A Network-Exchange Approach to Corruption: Exemplary Analysis from a Chinese Corruption Network

• In Event: 1531 - Sociological Approaches to Corruption

Abstract

Existing studies on corruption have largely followed the micro-economic, the institutional-organizational, and the cultural approaches. Building on insights from Social Exchange Theory and Relational Sociology, this article seeks to construct a network-exchange approach for understanding corruption as acts of exchange and network activities. Its analytical task is to explain how structures of corruption networks shaped rules of exchanges. The article showcases the network-exchange approach by parsing a Chinese corruption network that involved 161 connected individuals exposed from China’s current anti-corruption campaign. The article finds that brokers were crucial in privatizing public resources and facilitating corrupt transactions. Four types of brokers were found in the context of Chinese political economy: frequently transferred officials, private entrepreneurs, relatives of officials, and managers of state-owned enterprise. Regardless of their specific institutional locations, all four types of brokers spanned public and private domains of various types and followed reciprocity-based rules of exchanges.

Author

• Yingyao Wang, University of Virginia