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Understanding Social Norms

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View the page of Diana Chigas

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Diana Chigas provides an overview to social norms and how social norms influence corruption.

Image courtesy of interviewee. March 25, 2024

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This video video discusses the intersection of corruption and peace building, discussing how both the co-directors, who have 25 years of experience in peace building, noticed that corruption is prevalent in many areas they worked in and is often identified as a key driver of conflict. Despite the recognition of corruption's significance, peace building programs frequently neglect to address it, leading to ineffective anti-corruption efforts.

They highlight the role of social norms, which dictate appropriate behaviors within groups. Social norms can maintain compliance through rewards and punishments, which can foster corrupt behaviors under certain conditions. This video video provides examples of how corrupt practices can become normalized within official settings, such as court clerks demanding fees for services, despite these practices being illegal.

In fragile and conflict-affected situations, social norms play an even more crucial role as individuals rely on their social networks for survival amid challenges like violence, unemployment, and weak institutions. The pressures to conform to corrupt practices often stem from the need to support family or protect one's status within a community.

The narrative emphasizes that traditional anti-corruption approaches often fail because they treat corruption as an exception rather than a systemic issue. They conclude that effective anti-corruption strategies must address both the enabling conditions for corruption and the underlying drivers, including social norms, that compel individuals to engage in corrupt activities. Understanding these dynamics is critical for developing sustainable solutions to combat corruption.

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X-TIMESTAMP-MAP:LOCAL=00:00:00.000,MPEGTS=900000

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Both my co-director, Cheyenne s Shabaka church

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and I both come from the peace building field.

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We've spent 25 years in peace building,

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and both of us were noticing in our different work,

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that corruption was an endemic feature of most

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of the context we worked in.

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And people, at least in my experience,

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consistently identified some form of corruption

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as a key driver of conflict.

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And then when you looked at peace building programs,

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nobody was actually addressing it at the same time.

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Our examination of evaluations

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of anti-corruption work revealed that the record

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of effectiveness was not so good.

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There were places where there was lots of work, lots

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of laws, processes, programs, trainings, et cetera,

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but very little effect on the levels of corruption.

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Um, this was very consistent with a lot of the research

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that was coming out at the time.

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It's arguing the same thing,

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but also questioning the various assumptions

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and conceptual foundations on which a lot of the

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traditional anti-corruption work was based.

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So we created the corruption, justice,

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and legitimacy program to understand how

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and why this happens, and develop more effective ways

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to analyze and approach anti-corruption programming

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and increase its effectiveness.

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Social norms are be, put it sort of very quickly.

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Uh, there are unwritten rules about the right way

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to behave in a group.

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Um, and these aren't just common beliefs

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about how to behave.

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These are really rules that take the form

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of mutual expectations within a group, about

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what is typical behavior.

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That means sort of what I think others are doing

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or thinking, and what is appropriate behavior.

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That means what I think the behavior would is expected

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of me, in a particular context.

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Um, and they're kept in place,

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or enforced, by the group, through rewards

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and punishments, which are usually social, reputational

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or relational in nature.

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So it might be if you're doing well

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and complying, you get approval, you get a smile,

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you get some status, you might have increased influence.

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And if you breach the norms, you may,

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get some frowns or dirty looks.

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Um, they can be, you can lose status,

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you can lose credibility.

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Um, you might be mocked, et cetera.

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So to give you a very everyday example in,

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in my town in Massachusetts, cars stop for pedestrians.

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That's a very unusual occurrence in Massachusetts.

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Uh, but there's a social norm in my town, Belmont, that,

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residents in Belmont stop

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for pedestrians when they step off the curb.

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Um, and if you don't stop,

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the drivers will give you a dirty look,

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and most of the pedestrians in the area will also give

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you a dirty look.

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Uh, and I care. So I do comply because I live in Belmont

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and I want to be a good Belmont citizen,

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and I want to have good relations with my neighbors.

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Someone from New Hampshire who's just driving through,

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for example, may not care so much and may not comply

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because they have no connection, to the town,

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so it doesn't have any influence on them.

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So that's how social norms work,

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and it works in a similar way with corruption.

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So give a couple of examples. Court clerks.

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In some of our research we saw court clerks were expected

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by other court officials in their courthouses

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to demand a fee, which they called airtime or water.

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There are lots of different names,

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for petitioners to set court dates.

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Now, this was illegal. They were not supposed to do that.

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Uh, the court clerk though,

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who defied those expectations from her colleagues,

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and didn't demand a fee from the petitioners,

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would be mocked.

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They people would say, she's gonna die poor.

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Um, she might not be trusted.

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She might be ostracized

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or even potentially be reposted

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to a less desirable position in the courthouse.

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Or if she were really good at it,

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at collecting the fees.

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And she might get nods of approval,

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she might get status, et cetera.

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Um, similar, case with civil servants who are expected

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by their families

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or clans to do what it takes to protect their own.

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And that's a pretty common kind of norm in a lot

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of these contexts that we work.

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That means hiring family,

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giving them favorable treatment, getting them out

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of trouble when they're in trouble with the justice system,

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getting money embezzling,

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et cetera, to support their family.

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Uh, if they don't, they will be mocked.

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They will, you know, they, they,

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they appear in their village without the big Mercedes.

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Um, they will be put at the back of the church,

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and they will say, so what are you doing there?

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What are you out there for?

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Um, and they might also find themselves not getting the

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support or hope that,

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that they want from their family when they're in need.

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Um, so that's sort of in a nutshell what social norms are

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and how they relate to corruption.

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Social norms are important in fragile

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and conflict affected situations.

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They're not, we'll go back a second

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and look at how they drive corruption,

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because social norms can drive corruption

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because in any context, right?

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Because they can be a very important determinant of

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how people behave.

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Um, they play a role in how they choose to behave.

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It's true in all contexts, but in fragile

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and conflict affected contexts.

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Um, it's even more so

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because in these contexts, a person's relationships

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and their networks with like-minded people,

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and whether it's their family, their ethnic group,

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their religious order professional network, whatever it is,

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they're key to their ability to survive

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and navigate life.

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Um, these are contexts with lots of challenges.

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They have risks to climate, unemployment,

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political exclusion, violence.

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The institutions are weak.

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Um, so services, services are quite poor.

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You might, security may not even be really

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provided by, the government, social divisions, mistrust,

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contested politics, et cetera.

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And in these environments, people are really forced

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to rely on each other

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and on their group to get these services, to get security,

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to get food, access to opportunities

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and livelihoods to protect their land status, et cetera.

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And so as a result,

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they're not only more important to people.

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The group is not only more important to people,

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but the punishments for breaching social norms can

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be much more severe.

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So you don't wanna be considered disloyal,

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or to your group or traitor,

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particularly in a conflict context.

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You can lose access to all of this kind of support

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that you need to survive,

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to quote a police officer in Central African Republic,

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that was one of the case studies we did when we initially

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started this, program.

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It's better to break the law, than

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to make the family turn its back on you.

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And there's a sango province,

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proverb in Central African Republic pity the

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man who is alone.

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Uh, so your networks are your lifeline.

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And, that includes sort of pressures

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to engage in corruption in order to survive.

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People con often confuse social norms with a number

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of other related concepts.

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So there may be attitudes.

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It means attitudes are what people personally believe

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or think their morals

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or values, what they believe is right in the sense of

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ethical standards that apply in all situations.

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There are conventions.

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Um, these are behaviors people engage in

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because it meets a need, like when you

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use an umbrella when it rains outside.

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Um, so sometimes when we see a common behavior,

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let's say offering a gift to a doctor

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to get preferential treatment,

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sometimes we may assume it's a social norm at play

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because it's normal.

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And so, and that all things

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where things are just normal is social norm.

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It's, influence. And that's not necessarily the case.

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The be behavior in that case could be just

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as easily a matter of convenience.

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There's no other way to get healthcare they need.

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Um, so that's a convention.

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Um, the behavior may align with attitudes.

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People may think it's okay

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because they per personally believe it's okay

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to give a gift, if it's to help yourself or your family.

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Or they may not know that it's not permitted to give gifts.

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Um, and they do it. Uh, and so,

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or that they can lodge a complaint at a hospital.

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Um, so that's a knowledge, driver.

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Or it could be a social norm.

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The patients may be bribing

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because they see

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that other patients are doing the same thing.

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Um, and they may may feel social pressure from other

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patients or from their families to do it

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because they will get, you know,

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people might think they're stupid

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or negligent if they don't.

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Um, so the distinction sometimes seem

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very academic and arcane.

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Um, but they really do have very practical

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implications for programming.

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So understanding the differences

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and diagnosing the type of beha influence,

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driving a behavior, it's critical because the strategies

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and tactics that you would use to address

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attitudes versus social norms versus conventions

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or knowledge are really different.

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And if you do the right, if you,

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if you mismatch the strategy, you won't get the results.

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Um, especially, and,

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and this is quite common in the field

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as we noticed when we were doing the research.

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Uh, if you try to change people's attitudes

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and knowledge, for example, patients, you know,

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patients then know their rights.

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Um, they personally come to think that it's bad

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to give doctors gifts to get a service.

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Um, their behavior might not change.

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Because if a social norms at play,

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you haven't changed the social norm,

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the changing attitudes won't change the social norm.

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Uh, so that's why those distinctions are really

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important to understand.

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A key element of social norms, is the group,

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'cause they exist within a group,

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because it's the approval or disapproval

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or whatever other social sanction there is

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that the group members impose that help ensure

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that the social norm is complied with.

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Um, so sometimes we call it the reference group

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because it's the group to which someone will refer in order

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to understand what's expected of them.

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So there's no one unfortunately way

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of figuring out who's the group.

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Um, the key characteristic is that people, it's a, a group

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where people matter to each other, doesn't necessarily mean

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that they know each other personally,

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or have personal relationships.

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Also doesn't mean that they are geographically concentrated.

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A group of people whose opinions approval, disapproval,

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someone cares about, usually on a specific issue.

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And they can be formal groups like peers in an organization,

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you know, sort of the, a labor union, a religious group,

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a militia, professional organization, university alumni,

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but also more informal.

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Um, you could be, you know, women judges or your community

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or your social network or your ethnic group.

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And most people logically belong to many groups

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and social networks at the same time.

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I mean, that's, that's life.

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And so in order to figure out, you know, it's

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how do you figure out which group's norms will be most

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influential in a particular situation?

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I mean, that's the real question. So if you have a judge

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who's deciding whether to demand

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or take a bribe, to decide a verdict,

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will the judge be influenced by their family

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or their fellow judges in the courthouse

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or their, church group or their friends network?

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Um, that really depends on the salience

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of the group to the situation.

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In other words, how relevant is the group to the,

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and the group identity to this particular situation,

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which in this case is the bribe in the courthouse.

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And so I think here, you might say you'd have to look at it

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'cause it's not gonna be the same in every situation.

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But here the judge might look to their own peers

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and see what they're doing and

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what's being expected of them.

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Maybe they're superiors,

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maybe they're getting pressure from their family too.

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So there may be two groups influencing,

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at the same time.

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So there's no formula, unfortunately. I wish there were.

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Um, you need to look at the situation

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and at the specific corrupt behaviors

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and the context in order to figure out what's,

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who the relevant group is.

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Social norms serve many important functions

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to, for individuals.

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They meet people's inherent need, to belong

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and fit in somewhere sort of sense,

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have a sense of community.

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They strengthen their sense of identity as part of a group.

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Having a group is, is important to people's identity.

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Um, and in groups, social norms help

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to maintain social cohesion.

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Um, they promote and sustain cooperation when it's hard

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to get people to move in the same direction.

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Um, and they help provide solutions to problems people face.

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And so how do they influence people's behavior?

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They com people comply with norms

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because they get positive reinforcement for complying

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with the expectations and negative consequences

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for not expect, behaving in the expected ways.

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And we talked about that already,

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but I think it's important to emphasize that social norms

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and the behaviors they support,

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including the corrupt behaviors that they support,

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exist because they're functional.

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You know, even as in the case of corruption, it leads

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to a social bad.

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So a social norm, for example,

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that people should do whatever it takes

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to protect their family.

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And so it will lead people to bribe, for services.

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It leads officials to engage in things like nepotism,

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embezzlement to demanding bribes, et cetera.

12:58.145 --> 12:59.885
And it's not that these people are bad

12:59.985 --> 13:03.285
or immoral, necessarily, I mean, maybe they,

13:03.395 --> 13:06.685
they might be greedy, but often, the norm

13:07.025 --> 13:08.125
and following that norm

13:08.125 --> 13:10.565
and social pressure, leads them to do that

13:10.565 --> 13:13.005
because the norm is important to people's survival,

13:13.025 --> 13:15.645
in these contexts where they don't can't get their,

13:16.145 --> 13:17.925
it can't satisfy their needs otherwise.

13:18.225 --> 13:19.525
And so a couple of examples.

13:19.625 --> 13:20.845
So a widow,

13:20.865 --> 13:22.565
and we did see this in Northern Uganda,

13:22.805 --> 13:25.165
a widow's son gets put into jail based,

13:25.165 --> 13:28.165
perhaps based on trumped up charges, to pressure her

13:28.165 --> 13:30.325
to give up some land, to her neighbor.

13:30.745 --> 13:32.725
So she goes to bribe the police officer

13:32.865 --> 13:34.045
to release her son from jail.

13:34.345 --> 13:36.325
Um, she knows that the case is unjust

13:36.665 --> 13:38.965
and you know, she might be able to win in court,

13:39.225 --> 13:41.005
and she knows that the bribery will further

13:41.005 --> 13:42.045
undermine the rule of law.

13:42.085 --> 13:43.325
I mean, it leads not a good thing.

13:43.705 --> 13:45.565
Um, but for the widow, it's functional.

13:45.895 --> 13:49.165
She's concerned that her son will die in prison

13:49.165 --> 13:50.565
because the conditions are terrible.

13:50.905 --> 13:53.765
And she also can't afford to lose the family's main provider

13:53.945 --> 13:58.125
and protector even sort of, kind of bad, greedy seeming,

13:58.525 --> 14:00.645
behavior like a politician who uses her position

14:00.645 --> 14:03.205
to extort bribes from companies doing business

14:03.205 --> 14:04.765
with the government or buys votes

14:04.825 --> 14:06.565
or hires only people from her tribe.

14:06.865 --> 14:08.805
You know, that you think that they're greedy,

14:09.075 --> 14:10.205
immoral, and power hungry.

14:10.265 --> 14:11.605
And that may be true,

14:11.665 --> 14:15.925
but in a winner takes all context where people are insecure,

14:16.135 --> 14:18.405
where you could lose everything in a moment's notice

14:18.545 --> 14:21.525
and access to the state's resources is the only guarantee

14:21.525 --> 14:22.685
of survival for one's group.

14:23.265 --> 14:26.285
Um, she may also feel pressure to engage in these behaviors

14:26.285 --> 14:29.485
because that's the only way to protect one's own, ensure

14:29.485 --> 14:30.565
that they survive as a group.

14:30.745 --> 14:33.765
Um, so very much of a a functional thing.

14:33.945 --> 14:36.605
So drivers and enablers, I, I'll go back a bit to sort of

14:36.605 --> 14:40.245
how we started our, our project, which was,

14:40.635 --> 14:43.205
when we started looking at ineffectiveness

14:43.505 --> 14:47.365
of anti-corruption work, one of the things that we,

14:47.395 --> 14:50.845
noticed in terms of how people did their work, it was

14:50.845 --> 14:52.045
that there was a mismatch

14:52.045 --> 14:54.485
between the social dynamics in fragile

14:54.545 --> 14:55.765
and conflict affected states.

14:56.065 --> 14:57.805
Um, and the technical

14:57.865 --> 15:01.245
and very formulaic, type of analysis

15:01.465 --> 15:05.005
and program we saw in anti-corruption in the field.

15:05.385 --> 15:08.885
So the conventional anti-corruption approaches are grounded

15:08.985 --> 15:10.845
in an assumption that corruption is a

15:10.845 --> 15:12.165
deviation from the norm.

15:12.225 --> 15:14.485
You have sort of a, a greedy bad apple.

15:14.825 --> 15:17.005
And what you need to do is understand

15:17.075 --> 15:19.565
what opportunities there are for greedy people

15:19.625 --> 15:21.445
to take advantage of, to commit corrupt

15:21.445 --> 15:22.645
acts and close them off.

15:22.985 --> 15:26.125
And then you look at what gaps there are in transparency

15:26.385 --> 15:29.925
and the information that's available in, knowledge

15:30.265 --> 15:33.725
and skills and as well as accountability mechanisms.

15:33.985 --> 15:36.165
And once you've figured out all those gaps,

15:36.185 --> 15:38.205
you have a standard solution and you fill them.

15:38.865 --> 15:41.485
And what we are noticing when you notice in a lot

15:41.485 --> 15:42.725
of these situations is what if

15:42.725 --> 15:44.165
corruption actually doesn't work that way?

15:44.545 --> 15:47.005
Um, what if those enforcing the rules

15:47.265 --> 15:49.325
or who are supposed to be enforcing the rules

15:49.385 --> 15:51.805
and doing all of this are also,

15:51.995 --> 15:54.005
have a stake in the game and part of the game?

15:54.385 --> 15:57.765
Um, they have no incentive to constrain the abusers and

15:58.315 --> 16:00.165
therefore there's nobody to do that.

16:00.345 --> 16:02.605
So what do you do then?

16:02.625 --> 16:05.445
And that, that was our experience in most of the situations

16:05.475 --> 16:07.645
that, that we were encountering.

16:08.785 --> 16:13.165
Uh, so in other words, corruption is not the,

16:13.625 --> 16:15.085
is not the exception to the rule.

16:15.345 --> 16:16.645
It is the rule. And somebody,

16:16.845 --> 16:19.325
a practitioner in Afghanistan put it very nicely said, well,

16:19.665 --> 16:22.605
corruption is not the exception to governance.

16:22.985 --> 16:25.445
It is governance in a lot of these contexts.

16:25.505 --> 16:28.365
And in those cases, you need a much different way

16:28.385 --> 16:29.805
of analyzing corruption

16:30.065 --> 16:33.245
and programming to be, to address it.

16:33.545 --> 16:35.525
And that's where the drivers and enablers are,

16:35.525 --> 16:36.845
because a lot of the factors

16:36.915 --> 16:39.605
that the traditional anti-corruption programming

16:40.465 --> 16:42.045
is based on, and the analysis

16:42.085 --> 16:44.485
that's done really focuses on enablers.

16:44.485 --> 16:47.485
These are the things that provide opportunities to,

16:47.625 --> 16:49.045
to engage in corrupt behaviors.

16:49.345 --> 16:50.965
Uh, there's, there's in fact a formula.

16:51.275 --> 16:54.245
They called the click guard equation from the person

16:54.265 --> 16:55.445
who were first proposed it.

16:55.745 --> 16:57.365
Um, corruption equals

16:58.085 --> 17:00.885
monopoly plus discretion minus accountability.

17:01.385 --> 17:05.325
Um, and so it's all right, how much monopoly do people have?

17:05.385 --> 17:08.085
And so, and how much unchecked discretion,

17:08.425 --> 17:10.645
and then what's transparency and accountability?

17:11.025 --> 17:12.525
Um, and those are all the things

17:12.525 --> 17:14.005
that are providing opportunities,

17:14.745 --> 17:17.405
but they're not dealing with the reasons

17:17.595 --> 17:20.805
that people commit corrupt acts, what their motivations are.

17:21.025 --> 17:24.765
Um, and so the drivers are those things that are,

17:24.865 --> 17:26.285
the reasons for committing corruption.

17:26.285 --> 17:27.885
So it could be, it could be greed

17:28.265 --> 17:29.885
so people can be greedy and power hungry.

17:30.185 --> 17:32.885
Um, but it also could be need, it could be financial need.

17:33.105 --> 17:34.925
Um, it could be things like avoiding abuse.

17:35.265 --> 17:38.125
Um, it could be lack of knowledge, it could be desire

17:38.145 --> 17:39.165
for status or power.

17:39.345 --> 17:41.965
It could be feeling that one is unjustly treated

17:42.025 --> 17:43.325
and excluded from the system,

17:43.385 --> 17:45.005
and you need to get what you can.

17:45.385 --> 17:48.845
Um, and it could be also social norms. So social norms are

17:48.845 --> 17:49.845
One of the drivers. And

17:49.845 --> 17:53.885
so it's important, in anti-corruption work

17:53.945 --> 17:56.725
and in thinking about it, is to both understand the enablers

17:56.905 --> 17:59.725
and the drivers and how they interact with each other.

18:00.025 --> 18:02.525
Um, because otherwise your programming is not gonna be very

18:02.525 --> 18:03.765
effective or sustainable.

18:04.365 --> 18:04.485
I.

00:00 - Both my co-director, Cheyenne s Shabaka church and I both come from the peace building field. We've spent 25 years in peace building, and both of us were noticing in our different work, that corruption was an endemic feature of most of the context we worked in.

00:15 - And people, at least in my experience, consistently identified some form of corruption as a key driver of conflict. And then when you looked at peace building programs, nobody was actually addressing it at the same time. Our examination of evaluations of anti-corruption work revealed that the record of effectiveness was not so good. There were places where there was lots of work, lots of laws, processes, programs, trainings, et cetera,

00:42 - but very little effect on the levels of corruption. this was very consistent with a lot of the research that was coming out at the time. It's arguing the same thing, but also questioning the various assumptions and conceptual foundations on which a lot of the traditional anti-corruption work was based. So we created the corruption, justice, and legitimacy program to understand how and why this happens, and develop more effective ways

01:07 - to analyze and approach anti-corruption programming and increase its effectiveness. Social norms are be, put it sort of very quickly. there are unwritten rules about the right way to behave in a group. and these aren't just common beliefs about how to behave. These are really rules that take the form of mutual expectations within a group, about what is typical behavior.

01:32 - That means sort of what I think others are doing or thinking, and what is appropriate behavior. That means what I think the behavior would is expected of me, in a particular context. and they're kept in place, or enforced, by the group, through rewards and punishments, which are usually social, reputational or relational in nature. So it might be if you're doing well and complying, you get approval, you get a smile,

02:00 - you get some status, you might have increased influence. And if you breach the norms, you may, get some frowns or dirty looks. they can be, you can lose status, you can lose credibility. you might be mocked, et cetera. So to give you a very everyday example in, in my town in Massachusetts, cars stop for pedestrians. That's a very unusual occurrence in Massachusetts. but there's a social norm in my town, Belmont, that,

02:30 - residents in Belmont stop for pedestrians when they step off the curb. and if you don't stop, the drivers will give you a dirty look, and most of the pedestrians in the area will also give you a dirty look. and I care. So I do comply because I live in Belmont and I want to be a good Belmont citizen, and I want to have good relations with my neighbors. Someone from New Hampshire who's just driving through,

02:54 - for example, may not care so much and may not comply because they have no connection, to the town, so it doesn't have any influence on them. So that's how social norms work, and it works in a similar way with corruption. So give a couple of examples. Court clerks. In some of our research we saw court clerks were expected by other court officials in their courthouses to demand a fee, which they called airtime or water. There are lots of different names,

03:21 - for petitioners to set court dates. Now, this was illegal. They were not supposed to do that. the court clerk though, who defied those expectations from her colleagues, and didn't demand a fee from the petitioners, would be mocked. They people would say, she's gonna die poor. she might not be trusted. She might be ostracized or even potentially be reposted

03:43 - to a less desirable position in the courthouse. Or if she were really good at it, at collecting the fees. And she might get nods of approval, she might get status, et cetera. similar, case with civil servants who are expected by their families or clans to do what it takes to protect their own. And that's a pretty common kind of norm in a lot of these contexts that we work.

04:05 - That means hiring family, giving them favorable treatment, getting them out of trouble when they're in trouble with the justice system, getting money embezzling, et cetera, to support their family. if they don't, they will be mocked. They will, you know, they, they, they appear in their village without the big Mercedes. they will be put at the back of the church, and they will say, so what are you doing there?

04:28 - What are you out there for? and they might also find themselves not getting the support or hope that, that they want from their family when they're in need. so that's sort of in a nutshell what social norms are and how they relate to corruption. Social norms are important in fragile and conflict affected situations. They're not, we'll go back a second and look at how they drive corruption,

04:48 - because social norms can drive corruption because in any context, right? Because they can be a very important determinant of how people behave. they play a role in how they choose to behave. It's true in all contexts, but in fragile and conflict affected contexts. it's even more so because in these contexts, a person's relationships and their networks with like-minded people,

05:12 - and whether it's their family, their ethnic group, their religious order professional network, whatever it is, they're key to their ability to survive and navigate life. these are contexts with lots of challenges. They have risks to climate, unemployment, political exclusion, violence. The institutions are weak. so services, services are quite poor. You might, security may not even be really

05:36 - provided by, the government, social divisions, mistrust, contested politics, et cetera. And in these environments, people are really forced to rely on each other and on their group to get these services, to get security, to get food, access to opportunities and livelihoods to protect their land status, et cetera. And so as a result, they're not only more important to people. The group is not only more important to people,

06:01 - but the punishments for breaching social norms can be much more severe. So you don't wanna be considered disloyal, or to your group or traitor, particularly in a conflict context. You can lose access to all of this kind of support that you need to survive, to quote a police officer in Central African Republic, that was one of the case studies we did when we initially started this, program.

06:25 - It's better to break the law, than to make the family turn its back on you. And there's a sango province, proverb in Central African Republic pity the man who is alone. so your networks are your lifeline. And, that includes sort of pressures to engage in corruption in order to survive. People con often confuse social norms with a number of other related concepts.

06:49 - So there may be attitudes. It means attitudes are what people personally believe or think their morals or values, what they believe is right in the sense of ethical standards that apply in all situations. There are conventions. these are behaviors people engage in because it meets a need, like when you use an umbrella when it rains outside. so sometimes when we see a common behavior,

07:13 - let's say offering a gift to a doctor to get preferential treatment, sometimes we may assume it's a social norm at play because it's normal. And so, and that all things where things are just normal is social norm. It's, influence. And that's not necessarily the case. The be behavior in that case could be just as easily a matter of convenience. There's no other way to get healthcare they need.

07:37 - so that's a convention. the behavior may align with attitudes. People may think it's okay because they per personally believe it's okay to give a gift, if it's to help yourself or your family. Or they may not know that it's not permitted to give gifts. and they do it. and so, or that they can lodge a complaint at a hospital. so that's a knowledge, driver. Or it could be a social norm.

08:01 - The patients may be bribing because they see that other patients are doing the same thing. and they may may feel social pressure from other patients or from their families to do it because they will get, you know, people might think they're stupid or negligent if they don't. so the distinction sometimes seem very academic and arcane.

08:23 - but they really do have very practical implications for programming. So understanding the differences and diagnosing the type of beha influence, driving a behavior, it's critical because the strategies and tactics that you would use to address attitudes versus social norms versus conventions or knowledge are really different. And if you do the right, if you, if you mismatch the strategy, you won't get the results.

08:49 - especially, and, and this is quite common in the field as we noticed when we were doing the research. if you try to change people's attitudes and knowledge, for example, patients, you know, patients then know their rights. they personally come to think that it's bad to give doctors gifts to get a service. their behavior might not change. Because if a social norms at play,

09:10 - you haven't changed the social norm, the changing attitudes won't change the social norm. so that's why those distinctions are really important to understand. A key element of social norms, is the group, 'cause they exist within a group, because it's the approval or disapproval or whatever other social sanction there is that the group members impose that help ensure that the social norm is complied with.

09:35 - so sometimes we call it the reference group because it's the group to which someone will refer in order to understand what's expected of them. So there's no one unfortunately way of figuring out who's the group. the key characteristic is that people, it's a, a group where people matter to each other, doesn't necessarily mean that they know each other personally, or have personal relationships. Also doesn't mean that they are geographically concentrated.

10:04 - A group of people whose opinions approval, disapproval, someone cares about, usually on a specific issue. And they can be formal groups like peers in an organization, you know, sort of the, a labor union, a religious group, a militia, professional organization, university alumni, but also more informal. you could be, you know, women judges or your community or your social network or your ethnic group. And most people logically belong to many groups and social networks at the same time.

10:33 - I mean, that's, that's life. And so in order to figure out, you know, it's how do you figure out which group's norms will be most influential in a particular situation? I mean, that's the real question. So if you have a judge who's deciding whether to demand or take a bribe, to decide a verdict, will the judge be influenced by their family or their fellow judges in the courthouse or their, church group or their friends network?

10:59 - that really depends on the salience of the group to the situation. In other words, how relevant is the group to the, and the group identity to this particular situation, which in this case is the bribe in the courthouse. And so I think here, you might say you'd have to look at it 'cause it's not gonna be the same in every situation. But here the judge might look to their own peers and see what they're doing and what's being expected of them.

11:23 - Maybe they're superiors, maybe they're getting pressure from their family too. So there may be two groups influencing, at the same time. So there's no formula, unfortunately. I wish there were. you need to look at the situation and at the specific corrupt behaviors and the context in order to figure out what's, who the relevant group is. Social norms serve many important functions

11:48 - to, for individuals. They meet people's inherent need, to belong and fit in somewhere sort of sense, have a sense of community. They strengthen their sense of identity as part of a group. Having a group is, is important to people's identity. and in groups, social norms help to maintain social cohesion. they promote and sustain cooperation when it's hard to get people to move in the same direction.

12:12 - and they help provide solutions to problems people face. And so how do they influence people's behavior? They com people comply with norms because they get positive reinforcement for complying with the expectations and negative consequences for not expect, behaving in the expected ways. And we talked about that already, but I think it's important to emphasize that social norms and the behaviors they support, including the corrupt behaviors that they support,

12:38 - exist because they're functional. You know, even as in the case of corruption, it leads to a social bad. So a social norm, for example, that people should do whatever it takes to protect their family. And so it will lead people to bribe, for services. It leads officials to engage in things like nepotism, embezzlement to demanding bribes, et cetera. And it's not that these people are bad

12:59 - or immoral, necessarily, I mean, maybe they, they might be greedy, but often, the norm and following that norm and social pressure, leads them to do that because the norm is important to people's survival, in these contexts where they don't can't get their, it can't satisfy their needs otherwise. And so a couple of examples. So a widow, and we did see this in Northern Uganda,

13:22 - a widow's son gets put into jail based, perhaps based on trumped up charges, to pressure her to give up some land, to her neighbor. So she goes to bribe the police officer to release her son from jail. she knows that the case is unjust and you know, she might be able to win in court, and she knows that the bribery will further undermine the rule of law. I mean, it leads not a good thing.

13:43 - but for the widow, it's functional. She's concerned that her son will die in prison because the conditions are terrible. And she also can't afford to lose the family's main provider and protector even sort of, kind of bad, greedy seeming, behavior like a politician who uses her position to extort bribes from companies doing business with the government or buys votes or hires only people from her tribe. You know, that you think that they're greedy,

14:09 - immoral, and power hungry. And that may be true, but in a winner takes all context where people are insecure, where you could lose everything in a moment's notice and access to the state's resources is the only guarantee of survival for one's group. she may also feel pressure to engage in these behaviors because that's the only way to protect one's own, ensure that they survive as a group. so very much of a a functional thing.

14:33 - So drivers and enablers, I, I'll go back a bit to sort of how we started our, our project, which was, when we started looking at ineffectiveness of anti-corruption work, one of the things that we, noticed in terms of how people did their work, it was that there was a mismatch between the social dynamics in fragile and conflict affected states. and the technical and very formulaic, type of analysis

15:01 - and program we saw in anti-corruption in the field. So the conventional anti-corruption approaches are grounded in an assumption that corruption is a deviation from the norm. You have sort of a, a greedy bad apple. And what you need to do is understand what opportunities there are for greedy people to take advantage of, to commit corrupt acts and close them off. And then you look at what gaps there are in transparency

15:26 - and the information that's available in, knowledge and skills and as well as accountability mechanisms. And once you've figured out all those gaps, you have a standard solution and you fill them. And what we are noticing when you notice in a lot of these situations is what if corruption actually doesn't work that way? what if those enforcing the rules or who are supposed to be enforcing the rules and doing all of this are also,

15:51 - have a stake in the game and part of the game? they have no incentive to constrain the abusers and therefore there's nobody to do that. So what do you do then? And that, that was our experience in most of the situations that, that we were encountering. so in other words, corruption is not the, is not the exception to the rule. It is the rule. And somebody, a practitioner in Afghanistan put it very nicely said, well,

16:19 - corruption is not the exception to governance. It is governance in a lot of these contexts. And in those cases, you need a much different way of analyzing corruption and programming to be, to address it. And that's where the drivers and enablers are, because a lot of the factors that the traditional anti-corruption programming is based on, and the analysis that's done really focuses on enablers.

16:44 - These are the things that provide opportunities to, to engage in corrupt behaviors. there's, there's in fact a formula. They called the click guard equation from the person who were first proposed it. corruption equals monopoly plus discretion minus accountability. and so it's all right, how much monopoly do people have? And so, and how much unchecked discretion, and then what's transparency and accountability?

17:11 - and those are all the things that are providing opportunities, but they're not dealing with the reasons that people commit corrupt acts, what their motivations are. and so the drivers are those things that are, the reasons for committing corruption. So it could be, it could be greed so people can be greedy and power hungry. but it also could be need, it could be financial need. it could be things like avoiding abuse.

17:35 - it could be lack of knowledge, it could be desire for status or power. It could be feeling that one is unjustly treated and excluded from the system, and you need to get what you can. and it could be also social norms. So social norms are One of the drivers. And so it's important, in anti-corruption work and in thinking about it, is to both understand the enablers and the drivers and how they interact with each other.

18:00 - because otherwise your programming is not gonna be very effective or sustainable. I.

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