Social Climate
How widespread is corruption?
By Mahar Mangahas
Philippine Daily Inquirer
First Posted 02:25:00 03/29/2008
MANILA, Philippines—“How widespread do you think corruption is in the public service in [name of this country]?” is a question in the 2004 Survey on Citizenship of the International Social Survey Program (www.issp.org). It is relevant to the Philippine Development Forum’s reminder about the importance of quelling corruption.
The five choices of answers as to how widespread is corruption in the public service, with corresponding Philippine results from the June 2004 national survey by the poll group Social Weather Stations (SWS), were: “Hardly anyone” (“Halos wala”), 2 percent; “A small number” (kaunti lang), 14 percent; “A moderate number” (“Marami-rami”), 22 percent; “A lot” (“Napakarami”), 25 percent; and “Almost everyone” (“Halos lahat”), 30 percent. The balance of 7 percent couldn’t choose any answer.
Corruption is pervasive in the Philippines, according to 55 percent. Given the five-point answer grid of this item, the first two answers (which got 2 and 14 points respectively) can be taken as favorable, the last two answers (25 and 30) as unfavorable, and the middle answer (22) as neutral. One could then say that, in June 2004, 25 + 30 = 55 percent of Filipinos saw corruption as pervasive, meaning that they saw a lot of people, or more, in the public service as involved in corruption.
I find it interesting that, class-wise, there was no difference between the perceptions of the middle-to-upper classes or ABCs and those of the “masa” [masses], or Ds. In both groups, 56 percent saw corruption as pervasive. Among the very poor Es, the score was 49 percent, which is only a little smaller.
Government people see just as much corruption. And what do people in the public service itself say? In the June 2004 survey, 9 percent of the randomly drawn national sample of 1,200 adults consisted of employees of the government or of government corporations. Although they would be expected to be sensitive to criticism of public sector corruption, 53 percent of them, which is hardly different from the national average, said that “a lot/almost all” in the public service are involved in corruption.
Areas matter. There were bigger differences across areas than across social classes or employment sectors. The appraisal of pervasive corruption had a high of 68 percent in Metro Manila and a low of 42 percent in Mindanao, with Luzon (55 percent) and Visayas (52 percent) in-between. Having discounted the influence of class-expectations on the relatively high score in Metro Manila, I suspect that there really are significant differences in the pervasiveness of corruption across different areas of the Philippines.
Presidential popularity is affected. The date of the citizenship survey, in June 2004, was also the last time that President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo had a positive net satisfaction rating (+26). She got ratings of +43 from those who put involvement in corruption at “hardly anyone,” +46 from those who put it at “a small number,” and +39 from those who said “moderate,” but only +19 from those who said “a lot,” and only +9 from those who said “almost everyone.”
The global average is 36 percent. Though 55 percent of Filipinos constitute a majority, it would not be unfavorable if majorities in all other countries also see pervasive corruption in their own public services. What, in fact, is the general international experience on this? For the 38 member countries of ISSP in 2004, the average who saw corruption pervasive in their country was 36 percent, or fully 19 points below the Philippines.
Last Wednesday, I presented percentages on pervasive corruption for 15 ISSP countries at a closed-door briefing at the Inquirer. Above the average were: Mexico, 77; Venezuela, 72; Russia, 65; Israel, 61; the Philippines, 55; Uruguay, 52; and Japan, 40. Yes, there are a number of nationalities that are more critical of corruption in their public services than we Filipinos are. Below the average, on the other hand, were: Taiwan, 33; United States, 30; Spain 25; France, 22; Germany, 21; Australia, 12; and Great Britain, 11.
Bear in mind that this is a comparison of how different nationalities judge the extent of corruption in their own individual public services, and not how some super-national body judges the countries in relation to each other. It is, in effect, a comparison of national self-ratings. The ISSP data enable each nationality to view its own situation in relation to others, and help them to judge the efficacy of their own efforts to combat corruption.
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The ISSP is a network of national research institutes that do a national survey on a common topic each year. The SWS, which joined ISSP in 1990, was a proponent of the citizenship survey, and was elected to the questionnaire drafting committee. In the committee work, lasting over two years, SWS was mainly represented by political scientist Jose Abueva, one of the pioneers of opinion polling in the Philippines. Professor Abueva, who did election surveys as early as 1965, became an SWS Fellow in 1986 and was on the SWS board in 2000-2005.
The topics of the ISSP surveys have been: Role of Government (1985, 1990, 1996, 2006), Social Networks and Support Systems (1986), Social Inequality (1987, 1992, 1999), Family and Changing Gender Roles (1988, 1994, 2002), Work Orientations (1989, 1997, 2005), Religion (1991, 1998), Environment (1993, 2000), National Identity (1995), and Citizenship (2004). The ISSP cross-country data-sets are open to the public at the SWS Survey Data Library, care of SWS librarian/archivist Jeanette Ureta (jeanette.ureta@sws.org.ph).
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Contact SWS: www.sws.org.ph or mahar.mangahas@sws.org.ph.
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