Corruption is a pervasive concept in western political thought. It played a

central role in the political philosophies of Aristotle, Polybius, Machaivelli and the 16th century Italians, and Harrington and the 17th and 18th century English writers who became known as Whigs or Commonwealthmen.

Corruption seems to be getting worse in China, despite a two-year anti-corruption  Stray corruption has got converted into systemic corruption.The big story in the Corruption Perceptions Index 2014 is that corruption is becoming more and more rampant.

China has dropped four points from 40 out of 100 in 2013 to 36 in 2014. While this is not as eye-catching as the dramatic fall in rank from 80th to 100th, the four-point fall is significant. Only Turkey fell more as far as corruption is concerned.

The Chinese government is reported to have run a high-profile anti-corruption campaign ostensibly targeting both “tigers and flies” for two years. Officials are eschewing ostentatious consumption of luxury goods such is the fear of prosecution.

many factors related to corruption.  and these factors are systemically interrelated.  thus,  system thinking is one approach which can be recommended to capture this phenomena.  

among many systems methodology, system dynamics is considered as the powerful one as it has capability to build a rigorous model.  SD has causal loop diagram which able to translate the reality into model.

Hi

I tried to describe it. I think that the level of corruption is depends on factors:

the degree of collective decision-making

access to material resources.

You can described it by an exponential or using functional

Systemic corruption means that corruption is not a temporary deviation (a few bad apples) but the main guiding principle of the governance system (bad barrel). Corruption is a strong independent variable that explains the outcome of government institutions. In other words, it constitutes the very nature of the system. 

many thanks to all of you. corruption has become much severe in this two decades. it is a systemic phenomenon. so i want to use the SD modelling to explain it causal process. is there some good guides helping me to build a model?

What type of model are you looking for: Mathematical, graphical or flow model?

thank you Arun Aditya Sahay. i hope i can build a flow model of systemic corruption. however, i have a limited knowledge about SD modelling, so i need some basic guiding books or papers to follow, step by step.

Pl go through the link Action Oriented Research: Models and Methods

http://academic.son.wisc.edu/courses/N701/week/small_models.pdf

To say that corruption is 'systemic' or 'endemic' is misleading. Corruption is not a pervasive sin characteristic of human condition nor an inescapable flaw of entire organisations. It is not a sort of behaviour occuring only under propitious circumstances and confined to 'rotten apples' of civil service or corporation staffs that misbehave only when provoked by ill-intentioned citizens or clients.

Corruption is ‘organised’, it is an authoritarian and hierarchical kind of conduct that permeates the police and the judiciary, involving individual politicians, political parties, companies, go-betweens, and ordinary people. Corrupt behaviour forms networks in which people higher in rank tell others how and when to act improperly and use corrupt practices, establishing individual quotas of participation in transactions involving monetary gain or advantage, but also measured in terms of information, protection, favourable decisions, authorisation and support.   

Here are some qualitative observations regarding systemic corruption:

Citation, View attached link:

Persson, A., Rothstein, B., & Teorell, J. (2013). Why anticorruption reforms fail—Systemic corruption as a collective action problem. Governance, 26(3), 449-471.

In my experience, political corruption is something that is deeply rooted, long-standing, culturally integrated-normative behaviour. It becomes systematic or structural in cases where people have forgotten that what they are doing is wrong and in many cases causing harm to others.

In the case of China, it is difficult for me to be completely objective as I was raised in a society that values governments that change parties, philosophical principles & policy direction. Hence, I am biased in this regard. Moreover, I suggest reviewing the pros and cons of (long-term) one party democracy & one party systems.

http://weblaw.haifa.ac.il/en/JudgesAcademy/workshop3/Documents/A/D/Why%20Anti-Corruption%20Fail.pdf

How to motivate firms to allow researchers to do 'Action Research' to solve their problem and in the process produce a good  research following 'Action Research' design.

Thanks you all

This thread shows that not all the people think corruption is a systemic process. Regarding most of the countries, I agree with the person who says that  corruption "iconstitutes the very nature of the system",. Some societies do not suffer from this problem:  in them corruption is a confined phenomenon. In conjunction with the specific literature on corruption, I would suggest a recent work by North,, Wallis and Weingast (2009): Violence and Social Orders, where they .claim that throughout history , social order has been based on the creation of rents by dominant groups, and only in advanced stages of development it becomes more open and based on competition. 

https://books.google.com.ar/books?id=0rNfFo3DhEYC&printsec=frontcover&dq=north+violence+and+social+order&hl=en&sa=X&ei=LVY9VeaNNcawsASm4ICoCg&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q&f=false

Yimin Yao, Business Dynamics by John Sterman is a good book to start to learn system dynamics whereas Seeing the Forest for the Trees by Dennis Sherwood provides simple examples on how to develop a causal loop diagram.

Dear Novie Setian, thank you for your answer.  and i find that this book has been translated into chinese. i will read it right now.

Hi Yinmin,

From my experience to apply system dynamics to specific area, it is important to identify key causal factors of the phenomenon of interest in the first place. Then you need to map causal relations between these factors and then feedback loop. This may sound obvious. But the system structure needs to be explored via for example interviews and even your mental model. Each causal feedback loop represent a perspective from which corruption is understood. 

Hope this helps. 

Individual corruption is normally understood as deviant or pathological behaviour of an individual aimed at abusing powers entrusted to him/her for private gain. In contrast, the phenomenon of systemic corruption is an informal, pathological institution with parasitical attachment to formal institutions of politics and public administration. Systemic corruption is characterized by a network of corrupters who fulfil different roles but follow a common set of informal norms and rules of corruption. Abidance by these norms and rules is collectively enforced and rewarded, while noncompliance is penalized. Thus, systemic corruption is more than individual behaviour. This complex social phenomenon involves shared expectations, internalized beliefs, rules, norms, social bonds and networks, procedures and rituals, as well as mechanisms of generating common strategies, planning, management, logistic control of corrupt transactions and protecting them from exposure. The system of corruption is active vis-à-vis anticorruption efforts, protecting its members from exposure, prosecution and punishment. In the fullest sense of the term, systemic corruption is Émile Durkheim’s “social fact” with its supra-individual properties: its norms, rules, believes, procedures and social bonds grow detached from individuals, start living their own lives, independently of individuals’ will, and become capable of exercising a constraint on individuals. The dynamics or rather logic of systemic corruption development is matter of typical actors involved, their interests and mutual dependeces.