity of institutional corruption.

The fact that the above characterization of institutional corruption satisfies all of these desiderata further matters, as it shows that the notion of institutional purpose can be spelled out in a coherent manner and thus form the basis of a compelling account of institutional corruption. In this way, the present account can respond to some of the worries that have been levied against teleological accounts of this phenomenon more generally: namely, that its core notion—institutional purpose—cannot carry the weight it needs to (see e.g. Rothstein and Varraich 2017). As the defense of presentist social functionalism in chap. 3 makes clear, it is possible to provide a cogent grounding to the notion of institutional purpose and thus to use the latter as a foundation for a plausible account of institutional corruption.

This leads directly to the second important point to note about the present characterization of institutional corruption, which has also already been hinted at but deserves to be spelled out in more detail. This point concerns the fact that this characterization fits a general theoretical framework in the social sciences. This is the second major reason why the defense of presentist social functionalism from chap. 3 is important here. Unlike the account of Miller (2017)—which is also spelled out in detail—the present account is not disconnected from functionalism in the social sciences more generally. On the contrary, the present theory of institutional corruption is a natural extension of this general account of functionalism in the social sciences.

This not only gives this theory of institutional corruption a solid theoretical backing, but it also allows the easy extension of existing findings from the social sciences to the further investigation of institutional corruption. In particular, we do not need to establish the function of social institutions anew but can rely on the work already being done in the social sciences. For example, as also noted in chap. 4, we can rely on whatever theory of the function of corporations ends up being the most plausible one (whether it is the shareholder-benefit one or the stakeholder-benefit focused one), and we do not need to derive this function from scratch in the context of the investigation of potential institutional corruption. This way, we may also find instances of institutional corruption that we would have otherwise overlooked (for example, concerning the institutional corruption of corporations).

The third point to emphasize about this characterization of institutional corruption is that it does not require that the cause of the corruption is a systematic, intentional, immoral, or illegal action. Institutions can get accidentally corrupted, and they can get corrupted for moral or legal reasons. On the present account, institutional corruption is like the corruption of (electronic) data. If a flash drive (or printed out spreadsheet) falls into a river, it is likely that the data on it will become unusable and functionless. This is so whether the flash drive (or printed out spreadsheet) was intentionally, legally, or morally—or not—thrown into the river, and whether or not the data on the drive (or table) were moral or legal in content.

This is thus another way in which the present account does justice to the complexity of institutional corruption: it may sometimes require censure, it may be ethically problematic but excusable, it may be ethically neutral, and it may even be ethically permissible or even required. In this way, the present account can bring out what is common to all cases of the undermining of institutions (including corrosion, rebellion, and accidental prevention of function) without being forced to morally evaluate all of them in the same way. In turn, this places the normative and moral considerations squarely where they can do the most good: in the details of the relevant case.

For example, if someone acted in ways that undermined the function of the Nazi Party, then that may have been morally required. Indeed, even if this undermining of the Nazi Party is the result of mere laziness on the part of the relevant agent, it is still institutional corruption, and it is still morally good—though the person engaging in it need not deserve praise (Fricker 2016; Friedman 2013). For the same reason, the source of the corruption need not be systematic: just one action—such as the distribution of fliers in front of the University of Munich—can (partly) undermine the Nazi Party and can thus count as institutional corruption.⁶ (In a similar way, the data on a flash drive or printout can be corrupted with one-off behaviors—throwing it into a river—as well as with systematic actions, such as the careless treatment of the drive or piece of paper that, over time, leads to it getting dirty and unreadable.)

It is important to emphasize that the generality of the present account is one of its features, not one of its bugs. Of course, it is possible to make finer distinctions and focus particularly on certain forms of institutional corruption—say, ones that are internally, intentionally, and systematically caused and which target immoral institutions (as is done e.g. by Ferretti 2018; Miller 2010; Ceva and Ferretti 2018). However, this does not mean that there is not also value in providing a general account of the phenomenon. On the contrary, the generality of the present account is one of its key novel benefits.

In particular, by not using the sources and consequences of the undermining of an institution to characterize the nature of institutional corruption, it becomes possible to bring together what many superficially different social phenomena have in common. This is similar to generalizing accounts more generally. There are good reasons to often distinguish viral from bacterial diseases. However, there are also good reasons to often treat these subsets of the same overarching phenomenon: an infectious disease. This allows us to find common causes (e.g. the presence of other infected individuals) or common treatments (isolation, hydration, etc.).

In the present context, the fact that the account of institutional corruption defended here is generalizing allows us to note, for example, that some phenomena that might otherwise seem very different also share important communalities that it is theoretically and practically useful to note. For example, the Russia-based social media manipulation in the run-up to the 2016 US presidential election and the Trump administration’s allegation of wide-scale voter fraud in the aftermath of the 2020 election differ in numerous particulars: the former is driven by sources external to US democratic institutions, the latter by sources internal to these institutions.⁷ However, they also have some important features in common. In particular, they both (partially) prevented US democratic institutions from functioning properly, and they did so in similar ways—by increasing polarization and spreading propaganda.⁸ This is theoretically valuable to bring out when studying democratic resiliency and the ways to improve it. For example, it suggests that similar responses may be useful in both cases, such as ensuring that the electorate is as well informed about the facts as possible. The fact that the present account of institutional corruption can bring out these communalities is thus one of its theoretical advantages.

Similarly, it is a major benefit of the present account of institutional corruption that it brings out clearly that societies with many instances of institutional corruption are less likely to be stable. These are societies many of whose institutions are made less likely to survive or reproduce. Importantly, this is so independently of whether the corruption is systematic, intentional, or moral. On the present account, people living in highly corrupt societies—whatever distinguishing details there may be between these societies—have in common the fact that they need to deal with highly unstable institutions (i.e., institutions that face major barriers to their survival and reproduction). This brings out a key common feature of highly corrupt societies that other accounts would miss: whatever the details of their causes, a conglomeration of institutional corruption leads to institutional instability.

Importantly also, this is not a trivial inference. Rather, the present approach ties institutional corruption to the prevention of an institution fulfilling its function (and not to, say, duplicitous violations of democratic egalitarian ideals) and then spells out the function of an institution to those of its features that give it a current biocultural selective advantage. In this way, the present account can explain why societies with much institutional corruption are less likely to be stable—this follows from the present characterization of institutional corruption. Furthermore, this is not something that is, at least on the face of it, the case for the characterizations of Thompson (1995), Warren (2006), Lessig (2018), or Miller (2017), which would not lead us to expect much institutional corruption to go with much social instability: undemocratic and immoral societies can be stable.

Here, it is also noteworthy that not every crime or misdemeanor will count as an instance of institutional corruption on the present account. For example, ordinary theft need not block the function of an institution, and neither need all cases of nepotism (Miller 2017, pp. 110–115): the stealing of a bike need not have any implications for the institution of private property to survive or persist.⁹ The present theory thus provides a general, encompassing account of the phenomenon without being either trivial or forced to accept contentious moral or metaethical propositions (as is true of other theories in the literature, such as that of Miller 2017). The present account allows us to separate the analysis of the presence and consequences of institutional corruption from its causes and moral status. This gives us more degrees of freedom in tackling this phenomenon in a way that is both feasible and compelling.

All in all, therefore, the present theory of institutional corruption sees it as the outcome of actions that partly or fully prevent a social institution from fulling its function—i.e., which partially or fully negate those features of the institutions that increase its expected reproductive or survival success. This theory is theoretically well-grounded in a compelling general account of social functionalism—presentist social functionalism—and it meets the desiderata of the previous section. It also has some further, novel benefits, as the next section makes clear.

5.4 Implications and Further Developments

This account of institutional corruption also has two further sets of benefits that make it stand out from rival accounts, and which make for an important addition to the literature. The first of these benefits is the fact that the source of the corruption need not be an individual human being but can also be a collective agent, like a corporation or foreign government. In particular, the characterization recognizes that an institution can be prevented from fulfilling its function by the concerted effort of a number of human beings.¹⁰ For example, if a social network eases the spread of political misinformation, this can prevent the public press from fulfilling its function (see also Miller 2017, pp. 304–309). Importantly, this is so even if no individual can be seen as the source of this institutional corruption: owners and employees of the social network may not have been responsible themselves for furthering the spread of the misinformation—and may even have attempted to block this spread. Indeed, no individual user need have had any kind of significant impact on this spread. However, with sufficient numbers of users and sources of misinformation, misinformation can spread far and quickly, merely as the result of the structure of the institution of the social network (O’Connor and Weatherall 2021).

In this way, the present account diverges from those presented e.g. by Ferretti (2018), Ceva and Ferretti (2018), and Ferretti and Ceva (2021): institutional corruption need not reduce to the corruption of an individual agent.¹¹ To begin with—and as noted earlier—the institutional corruption need not be immoral, and even where it is, it need not result from the actions of a morally culpable individual. More importantly, though, the corruption need not even be analyzable into the intentions, ends, and behaviors of individual humans, as is assumed by Miller (2017). Rather, it can be the upshot of a genuinely collective agent (List and Pettit 2006). This matters, as it opens up a wider class of sources of institutional corruption and can thus help the study and prevention of the latter (see also Vergara 2020). In particular, the present characterization does not need to get involved in debates about the plausibility of individualism in the social sciences (see e.g. Elster 1982; Kincaid 2015; Jones 1996; Epstein 2014, 2015; Ruiz and Schulz 2023), but can work with whatever is the upshot of these debates. This is especially important due to the fact—noted earlier—that there is good reason to think that the holism/individualism debate may call for a pluralist solution that allows for both individualism and holism to sometimes be the best approach to a given social scientific issue (Ruiz and Schulz 2023). In this way, the present account’s openness to collective agency and social holism frees it from the constraints imposed by the individualistic commitments of Miller (2017), Ferretti (2018), Ceva and Ferretti (2018), and Ferretti and Ceva (2021).¹²

This deepens a point that was mentioned in sect. I already. Without a doubt, there is much complexity in the debate surrounding the question of whether all cases of institutional corruption reduce to cases of individual corruption. The same is true for the debate as to whether instead of a teleological account of the phenomenon, a deontological one (say) should be provided. The present treatment cannot be seen to address (or even to attempt to address) all the issues here. However, the point to note is that the present, teleological and non-individualistic account has several key benefits. In particular, it is coherent, it fits well to research in the social sciences elsewhere, and it brings out novel social patterns (such as the greater likelihood of instability in countries with many social institutions whose purposes are undermined). In turn, this means that good reasons need to be provided for giving up these benefits. If an individualistic, moral, and non-teleological account of institutional corruption is to be shown to be superior, it would have to be made clear that it has benefits, the sum of which is greater than that of the present account.

The second novel benefit to note about the account of institutional corruption defended here is that it is the first one in the literature that explicitly makes institutional corruption a matter of degree. This is important, as actions can prevent some, but not all, aspects of the function of a given social institution, and they can merely make the fulfillment of that function harder. For example, if one particular postal worker, out of tiredness, delivers mail a little late one day, then this is a very weak form of institutional corruption—if it is one at all: the function of the postal service is only negligibly undermined. By contrast, if postal workers are being so overworked—e.g., because of employment cuts—that they all always deliver mail late, then this is a more serious case of institutional corruption: the function of the postal service is seriously undermined. Finally, if the postmaster general orders the employees not to deliver mail, then that would be a very strong case of institutional corruption: the function of the postal service is fully undermined.¹³

The present account can easily handle this. It allows for institutional corruption to occur on a bigger or smaller scale: the greater the corruption, the more functions of an institution are undermined, and the more strongly they are undermined. The present account thus provides the right kind of framework with which to handle the complexity of the phenomenon. There is no need to make a call as to whether something definitely is or is not a case of institutional corruption; instead, we can allow something to be more or less of a case of institutional corruption. This is helpful, as existing accounts have tried to handle this fact by requiring genuine institutional corruption to be the result of actions that have the “tendency” to undermine the function of an institution (see e.g. Miller 2017; Thompson 1995). This, though, then requires an account of what such a tendency consists of and when it exists. In turn, this is not easy to do and may be somewhat arbitrary. It is clearer to describe the phenomenon as it is: namely, as leading to more or less of an undermining of the function of the relevant social institution. This is exactly what the present account does.

An example may make this clearer. Consider the International Federation of Association Football (FIFA).¹⁴ This association may have a number of functions, including growing the sport of football internationally, advocating for fair play, and ensuring it is accessible to everyone. It has, however, been alleged that various actions have led to some of these functions being undermined; for example, its ability to advocate for fair play may have been hindered by some of its officials taking bribes for sponsorship contracts or the awarding of tournaments (see e.g. Jennings 2006). However, others of its functions—such as its ability to grow football internationally—may not have been so undermined. In this case, FIFA can now more clearly be stated to be partially institutionally corrupted, rather than us having to decide whether the actions of FIFA officials have, or have not, fully corrupted the organization.¹⁵

In short: the account of institutional corruption defended here has several further benefits—beyond the fact that it satisfies the desiderata of sect. II. In this way, it is especially good at doing justice to the inherent complexity of the phenomenon.

5.5 Conclusion

The characterization of and response to institutional corruption has come to be recognized as a major task of the social sciences (broadly understood). In this chapter, I advocate for a novel theory of this phenomenon, based on the framework of presentist social functionalism. According to this theory, institutional corruption is the result of an individual or collective agent acting in ways that prevent a social institution from partially or fully fulfilling its function. In turn, the function of a social institution is spelled out in line presentist social functionalism—i.e. as those of its features that increase its expected reproductive or survival success in the current sociocultural environment.

This theory of institutional corruption is a useful addition to the literature. It is teleological and thus general, fully spelled out, and non-normative. In particular, it ties institutional corruption to the thwarting of the purpose of a social institution and provides a solid theoretical grounding to these purposes, but it does not require them to be based on normative considerations. In this way, it situates the study of institutional corruption in a wider functionalist approach toward the social sciences and does justice to the complexity of institutional corruption—both when it comes to its inherent nature and its moral evaluation. Moreover, the discussion of this chapter also further brings out the fruitfulness of presentist social functionalism: it allows us to develop a new account of an important social phenomenon.