Comment by lm28469
9 hours ago
I think culture and education play much bigger roles than anything else, all the sources I find show Germany and France having similar level of corruption (on top of being geographically and economically close) but completely different level of "social trust".
China's pretty corrupt politically but the social trust is quite high, the highest outside of northern europe as far as I can tell
The corruption numbers break down into: (1) They didn't ask the question in China, (2) They asked somebody if they paid a bribe or if taking a bribe is every justifiable, and (3) "Expert estimates of the extent to which the executive, legislative, judiciary, and bureaucracy engage in bribery and theft, and the making and implementation of laws are susceptible to corruption"
For (2) China doesn't look too different from the U.S., for (3) experts think it has gotten much worse since the time of Mao but I'd say China is on the honest side of the "global South".
Note that lay perceptions of corruption are widespread in the US
https://yougov.com/en-us/articles/51398-most-americans-see-c...
https://news.gallup.com/poll/185759/widespread-government-co...
https://www.occrp.org/en/news/survey-reveals-corruption-as-t...
though unlike India I think very few Americans have paid a bribe to a cop. See also
https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2026/03/05/in-25-countr...
> though unlike India I think very few Americans have paid a bribe to a cop.
No one, left or right, thinks there is street level corruption. Not the kind accessible to someone in a traffic stop. I have experienced it in Mexico and think that kind of corruption would still be worse because I cannot imagine how to recover from it. I have hope that a few high profile arrests of c level fall his may turn the tide. If not then there are extrajudicial methods open to American culture.
There is this difference.
I know from my own personal experience that I haven't paid a bribe to a cop or to an alderman to get a zoning variance. There are some places where this kind of thing is routine. (e.g. I know there is a crooked cop somewhere but I also believe that if I tried to pay a bribe to a cop it wouldn't go well)
Thus I trust people's reports of street level corruption.
If it comes to perceptions of "corruption in high places" that is mediated by the media. It may well be that it is very corrupt and you never hear about it, or that it squeaky clean but you hear allegations 10 times a day. Or a Democrat might think everything is corrupt when Republicans are in power and then when Democrats are in power, Republicans take up the slack.
So I don't trust people's reports of corruption in high places.
Now I know a lot of people who are involved in road construction and maintenance in upstate NY who range from "drives a truck" to "manages $10M+ projects" and the belief that there is corruption in highway projects is widespread based on second- and third- hand accounts.
> though unlike India I think very few Americans have paid a bribe to a cop.
Totally unthinkable in the UK ( at least outside organised crime ).
Do you really think “extrajudicial” methods will improve social trust in the US?
Wow Americans really dislike Americans! (Pew link)
How do you see Xi's anticorruption campaign? Is it just a club to beat political opponents with, or is there a real problem and he's trying to fix it?
Knowing nothing my guess would be he wants all the benefits of corruption accruing only to himself.
Both
It's the institutional part which is lacking in France. Look at the budget of the ministry of justice in France per capita and in Germany. Germany spend twice as much and has twice as much judges per capita than France (and everything which goes with it like clerks).
My company took the biggest telecom company in France to court for a violation of our license on a soft, license was GPLv2, we won, but it took 12 years.
Justice is a very poor and slow institution in France. For the same countries the budget of police forces per capita are nearly the same for example.
Also Germany spends more than France on defence while having a lot less to show for, with France having nuclear weapons, nuclear subs, aircraft carriers and a much more capable military overall with less money. Germany is the poster child of government waste. If I were a taxpayer there I'd want my money back and/or bureaucrats going to jail.
> China's pretty corrupt politically but the social trust is quite high, the highest outside of northern europe as far as I can tell
There are a few reasons for that that I can imagine:
- China is one of very few autocracies that has managed to significantly improve the standard of living of most of its population.
- The public trials and (sometimes) executions of allegedly corrupt individuals might help improve the perception of corruption.
- The same harsh penalties mentioned above might influence people to declare a higher level of social trust than they actually have, even if the poll is supposedly "confidential" and "only for scientific purposes".
>The same harsh penalties mentioned above might influence people to declare a higher level of social trust than they actually have.
This 100%.
Political imprisonment and reeducation camps are antithetical to any definition of a high trust society that I would subscribe to.
China was getting better for a long time. XI is changing that. Change is slow though and he is not rushing corruption though it seems to be increasing. He has purged some corrupt people as well making things slightly better in the short term - but he values loyalty over competence and so his short term changes are for less corruption but long term increase it.
That is China is a complex country and books (which are not written and many cannot be for decades yet) are needed to understand this, not a short comment box. [This applies to every other country anyone here mentions]
Social trust is high because there are pretty heavy handed control measures over the population with havy costs. Thats more of a fear based society than trust. Government can giveth and government can taketh.
1. Fear of a capricious state can cause survival-motivated compliance which can appear as "trust" in coarse measurements. Meaning, you simply do fewer of those things that would provide opportunities for distrust in contexts where that could happen.
2. In a relatively severe, but consistent regime, the high penalties for violating trust in everyday cases (crime) act as a deterrent.
3. Fear may cause people to be selective and mindful about their social associations based on stronger proofs of trustworthiness. You might tell a Hitler joke to someone you have used more energy/caution to "vet", but avoid being too casual in environments of undetermined trustworthiness.
We are probably meant to assume ceteris paribus and only vary the dimension of corruption.
I think you’re right that culture plays a key role. For example if small bribes are customary, that doesn’t erode trust, that’s just the way things are.