The Good Cause

Front matter

Gjalt de Graaf Patrick von Maravić Pieter Wagenaar (eds.)

The Good Cause

Theoretical Perspectives on Corruption

Foreword

If only corruption were confined to occasional lapses in personal integrity, we might be able to come to terms with it. But, alas, it assumes countless forms with multiple causes and unintended consequences, some of which are quite severe and irreversible. Theorizing about it much resembles exploring a complicated maze replete with dead ends and surprising turns enough to frustrate the hardiest venturer. The quest, like so many other puzzles in the social sciences, is to better understand ourselves, in this case, to discover why people and organizations act counter to what they profess in public to be their cultural ideals. What they do quite openly too belies what they claim they hold dear in their hearts. This is not necessarily just putting themselves first above everything else or acting purely in their own self-interest. They prize collective survival, stability, and security even higher, and in the pursuit, preservation and protection of these ultimate values, they act pragmatically. They become devoted to good (in their own eyes) causes that justify (to themselves) their use of questionable means. They come to believe in advances and innovations that get around obstructive social norms and resistant institutions. In short, they see themselves as enlightened, not just villains, deceivers, evil-doers, and immoral egoists in the eyes of others.

Theorizing about corruption, like theorizing about most things, is a hazardous venture but probably even more so. It requires speculation and conjecture, conclusive proof based on the evidence, and universal acceptance. Speculation can be wide of the mark. Accumulated facts can be quite deceptive and misleading. Universal acceptance can be impossible to achieve given the variety of belief systems that exist at any one time. This is the case in virtually every field of research, even in such successful disciplines as mathematics, physics, astronomy, and medicine where the human senses have been fortified by wondrous inventions of detection and total objectivity. The social sciences lag so far behind these, and still lack such sophisticated tools as the physical sciences now possess. Furthermore, the more social scientists delve into human behavior, the more complications arise and the more contradictions appear. This complexity just clutters up the picture even more.

10 Foreword

The virtue of theorizing is that it strives to reduce the confusion, to simplify the evidence, to discard the obsolete and unverifiable, and to incorporate new thinking. In fast changing times, it is important once in a while to pause and stand back to see what has been achieved and what still needs doing to overcome ignorance.

Of all topics, corruption is one of the most elusive despite being around since the dawn of civilization, and is likely to persist as long as human beings are imperfect. For much of its existence, it has been a taboo topic in polite society because of its uncomplimentary nature. Its content has changed in time and if anything seems to have expanded although what is known still constitutes only a fraction of what exists. It arouses so much emotion that few can remain as objective as they would like, as few can avoid bringing with them their internal beliefs, and hold fast to ideas and notions based oftentimes on pure speculation. If this were not enough to confuse and baffle the best experts, the closer researchers get to specific forms of corruption the more they resemble the parable of the blind men and the elephant, that is, by concentrating only on one part (psychological, sociological, economical, political, religious, cultural, legal, administrative), they fail to see the whole and thereby oversimplify. To put things in their proper perspective, they need to step back a little and interact more with specialists in other fields.

Despite their differences, the theorists of corruption acknowledge that they share the unavoidable ambiguity of its essence. Throughout human history, human behavior has been judged as being good or bad, right or wrong, fair or unfair, just or unjust, beneficial or detrimental, ethical or unethical, honest or corrupt. By corrupt, people refer to conduct that is objectionable, conduct that they resent, deplore and disown, and those found guilty of such conduct ought to be ashamed of themselves, ostracized, and punished if only to deter others from indulging in like behavior. In principle, corruption is unacceptable, disgraceful, and a breach of social conventions. The difficulty is that universality is rare. At its core, there has been some agreement over the ages embodied in the Golden Rule of most religions, i.e. treat others as you would want them to treat yourself, or, the opposite and less idealistic, don’t do to others that you would not want them to do to you. In addition, there is specific misconduct or misbehaviors, such as deceit, misrepresentation, misappropriation, misuse of authority, and neglect of commonly accepted duties and obligations. To this list has been added much of what is now considered hateful, and similar unworthy acts that denote flaws of individual integrity and trustworthiness, acts that are considered sinful, unlawful, and criminal, altogether disreputable and offensive, by taking into account not just the act itself but also likely motivation (self-seeking), evident consequences (disastrous), and probable remorse (regret coupled with offer to compensate). So what constitutes corruption can be drawn as narrowly or widely as anyone wishes but all of this is fair game for research. What further unites theorists is the recognition that research into corruption is not exactly welcomed, en-

Foreword 11 couraged, or supported, that theorists are held at arm’s length, that their motives are suspected, and there may well be personal risks and repercussions if they delve too deeply and reveal too much about corrupt activities.

What most divides the researchers and theorists is that too often they are rebuffed or ignored not just by the indifferent at large but by their own soul mates. If this were not so, there would be less room for debate and dispute among them. Most people understand that corruption is a fact of life everywhere (and in some places even a way of life). They take it for granted whether or not they indulge in it themselves or want to do anything about it. Revelations come really as no surprise unless the scandals are gross and unsuspected in which case they can be quite titillating and entertaining, but hardly truly shocking. Otherwise, most people just shrug their shoulders and quickly forget until the next revelation of misconduct. To do anything more is like banging one’s head against a wall. But most theorists resent this indifference. They want their findings, propositions, and recommendations to be heeded and acted upon. They want in their heart of hearts to be influential on a par with their counterparts in the physical sciences who no longer face the risks of prying into matters that should not concern them as they once did. The theorists have not given up on their ideals, no matter how strongly held or tepid and abstract these might be. For them, reason remains authoritative. Its purpose is not just to know things but to change them, to improve on what exists, to demand better of human behavior, and to enhance individual integrity. Keep this in mind while reading this contribution on the state of the art.

Gerald E. Caiden, Los Angeles, September, 2009

Chapter 1: Introduction: Causes of Corruption — The Right Question or the Right Perspective?

What causes corruption? Although no one would dispute how difficult that is to answer, the question is perfectly clear. Isn’t it? Well... no. The Good Cause is more about the question than an attempt to answer it.

A first difficulty is defining the explanandum. What do we mean by corruption? In our daily language and across the many academic disciplines that study corruption, the definitions are numerous. The norms defining what corruption is (or integrity for that matter) vary across both societies and academic disciplines.

But more than the concept of corruption is troublesome to the question. As stated by Caiden, Dwivedi, and Jabbra (2001: 21), ‘[j]ust as there are many varieties of corrupt behavior, so there are multitudinous factors contributing to corruption (...) So many explanations are offered that it is difficult to classify them in any systematic manner.’ Heywood (1997: 426) adds that ‘[t]he complexity of the phenomenon makes it impossible to provide a comprehensive account of the causes of political corruption’. Caiden, Dwivedi, and Jabbra (2001: 21-26) list sources of corruption as psychological, ideological, external, economic, political, socio-cultural, and technological. But factors that contribute to corruption are, of course, not causes of corruption. ‘In sum, corruption can be attributed to almost anything (...). But while the opportunities exist everywhere, the degree of corruption varies widely among individuals, public agencies, administrative cultures, and geographic regions’ (Caiden/Dwivedi/Jabbra 2001: 26). Fijnaut and Huberts remark: ‘Research shows that a conglomerate of social, economic, political, organizational and individual causal factors are important to explain cases of public corruption’ (2002: 8).

More than corruption’s multiple factors make the question difficult: there is also disagreement on what constitutes cause in scientific theory (see Gerring 2005; Tilly 2000). We can think, for example, of a well-known, clear corruption case and ask, why did it occur? To answer, we would first have to ask what we want to know. Do we mean, why did the case start? If so, we are looking for the immediate causes and circumstances of the corrupt transactions and decisions, the corrupt acts themselves. Or do we want to know why the case continued over a period of time and in connection with other cases? If so, we are more interested in why a specific official had the readiness to become corrupt. Perhaps we want to know why this particular corruption case occurred rather than not. Were there alternatives for the corrupt official(s), or were they in some way forced to do what they did? Was corruption, given the causes and conditions, their only course of action? This raises the debate on determinism versus free will. Maybe we are looking for the causes of the particular case of corruption, the issue that gets most attention in corruption research. In this context, are we interested in the causes external to the corrupt act itself? The first is the most popular in the literature — not surprisingly, since social sciences usually deal with concepts (see for example Geddes 2003; Gerring 2001; Moses/Knutsen 2007) rather than processes and thus ‘freeze’ reality (Schinkel 2004: 8). Corruption is then studied in an abstract sense, looking for the governing laws of corruption at a micro, meso or macro level. Another possible interpretation of the why question is: are you interested in the reasons and motives for the official(s) to become corrupt? This brings us to an issue often raised in philosophy, that is, whether reasons for action can or should be seen as causes of action and, if so, in what sense can they be treated (Schinkel 2004: 8).

2. Causality and corruption

A core subject of social sciences is understanding causal relations and explaining ‘phenomena in the world of our experience’ (Hempel/Oppenheim 1948: 135), which means nothing more than answering one of the now famous ‘why’ question. The concept itself, however, is subject to debate and throughout the history of scientific discovery highly contested (Mackie 1985). Two fundamental positions seem to divide the issue. Positivists argue in the unitary or /ogical deductivist tradition of Hempel and Oppenheim: all causes need to be understood according to ‘general laws’, be a ‘logical consequence of the explanans’, and the explanans must be empirical in nature insofar as they can be tested or observed (Hempel/Oppenheim 1948: 137). Pluralists, on the other hand, challenge the view of ‘invariant universal[s]’ (Tilly 1995: 1597) laws and argue instead that different types of causes, which are not necessarily commensurable, exist (Gadenne 2001: 1562). For example, Mr. Adams, a senior civil servant, accepts a bribe because he is heavily in debt. But he could have taken the bribe in any case, so that owing a large sum of money was not necessary to acting in a corrupt manner. Multi-causality is normal rather than exceptional. As the least common denominator of a definition of cause, Gerring (2005: 169) suggests defining causes as ‘events or conditions that raise the probability of some outcome occurring’, which implies a ceteris paribus condition.

Causes of Corruption 15

In the philosophy of causality, an epistemological and an ontological tradition can be distinguished (Schinkel 2004). In the first tradition, a cause is the coinciding of phenomena where, because the cause always precedes the consequence, a belief exists that there is a cause (Hume 1990/1739). This kind of causality cannot be found in any scientific theory on corruption, however, because no cause can be identified that always coincides with the consequence ‘corruption’. This leads all too often to confuse correlation with causation. Causes identified in corruption research are not assumed always to lead to corruption. The so-called necessity criterion, often named as a criterion for causation (if A is the cause of B, B must occur when A occurs) is such a strong one that it is not used in corruption theories, which makes corruption studies not too different from other social analyses.

In the ontological tradition, causality is seen as something that actually happened. In social science this is often hard to identify, so neither is this very helpful in corruption research. For example, in what way does GNP or leadership exist, and how can it cause a particular corruption case? Bourdieu has warned against ascribing intrinsic aspects to social phenomena since it would amount to naturalizing something that is socially constructed (Schinkel 2004: 14). An often-noted and general problem for corruption research is that individual corruption cases are rarely being studied; the identified causes, therefore, are not triggering but most often predisposing. This makes it difficult to explain corruption.

3. Theories of the causes of corruption

Taking these remarks as a departing point, in the following chapters we will seek to identify different theories and schools of thought and analysis (which can but do not necessarily map to disciplines) to understand their way of conceptualizing the causes of corruption. Having mentioned the problem of defining the explanandum in the beginning of this chapter, which is the cause of corruption, the remainder of this chapter focuses on the theories of the causes of corruption. How are causes of corruption theoretically framed? Understanding how different theories define, conceptualize, and eventually deduce policy recommendations will amplify our understanding of the complexity of corruption and illustrate the spectrum of possibilities to deal with it analytically as well as practically.

Corruption is a much-debated subject in both popular and in scientific discourses (see for example Heidenheimer/Johnston/LeVine 1989). Relevant research from a variety of scientific disciplines by a variety of scholars has steadily accelerated in the last decade. The economic approach (e.g. Kaufmann/Kraay/Zoido-Lobaton 2000; Klitgaard 1991; Lambsdorff 2007; Rose- Ackerman 1978, 1999, 2006; Treisman 2000) is arguably the most dominant but certainly not the only scientific discourse on corruption.

A glance at the growing number of different scientific studies on corruption leads to more questions than answers. Confusion exists in the literature even within specific scientific disciplines. Which anti-corruption methods work best under what circumstances? The answer is equivocal. It seems that the theoretical model chosen to research corruption largely determines the direction of the proposed solutions. Different causal chains lead to different discourses on corruption prevention and control. Problems with comparisons of the different perspectives and attempts to come to an accumulated body of knowledge are hampered by the sometimes very different theoretical underpinnings. Confusion starts with the perspectives using different conceptualizations of corruption. Our motivations for this book stem from a need to help clear the confusion and the hope of uncovering less prominent theories of the causes of corruption. ‘Outmoded’ conceptions of the causes of corruption may help amplify the analytical and policy spectra, informing parties in both domains.

The main question of this book is: how are the causes of corruption studied? The more we know about the causes of corruption, the better we can choose the policy instruments to combat it. The more we know about the policy instruments (dominantly) used and recommended the more we need to know about the underlying conceptions of the causes of corruption.

The book presents the state of the art in a comparative study of the causes of corruption. Different authors in the field of corruption analysis from different schools of thought shed light on the issue of corruption from different theoretical perspectives. Corruption is currently studied within different disciplines and from different theoretical perspectives (Alemann 2005). Criminology, sociology, philosophy, public administration, economics, political science, history, and psychology, for example, may have within them a rather narrow set of theories and research methods that do not communicate well with each other. Part of the problem seems to be the different conceptual and theoretical starting points of the disciplines, leading to a ‘dialogue of the deaf’. By making these differences explicit, The Good Cause will further the important project of making the different corruption discourses intelligible to each other within academia. Obviously, certain theoretical perspectives enjoy at a certain place and time more prominence than others. This book aims to emphasize that (1) each theory has its strengths and weaknesses, and (2) the most prominent or hegemonious theory in practice and academia (such as the economics of corruption in the last twenty years) is not necessarily the analytically strongest or most useful one. Taking account of the (dis)advantages of different theoretical perspectives, such as structural functionalist theory, new institutional economics of corruption, criminological, postmodern, and systems theories, and others could therefore help analysts as well as practitioners be aware of the blind spots in developing policies to fight corruption and push researchers towards interconceptual analysis. The Good Cause takes into perspective what has been done so far in conceptualizing and em-

Causes of Corruption 17 pirically studying the causes of corruption and what needs to be done in the future.

4. Academic corruption discourses

The variety of scholarly disciplines within which corruption is studied results in several academic discourses. Hoetjes (1977), a scholar studying development administration, distinguishes four such clusters of corruption theories: Weberian ideal-typical, structural functionalist, institutional economics, and ecological. Since Hoetjes’s dissertation on corruption in India, however, other academic corruption discourses have come into being. To the four clusters we therefore add system theoretical, institutional design, post-positivist, and criminological perspectives. Let us briefly introduce the eight perspectives.

1. The Weberian-idealtypical approach (see Rubinstein/von Maravić, chapter 2) sees corruption as a lack of rationalization of the public service. To its proponents it is a phase on the route from patrimonialism to rational legal authority (Hoetjes 1977: 53-55; Hoetjes 1982: 65-67; see e.g. Rubinstein 1983). Loopholes exist in the not fully developed bureaucratic system for corrupt acts to occur.

2. The structural functionalist approach (see de Zwart, chapter 3) looks at society as a collection of coherent systems in which all societal phenomena have a function. Structural functionalist-inspired scholars therefore ask themselves which function corruption fulfills in a certain society (Hoetjes 1977: 55-57; Hoetjes 1982: 67-69). ‘Brokerage’, for example, is such a function when corrupt officials facilitate action between the central and the local levels (Blockmans 1988; Campbell 1989: 334; Huiskamp 1991, 1995). Corruption can serve to tone down unduly harsh laws (McFarlane 1996: 58-59) or provide protection and influence for social groups with material wealth but little or no political power (Waquet 1992: 62). The most elaborate example of a structural functionalist approach to corruption can be found in Fred Riggs’s theory of the prismatic society (Riggs 1964).

3. Adherents of the institutional economics approach (see Rose-Ackerman, chapter 4) see corrupt officials as rational utility maximizers who simply take the most profitable course of action (Hoetjes 1977: 57-60; Hoetjes 1982: 69-71; Klitgaard 1991; Lambsdorff 2007; Rose-Ackerman 1978). Rose-Ackerman says of this style of analysis, ‘[i]n a study of corruption, one can make substantial progress with models that take tastes and values as given and perceive individuals as rational beings attempting to further their own self-interest in a world of scarce resources’ (Rose-Ackerman 1978: 4). Rose-Ackerman’s work on the causes of corruption within organizations gives us a first idea for exploring the topic. Her conclusion is that each organizational structure is vulnerable to exploitation by unscrupulous officials but the structures vary with respect to the /ocus of corruption (1993: 817). Rose-Ackerman argues that the structure of the bureaucracy determines the discretionary power of an actor and the expected costs of accepting a bribe (1993: 803). As new forms of administrative systems emerge, the question of where to identify potential risks of corruption in the systems is relevant to a better understanding of the situation. The institutional economics approach consists of several subtheories and -streams such as rent-seeking and transaction cost theory (e.g. Lambsdorff 2002a, b).

The ecological approach involves combining micro, meso, and macro levels of corruption research. Mackie’s (1985) INUS (Insufficient but Necessary part of an Unnecessary but Sufficient) conditions play an important role in this approach. Huberts introduces a similar concept in the multi-approach (see Huberts, chapter 9).

System theory is Niklas Luhmann’s (cf. Brans/Rossbach 1997) approach to corruption (see Hiller, chapter 5). Society is divided into separate, selfreferential, autopoietic value systems. Corruption results from overlapping systems, for instance, when values from the economic system penetrate the legal or political system (Luhmann 1995a), resulting in the abuse of another system’s logic (‘Sinnlogik’; Hiller 2005: 61).

Adherents of the institutional design of political systems (e.g. Gerring/Thacker 2004; Johnston 2005; Kunicova/Rose-Ackerman 2005; Manow 2005) approach believe that institutions shape behavior and that therefore some political systems are more prone to corruption than others (see Peters, chapter 6).' The study of the link between political institutions and ergo-political governance arrangements and corruption emphasizes the different impact of types of political systems. The core theoretical concept is grounded in the assumption of political competition, which

Unlike interest-based theories, neo-institutional theories emphasize the embeddedness of individual preferences and action in collective social settings (DiMaggio/Powell 1991: 11; Goodin 1996: 7). Individual behavior is shaped by rules, symbols, routines, norms, scripts, and templates (Hall/Taylor 1996: 15). Institutions therefore make behavior predictable by mitigating ambiguity and unpredictability in complex and dynamic social settings (March/Olsen 1989: 22-24). Actors follow rules they consider legitimate, i.e., those that have a shared understanding of what is right, true, reasonable, and good. Seeking identity or fulfilling the expectations and obligations “encapsulated in a role” (March/Olsen 2006: 689) is a central element in this theory. Instead of calculating the net benefit of alternative options, conformity or the logic of appropriateness explains decisions. Not consequence, likelihood, or value matter but “criteria of similarity and congruence” (March/Olsen 2006: 690). To act appropriately simply means to act in accordance with institutionalized practices of a collective. Corruption or deviance from accepted norms and standards occurs when institutions do not fulfill this “sense-making” function and therefore create uncertainty and disorder; the “aggregative” institution (March/Olsen 1989: 118, 137) itself starts to propagate to maximize the net benefit of alternative options.

Causes of Corruption 19 emphasizes the ideal of elections as sufficient means of control and accountability. Such an analytical perspective seeks to explore disparate causal mechanisms such as openness and transparency, party competition, decision-making rules, or collective action problems. It often tries to explain political corruption with deficits of competition. Are parliamentary democracies more prone to corruption than presidential ones, or do unitary systems lead to lower levels of corruption than federal systems?

7. The post-positivist approach focuses on how corruption is socially constructed (de Graaf/Wagenaar/Hoenderboom, chapter 7). The American political scientist Michael Johnston has defined corruption as ‘the abuse, according to the legal or social standards constituting a society’s system of public order, of a public role or resource for private benefit’ (Johnston 1996: 331-334). He invites us to investigate how the content of notions of abuse, public role, and private benefit are contested in specific places and at specific times. Johnston is interested in finding out how clashes over the boundaries between public and private, politics and administration, institutions and sources of power, state and society, private and collective interests, and the allocative limits of the market develop, because it is precisely during such conflicts that concepts such as integrity and corruption acquire their meaning (Johnston 1996). From such a cultural or constructivist perspective, corruption manifests as a specific type of social relationship. Its social meaning must be understood with reference to its social setting (Sissener 2001). Consequently, the meaning of deviancy varies from society to society and throughout history. There is neither a universal understanding of corruption (or nepotism or deviancy) nor are the phenomena grounded in the dark side of humans. Instead they represent social mechanisms to achieve solidarity between and within kinship groups (Tanzler 2007). According to this understanding, focusing on the perceptions of corruption reveals the social construction of reality. Empirical research therefore emphasizes the importance of narratives and arguments in understanding the subjective perspective of reality.

8. Those who take the criminological approach (Huisman/Vande Walle, chapter 8) are interested in individual corrupt officials and apply criminological theories to them. De Graaf and Huberts (2008) studied ten Dutch corruption cases and drew attention to the importance of the psychological make-up of the perpetrators involved. Corrupt officials in the Netherlands, it turns out, are often highly popular with their colleagues because of their openness and flair, and especially their ability to ‘get things done’. They are usually males, whose orientation to problem solving rather than problem creating tends to make them valuable to their organizations. Yet it is precisely their unorthodox, results-oriented mode of operation that makes them cross the thin line between laudable and lamentable behavior.

The Good Cause is structured to allow the variously schooled authors to introduce you to their particular perspectives. They discuss the definition and models used within them, give examples of empirical studies, describe their research methods (for example, quantitative or qualitative), and evaluate their inherent strengths and weaknesses. Last, the authors review the perspectives’ empirical insights to show what they add to the discussion at hand: the question of what causes corruption.

Chapter 2: Max Weber, Bureaucracy, and Corruption

Max Weber (1864-1920), the great German sociologist, was probably the most formative intellectual progenitor of the theoretical framework in which bureaucracy has been studied and approached during the past century, and has obvious relevance to our knowledge of corruption and corrupt practices.

It does not appear that Max Weber (1864-1920) wrote anything of a lengthy and considered nature about corruption in modern societies; his thoughts on this subject, in so far as they exist, appear to be contained in his views on bureaucracy and ‘modernity’. In so far as Weber had a view of political or bureaucratic corruption, then, it is fair to term it an evolutionary one: corruption was the hallmark of an earlier, more ‘primitive’ stage of society, and would eventually vanish with the triumph of a professionalized bureaucracy. Weber’s implicit views on corruption are chiefly contained in his writings on bureaucracy (Weber 1922) and, to a lesser extent, in his writings on the ‘vocation’ of politicians (Weber 1948).

Although Weber for the most part insinuates the notions of corruption and favouritism, the conceptual and empirical implications arising thereof will most certainly pique the interest of a student of corruption analysis. To trace the distinct Weberian perspective, our first section will characterize the time and Zeitgeist of Weber’s writings in terms of nepotism and corruption in Europe and abroad; the second will link the historical evolution of a Weberian bureaucracy in England in the nineteenth century to cases of patronage and nepotism. And what will we learn? First, and as will be argued in the third section, a Weberian thinking about corruption must start with the distinction between three ideal types of domination (traditional, charismatic, and legal-rational) that form the basis for analysing the relationship between rulers and the ruled. Second, the Weberian perspective on corruption offers both (1) a lens for the analysis of systemic forms of corruption that have the character of a ‘web of reciprocities’, where corruption and its causes are located in the wider context of a specific form of domination and personal rulership (see Huberts, this volume); and (2) a concept of legal-rational order that lays the foundation for an explicit understanding of corruption, one which has the misuse of public power for private gain and deviance from legitimate order at its conceptual heart.

2. Weber and his time — The Dreyfus Affair, the Panama Canal Scandal etc.

Although Weber was well-informed on corruption in local American politics, to a certain extent, his silence is somewhat surprising, since there were, in Weber’s lifetime, many corruption scandals in ‘modern’ societies of which he must have been aware. In France, the Panama Canal Scandal of 1889-92 brought the Third Republic to its knees, and is seen as paving the way for the Dreyfus Affair a few years later. In it, 104 deputies in the French Parliament (some sources claim 510 deputies) were accused of taking bribes to keep quiet about the financial difficulties of DeLessup’s Panama Canal Company, which hoped to construct the Panama Canal, eventually built by the Americans. One of those accused of bribe-taking was Georges Clemenceau, France’s wartime Prime Minister (Tombs 1996: 457). Some of those accused of bribe-taking were Jewish financiers, who were singled out for attack by the same sources on the French right as would launch the more celebrated Dreyfus Affair three or four years later. In supposedly incorruptible Britain, there occurred in 1912 the Marconi Scandal, in which four high-ranking Ministers in H.H. Asquith’s Liberal government, among them future Prime Minister David Lloyd George, were accused of what would now be termed “insider trading’ in shares in the British Marconi Company, just before it was awarded a lucrative government contract for the construction of wireless installations around the British Empire. This affair became a cause célébre in Britain at the time; the four men were acquitted of any wrongdoing by a Parliamentary committee which voted along partisan lines.