• No results found

E-Government, Trust and Corruption

N/A
N/A
Protected

Academic year: 2020

Share "E-Government, Trust and Corruption"

Copied!
9
0
0

Loading.... (view fulltext now)

Full text

(1)

E-Government, Trust and Corruption

Shahram Raeisi Dehkordi

Iran National Bank, (BMI) & Amin Higher Education Institute

shahram_raisi_d@yahoo.com

Shahrooz Raeisi Dehkordi Islamic Azad University, Tehran

shahrooz_reisi@yahoo.com

Abstract

Governments around the worlds especially in developing countries face with tremendous challenges. High or moderate rate of corruption can be named as one of the most important of these challenges. Corruption and its inefficiency can deviate resources allocation to unproductive sectors of economy. Trust in social networks or within the society has two antithetic effects in deployment of corruption in government and bureaucratic systems. Governments may want to use public trust for eradicating corruption in one hand and by the other hand particularistic trust may cause corruption. Generalized and particularistic trusts have two effects on corruption. E- Government a solution can decrease the harmful effects of particularistic trust extension. This paper wants to introduce and use these two phenomena in the field of public economics by concentrate on corruption and e- Government as a solution.

Keywords: E-government, generalized trust, particularistic trust, corruption, social network

Introduction

Erosion of citizen’s trust in government due to rampant corruption at various levels in government ought to be an area of serious concern for developing countries and

development agencies. A well-planned E-government strategy can build a more efficient,

accountable and transparent government (Bhatnagar, 2008). During the last recent years,

trust phenomenon and its effects have been entered into the public economics discussions and naturally it would relate to the governments concepts. Considering governments as

essential institution in the political structure of each country or political regimes, it will be

clear that talking about trust is an important subject in the field of public economics. Trust

is a key concept that can affect bilateral relationship between government and publics.

Since applying contract theory in every principle – agent model highly depends on trust

levels between two or more parties. But studying about several aspects of trust will

explicitly focus on generalized trust so it is essential to distinguish this type of trust from

particularistic trust. In other word based on the social and economic literatures trust has two

important aspects named generalized and particularistic trust (Wegner,2006). Trust

(2)

introduced the Amoral Familism theory when studying the behaviour of peoples in a village

in south of Italy. He found that people within the family have strong powerful trusty

relationships (particularistic trust) but between families there are no trusty relations

(generalizes trust). Systematic Corruptive behaviours often rest on particularistic trust

among the conspirators. Using information and communication technology (ICT) in the government's structure names E-Government, it would be applicable to decrease the

menace of face to face contacts between agents and principals that rests on particularistic

trust as a source of corruption.

Trust & Corruption

The term corruption is used to describe a variety of activities such as bribery,

embezzlement, collusion, peddling, ethics violations, illegal asset accumulation, conflict of

interest, political cronyism or nepotism, campaign and party finance violations, money

launderings, illegal transactions, frauds, gifts and hospitalities, lobbyings, revolving door,

patronages and many other issues. Transparency International (TI) gives the following

definitions of some of the most common types of corrupt activities (Transparency

international, 2009):

Attempts at developing the typology of corrupt practices have led into the

differentiation among three levels of this complex phenomenon

A. Systemic, when corruption is incorporated within the entire or particular section

(e.g. border control) of the rule of law system (multiple institutions: judiciary, police,

customs, tax, etc.);

B. Institutional , where the institution affected is tolerant of corrupt practices;

C. Individual, where the person is prepared to undertake illegal actions because their

employment provides them with an opportunity to exploit their position for again.

According to the World Bank, corruption is “the abuse of public office for private gain. UNDP defines corruption as the misuse of public power, office or authority for private

benefit (UNDP, 2004).

Trust is the cornerstone of a cooperative spirit (Uslaner, 2004) . According to an OECD report public service is a public trust, citizens expect public servants to serve the public

interest with fairness and to manage public resources properly on a daily basis. Fair and

reliable public services inspire public trust and create a favourable environment for

businesses, thus contributing to well-functioning markets and economic growth (OECD,

2000). This report identifies a number of core public service values as being important for

building citizen trust. These include: impartiality; legality; integrity; transparency;

efficiency; equality; responsibility and justice. As Uslaner (2004) describes there are two

dimensions of trust. First is distinction between moralistic and strategic trust and the second

(3)

behaviour against corruption is based on moralistic and generalized trust. Moralistic trust

means that people with different backgrounds may still constitute a moral community and

generalized trust is the belief that most people can be trusted.

But in the other hand corruption as an illegal and unethical behaviour deeply rely on

strategic or particularistic trust. Strategic trust is some kind of trust that based upon experienced instead of values and particularistic trust is only trust in people like you.

Base on Uslaner definition in particularistic trust people just relate to peoples like

themselves that is opposed to trust to people in general. Corrupt networks reflect and rely

upon people like themselves so trusting to other persons exclude the networks may become

dangerous. So entrance to corrupt networks will not to be easy.in this situation Benefits

within the networks share between corrupt party and other related persons and most of

other people abdicate from possible such benefits. The same distinguish has been drawn by

Putnam (1993) which described the defences between "bonding" and "bridging" social

capital. We bond with our friends and people like ourselves. We form bridges with people

who are different from ourselves.

E-Government

United Nations defines E-government as the employment of the Internet and the

world-wide-web for delivering government information and services to the citizens (OECD,

2000).

‘Digital Agenda for Europe report defines E-government as tools and systems made possible by Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) to provide better services

to employees, businesses and citizens.

using such tools promote more efficient and cost effective government, facilitate more

convenient government services and allow greater public access to information, and make

government more accountable to citizens, whereas governance is a wider term which covers the state’s institutional arrangements, decision making processes, implementation capacity and the relationship between government officials and the public.By Engaging citizens

through dialogue and feedback to promote their greater participation in the process of governance of these institutions e-government can be viewed as a subset of e-governance,

and its focus is largely on improving administrative efficiency and reducing administrative

corruption (Putnam, Leonardi, & Nanetti, 1993)

Both the United Nations and the World Bank present an incremental development

model for E government services. This four-stage model (Figure 1) encompasses the

(4)

Figure1. Four stages of service development (paradigm vs. target).

Base on the figure (1) the following targets were defined:

• Government to Employee (G2E) (focus on administrative issues, and targeting government employees).

• Government to Business (G2B) (focus on business issues, and targeting companies). • Government to Citizen (G2C) (focus on citizenship and tourism, and targeting citizens).

• Citizen to Citizen (C2C) (focus on the civil society, and targeting citizen to citizen communication).

According to the United Nations E-government Survey, “Europe as a region has been

in the vanguard of information technology and setting the pace for others to follow.

Building on the existing strength of high levels of human capital and infrastructure, the

(5)

Figure 2. Average e-government development (United Nations E-government Survey 2012).

Trust and Government

According to Zucker (1986) trust in government emerges from three factors:

1. Characteristics of the individual (i.e. his or her social–cultural background);

2. Professional standards and public statements of ethical standards (institutional trust);

and

3. Experience (process trust).

Franklin, van der Eijk, and Marsh (1995) argue that trust may be influenced by the transient popularity of the government in power as by broader concerns about institutions,

and that the more popular the government, the more people trust not only it, but the state.

Kampen, Van De Walle, and Bouckaert ( 2006) suggest that trust is lost more easily than it is gained; to use their own colorful phrase, “trust comes on foot and goes away on horseback. Christensen and Laegreid ( 2005) argue that trust in government depends on

several factors including trust in institutions and democracy and well as service satisfaction

and a number of demographic variables such as age and education

Reviewing several papers about the role of trust in government structure and state as a

whole declare that trust to government implements we know as being benevolent

government, can decrease the transaction costs and help government be more effective in

public goods production process. It is essential to emphasis that E-Government, can increase trust in government is of interest.

Trust and e-Government

Several literatures investigated the relations between trust and its implications in the

(6)

e-government. For example Warkentin, Gefen, Pavlou, and Rose (2002) proposed a model of

trust in E-government while Carter and Bélanger (2005) and Rogers (1995) worked on the

effects of increased trust in government generally. They found that trust in government

generally leads into increased use of E-government facilities.

But Goldfinch, Gauld, and Herbison (2009) suggests the opposite, i.e. that those who trust government less tend to make greater use of e-Government.

The result of Welch, Hinnant, & Moon (2005) study on the relation between trust and

government categories to three main factors: transactions, transparency and interactivity. Transactions are measured by convenience, quality, privacy, efficiency, and security. Transparency is a measure of how visible the organization and its processes are to the user,

i.e. how well does the citizen understand what is going on? Interactivity is simply the speed

and quality of response (Bannisterb,& College,2013). Figure 3 shows Welch et al.'s model The results of Welch et al.'s analysis show that citizens who are most satisfied with E-government also trust E-government more (which conflicts with the findings of Goldfinch et al. noted above), but also show that citizens that trust government more are more likely to be satisfied with E-government.

E-government has the power to create new modes of public service whereby all public organizations deliver modernized, integrated, and seamless services for citizens. In this

shift towards external services, transparency has been increasingly emphasized as a

fundamental driver for E-government. E-government initiatives are regarded as a powerful

schema for enhancing public transparency (along with internal efficiency and quality

service delivery) to the public (Fountain, 2001); (Brown, 1999). Northrup and Thorson

(2003) cite increased efficiency, increased transparency, and transformation as important

reasons for e-government initiatives.

Compared with earlier forms of E-government infrastructures (Chadwick, 2001), most

current e-government websites and systems encompass more interactive features and

services in order to restore public trust by providing necessary information and regulations,

in addition to quick responses to individual queries (Moon, 2002). By incorporating the

agent-principal theory, Smith and Bertozzi (1998) explain the relationship between governments (as agents who work for citizens) and citizens (as principals). Since the

governments have more control than citizens over the flow of information, members of the

(7)

Figure 3. Model of e-government and trust (Welch, Hinnant, & Moon, 2005).

Source: Oxford University Press.

Conclusion

Transparency in decisions, actions, rules, procedures and performance is the direct

effect of expanding ICT in Government structures. By automating public service delivery's

processes the society can benefit from less discretion, less delay and less corruption. Beside

that, ICT can simplify reengineering of government procedures. Information and

communication can eradicate the bad effects of particularistic trust as the source of corrupt

behavior by decreasing the face to face contact of citizens or parties who belong to same

ethnical, cultural and political groups.

Builds accountability, documentation to citizens for following up the procedures,

increase competition amongst delivery channels, Standardized documentation of comments

and objections, effective supervision through comparative indicators, Centralizes and integrates data for better audit and analysis are some of the most important benefits that

comes from E-government. Most of these factors can consider as anti-corruption policies

and also has direct and indirect effect on generalized trust as a sustainable development

index.

References

Banfield, E.C. (1958).The Moral Basis of a Backward Society.New York: Free Press.

Bannisterb,F.,& College,T. (2013). Trust and transformational government: A proposed

framework for research. Government Information Quarterly, In Press.

Bhatnagar, S. (2008). Building trust through e-government: Leadership and Managerial

Issues. United Nations Public Administration Network. Retrived from http://unpan. un.

org./intradoc/groups/public/documents/unpan/unpan025871.pdf

Brown, D. (1999). Information systems for improved performance management:

Development approaches in U.S. Public Agencies. In R. Heeks (Ed.), Reinventing

Government Websites Use

E-Government

Satisfaction (i.e. extent to which expectations about e-government have been met. been met.

Overall Satisfaction with

Government (i.e. extent to which general expectations of government are perceived to have been met

(8)

Government in the Informa- tion Age(pp. 113 – 34). New York: Rutledge.

Carter, L., & Bélanger, F. (2005). The utilization of e-government services: Citizen trust,

innovation and acceptance factors. Information Systems Journal, 15(1), 5−25.

Chadwick, A. (2001). The electronic face of government in the Internet age: Borrowing

from Murray Edelman. Information, Communication, and Society 4,435–457.

Christensen, T., & Laegreid, P. (2005).Trust in government, the relative importance of

service satisfaction, political factors and demography. Public Performance &

Management Review, 28(4), 487−511.

Fountain, J. E. (2001). Building the virtual state: Information technology and

institutional change. Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution Press.

Franklin, M., van der Eijk, C., & Marsh, M. (1995). Referendum outcomes and trust in

government: Public support for Europe in the wake of Maastricht. West European

Politics, 18(3), 110−117.

Goldfinch, S. F., Gauld, R., & Herbison, P.(2009). The participation divides? E-Government, political participation, and trust in government in Australia and New

Zealand. Australian Journal of Public Administration, 68(3), 333−35.

Kampen, J., Van De Walle, S., & Bouckaert, G. (2006). Assessing the relations between satisfaction with public service delivery and trust in government: The impact of the

predisposition of citizens toward government on evaluations of its performance. Public

Performance and Management Review, 29(4), 387−404.

Moon, M. J. (2002).The evolution of e-government among municipalities: Rhetoric or

reality. Public Administration Review, 62 (4), 424-443.

Mulgan, R. (2000). Accountability: An ever-expanding concept? Public administration,

78(3), 555–573.

Northrup, T. A., Thorson, S. J. (2003). The web of governance and democratic

accountability. In Proceedings of the 36th Hawaii International Conference on System

Sciences.

OECD (2000). Building Public Trust: Ethics Measures in OECD Countries. Retrieved from

http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/60/43/1899427.pdf

Putnam R.D., Leonardi, R., & Nanetti, R. (1993). Making democracy work: Civic traditions

in modern Italy. Princeton: Princeton University press.

Rogers, E. (1995). The diffusion of innovations. New York: The Free Press.

Smith, R., & Bertozzi, M. (1998). Principals and agents: An explanatory model for public

budgeting. Journal of Public Budgeting, Accounting and Financial Management, 10

(3), 325-353.

The World Bank (2003). A definition of e-government. Retrieved from www.links.org.ar

/infoteca/otros/egov_argentina_final_report.doc

(9)

available at: http://www. transparency.org/global_priorities/private_sector/business

_principles (accessed 12 November 2011)

UNDP (2004). Anti-corruption practice note. Retrieved from http://www.undp.org/policy

/docs/practicenotes/Anti%20Corruption%20Note%20Draft%20FINAL%20copy%2

0edited%20100404.pdf

United Nations E-government Survey (2012). E-government for the People. Retrieved from

http://www.un.org/en/development/desa/publications/connecting-governments-to-citizens.html

Uslaner, E. M. (2004). Trust and Corruption. In J. G. Lambdorf, M. Taube & M .Schramm

(eds). The New Institutional Economics of Corruption (pp. 76-92). London, Rutledge.

Warkentin, M., Gefen, D., Pavlou, P., & Rose, G. (2002). Encouraging citizen adoption of

e-government by building trust. Electronic Markets, 12(2), 157−172,

Wegner, S. (2006). Administrative Corruption-A Framework. Seminar paper, Universitetet

Bergen.

Welch, E., Hinnant, C., & Moon, M. (2005). Linking citizen satisfaction with e-government

and trust in government. Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory, 15(3), 371−391,

Zucker, L. G. (1986). Production of trust: Institutional sources of economic structure. In

B.M. Staw & L.L. Cummings (Eds.), Research in Organizational Behavior (pp.

Figure

Figure 2. Average e-government development (United Nations E-government Survey 2012).
Figure 3. Model of e-government and trust (Welch, Hinnant, & Moon, 2005).  Source: Oxford University Press

References

Related documents

Cardiac troponin I for the prediction of functional recovery and left ventricular remodelling following primary percutaneous coronary intervention for ST-elevation

Anyhow, today’s wars are represented in a specific continuity with the principle of intervention, even humanitarian, although in a rather farcical way: the liberation of Afghan

A total of 1,015 potential patients for five clinical trials (SCOT, FAST and PATHWAY 1, 2 and 3) were randomised to receive either a standard trial invitation letter or a

Simulated online adaptive magnetic resonance guided stereotactic body radiation therapy for the treatment of oligometastatic disease of the abdomen and central thorax:

One in two smokers were found to have airflow limitation; the predictors were Indian ethnicity, prolonged smoking pack-year history and Lung Function Questionnaire score ≤

The mean QOL scores were higher at six months with statistically significant differences in each domain ( p ≤ 0.05): physical domain (mean differ- ence = -4.5 and mean difference

► This birth cohort study has documented the influ- ence of ARI on infant’s pulmonary function test indices as indicated by significantly lower infant pulmonary function test

Urolithic rats showed increase in calcium output while both extract and fractions treated group showed significant action ( P ˂ 0.001) in a dose-dependent manner on calcium level in