Culture and Networks

So this post isn't strictly limited to one-child issues, but the idea was in my head when I woke up this morning, and I am eager to get it down.

Why is corruption so insidious in some societies, and relatively unimpactive in others? For the sake of this discussion, corruption is held to mean systemic activity that takes place outside the law, but is institutionalized sufficiently to require most people in a society to take part in order to meet basic needs. Western societies have put official procedures and rule of law on a pedestal, and even small breaks in the dominance of such systems have largely resulted in total chaos. However, in places like China, relatively low levels of corruption allow for an otherwise rigid system to flex to the needs of the society, with little negative impact on the overall health of the society (of course, larger-scale corruption causes tremendous problems, but I am talking about the little processes like using family connections to gain access to officials, etc).

I think the key difference is the role of the individual. The efficacy of the Chinese system is measured by its own people largely by how is serves society as a whole. Individuals left behind are not considered significant points of failure if the society as a whole flourishes (the measure of which varies, but usually security and economic prosperity as the primary evaluated factors). Western societies, however, view the larger system as a means of serving individual needs, often protecting individuals from the 'tyranny of the majority'. To the extent that a corrupt system may exclude certain participants, that system has failed. The simple existence of corruption signals a failure in the system in a way that is not true in Chinese society.

Furthermore, the concept that the system exists at the consent of the individuals it serves, and the notion that an individual has an obligation only to established law- the system exists in some part to protect those that opt out of societal norms- means that individuals feel little obligation to honor the norms established by a corrupt system in a Western society. Since there is no law governing, and since the individual sees his primary obligation to law and his own interests, a corrupt system provides an opportunity to further his own interests at the expense of the group. As a result, western societies have little tolerance for corrupt systems, as they result in an insidious pattern of behavior. In Chinese society, the individual's primary obligation is to society as a whole, not to the law; thus the unofficial rules governing a corrupt society are coercive to him, and his behavior is constrained from seeking to exploit the system fully for his own advantage.

Of course the other side of this is that the scope of the group to which one feels a primary obligation matters. In China, where the scope of the system (national) rougly matches the scope of the group (the Chinese nation), the unofficial rules of an extralegal system are largely respected. However, in societies in which that group is smaller than the system (tribal societies in a multi-ethnic nation state), primary loyalty to the group instead of law or the nation ensures that corrupt systems are exploited by subgroups to serve their own interests.

In sum, a society with rule of law does not tolerate corrupt systems, as corruption facilitates too much individual exploitation. Societies in which participants feel a primary obligation to the same group that is served by the corrupt system (the nation, in the case of China) constrain individual exploitation with social norms, and a corrupt system can thrive. However, in societies for which there is no effective rule of law and in which groups feel a primary loyalty to a group smaller than that defined by the system (loyalty to tribe in a mutli-tribal nation with little national identity, for example), corruption facilitates the clear and relatively unconstrained exploitation of the corrupt system by one group, usually to the detriment of another. This often results in state failure, or something akin to it. These are the examples held up as evidence of the superiority of rule of law. Ironically, strong identification with a sub-national group is often the cause of the corrupt system; rule of law does not allow a group to effectively privilege itself in the acquisition of limited resources, so alternative means are constructed.

As mentioned in a previous post, the one-child policy will considerably limit the unofficial 'guanxi' networks that are the foundation of the extra-legal system. This post has argued that unique cultural characteristics of the Chinese allow this system to exist and society to flourish under it; the big questions then is what replaces it? Or what networks fill the gaps when family connections no longer exist?