The Rationalization of Political Corruption

Flying Under the Radar: How Frames Influence Public Officials’ Perceptions of Corruption

“…Three specific results are noteworthy. First, even though previous studies have found that corrupt public officials tend to rationalize and frame their misbehavior in light of its harmlessness (Gannett & Rector, 2015;Rabl & Kühlmann, 2009), we found no evidence that civil servants themselves are persuaded by these types of frames. This result suggests that corrupt public officials may be unaware of the ineffectiveness of their strategy, that citizens and officials are affected differently by framing, that public officials anticipate that these frames will be used to hide misbehavior, or that civil servants in developed and developing democracies form their ethical evaluations differently.…”

“…To test the capacity of framing to shape public officials' attitudes, we randomly varied the justificatory frames organizations and solicitors use within each vignette. Doing so allows us to account for all confounding factors across individuals and scenarios and to control for the endogenous relation between public officials' attitudes toward corruption and their willingness to accept frames (Anand et al, 2004;Gannett & Rector, 2015). It is important to acknowledge, however, that our design is not equipped to distinguish framing from informational effects.…”

A Model of Neutralization Techniques

“…People can appeal to having imperfect knowledge of the norm that is at stake. Some examples of this subtechnique are "I really didn't think I was doing anything wrong at the time" (Gannett and Rector 2015) and "I don't know enough about fair tradethat's why I don't buy these products" (Brunner 2014). Rhodes and Cusick (2002) found in their research among people having unprotected sex numerous examples of this subtechnique: "I did not know that unprotected sex carried HIV transmission risks", "I did not know what it was all about", and "We didn't know what safer sex meant, it was a completely new expression."…”

Breaking Lockdown during Lockdown: A Neutralization Theory Evaluation of Misbehavior during the Covid 19 Pandemic

“…Informants justify their actions on the basis that their deficient knowledge makes them not fully responsible for their rule infractions (also see for example Gannett and Rector 2015). Imperfect capabilities.…”

“…The neutralizing claim of imperfect knowledge is used by informants to justify their actions on the basis that their deficient knowledge makes them not fully responsible for their rule infractions. Past research has found numerous similar justifications for deviant behaviors ranging from unsafe sexual activities (see Rhodes and Cusick 2002) to shopping habits (see Gannett and Rector 2015). In the case of lockdown rules, informants often claim that the information supplied to them is confusing, overwhelming, or contradictory.…”