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Seminar: Corruption, Competition and Scales of Cooperation. Corruption is Rooted in Our Relationships
Cultural evolution and the science of cooperation suggest that corruption can be conceptualized as competing scales of cooperation. For example, when a leader gives his daughter a government contract, it’s nepotism. But it’s also cooperation at the level of the family, well explained by inclusive fitness, undermining cooperation at the level of the state. When a manager gives her friend a job, it’s cronyism. But it’s also cooperation at the level of friends, well explained by reciprocal altruism, undermining the meritocracy. Bribery is a cooperative act between two people, and so on. Part of the problem is that these smaller scales of cooperation are easier to sustain and explain than the kind of large-scale anonymous cooperation that we in the Western world have grown accustomed to. However, this approach offers a host of existing tools for rethinking corruption, the effectiveness of anti-corruption strategies, and historical and cross-cultural differences in corruption and its correlates. I’ll discuss recent tests of these ideas (Muthukrishna, Francois, Pourahmadi & Henrich, 2017; Nature Human Behaviour) and some work in progress.
Date:
8 November 2017, 16:00
Venue:
Nuffield College, New Road OX1 1NF
Venue Details:
Butler room
Speaker:
Michael Muthukrishna (London School of Economics and Political Science)
Booking required?:
Not required
Audience:
Public
Editor:
Ana Gornatkevic
