A country free of corruption is more likely to have good investments, and the possibility to grow or to be economically shielded is higher than corrupt countries. The corruption can or can not start in the political system, but is very unlike that a corrupt nation has ethical politicians.
The increasing availability of data from electronic social media, web pages, e-newspapers and other are helping the analysts to generate complex and graphics networks in many different areas.
Thierry Dias Coelho’s recent working paper, “Lightening the Shadow of Power: Elites, Hidden Structures, and Institutional Corruption: The Social Network Analysis Approach”, analyzed 2392 Registers of Interests published since 1995 by Portuguese Prime Ministers, Ministers, Junior Ministers and Members of Parliament to uncover hidden networks of power. (1)
Mihály Fazekas and István János Tóth, researchers from the ANTICORRP project at the Corruption Research Center Budapest have recently generated a large organizational network using “big data” from Hungarian public procurement processes from 2009-2012. This network consists of Hungarian public bodies authorized to award procurement contracts and the private companies competing for these contracts. The idea is that by plotting these relationships graphically, an observable difference should emerge between open and transparent competition for public contracts from those which are awarded as a result of socio-political influence. (1)
The Brazilian corruption system is extremely complex and dense. In 2015, my country was ranked in the 76th position among 168 countries in the Corruption Perceptions Index. We tied with Bosnia and Herzegovina, Burkina Faso, India, Thailand, Tunisia, and Zambia.
Brazil was born in 1500 as a colony of Portugal. The European colonizers extracted as many rocks, gold and silver as possible from the land; they also stimulated the plantation of sugar cane and coffee for a long time. All those resources were shipped away to Europe. Portugal, for 300 years, intentionally avoided developing a local political structure and physical infrastructure (cities and roads) in Brazil.
The territory was divided into 15 parts, all open to see, and shared to be managed by members of Portuguese nobility. This kind of system, until 1759, provided full the power of decision for the captains, and their sons and daughter because the control was passed hereditarily.
After the Napoleon’s army invasion to Portuguese’s soil in Europe in 1808, the royal family, for the first time, traveled to Brazil. They established an extended kingdom in South American lands, and in order to meet their royal lifestyle, the court started distributing titles and properties to rich businessmen that would lend them money or grant them favors. Probably, here is the root of the Brazilian corruption system.
Later, after part of the royal family come back to Europe, the independence from Portugal was declared without many conflicts.
Since the early days, Brazil has a weak legal system to promote equal opportunities to rich and poor people. Since corruptors are able to insert money in the structure they are protected by a bunch of tricks and maneuvers available in the system.
My proposal is not to understand the whole history and identify the complete corruption network since 1800; but is to map, understand and identify actual personages in the process, and prevent future problems for the country. Maybe the information can help the Brazilian population to define their votes in the next coming elections.
In all major corruption scandals from the early 20th century up until now, always big economic oligarchies are involved, sometimes led by the same families for several years creating a sort of dynasty, and they are able to find their way into the political field to never let it go, even when pressed by the justice system.
Brazil has 35 different political parties today (2), and this large number of parties makes impossible a President, Governor, or Mayor get the majority in the congress, and the projects are always rejected if the parties do not make agreements and alliances.
But, to be part of an alliance the parties always ask for favors, executive positions in the state-owned companies or chairs in the ministry offices (cabinet or administration).
Creating a social network map representing the interaction of the nodes (politicians, business people, judges, police commissioners, …), in Brazil and abroad, will be possible to understand the dimension of the chain organization.
It will be necessary to collect some specific personal information from the politicians, better explaining, it will be necessary to add attributes to the data set, such as:
- - Gender
- - Age
- - Party
- - Party alliances
- - Federal state
- - Marital state
- - Actual political position
- - Previous political position
- - Previous position (before become politician)
- - Business owner? Yes or No
To determinate the connections between nodes will be necessary to use political interaction because politicians will never answer a survey about this matter. I also propose to introduce different types of interactions between nodes, as if supports, hates or is indifferent to each other; and is important to know the intense of the ties (strong, moderate or weak), too.
The following areas should be the most important to be analyzed:
- - Political System
o Legislation Sub-system
o Executive Sub-system
o Judicial Sub-system
- - Police System
o Policemen Sub-system
o Prison administration Sub-system
- - Public Services System
- - Land Administration System
- - Tax Administration System
- - Customs Administration System
- - Public Procurement System
- - Natural Resources System
- - Civil Society System
o Business Sub-system
- - Military System
o Army Sub-system
o Navy Sub-system
o Aeronautics Sub-system
I believe that these sets of information will support a strong network with millions of ties that will support the identification of corrupts, and will provide rich data to classify potential problems in the nation.
Until now the large majority of the assignments based on SNA was used by political scientists to research small samples of information, but improving the collaboration of the society and growing the data set, systems and sub-systems, it is going to be very powerful. As more people support this kind of initiative, as more effective this process become and the country will benefit from the result.
Renato Brandao
MBA Candidate
Hult International Business School
Cambridge, MA
2. (2) Number of parties in Brazil: http://www.tse.jus.br/partidos/partidos-politicos/registrados-no-tse
References:
1 comment:
Well, no one can accuse you of thinking small! You've laid the groundwork for your proposal very well, and while I would have liked to see a specific network question and a bit more on how you would use SNA techniques to measure the various players and types of corruption you're looking for, but you score points for suggesting that you could use not just valued ties but negative and neutral ones as well. Using that type of tie together with the attributes you recommend could create a rich network dataset, for you and others to analyse.
Muito obrigado.
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