Roman Catholicism Fosters Underdevelopment

Child Living in Smokey Mountain Dump, Tondo, Manila Philippines

ROMAN CATHOLICISM FOSTERS UNDERDEVELOPMENT

CHRISTMAS, CATHOLICISM, AND CORRUPTION

BY AL S. VITANGCOL III

THE MANILA TIMES

DECEMBER 29, 2018

…Corruption Perception Index

Transparency International, a global coalition against corruption, publishes an annual Corruption Perception Index (CPI) of 180 countries. The CPI ranks these countries “by their perceived levels of corruption, as determined by expert assessments and opinion surveys.” CPI uses a scale of 100 (very clean) to 0 (very corrupt). The lower the CPI, the more corrupt the country is.

For the year 2017 (2018 CPI is not out yet, it will be released sometime in February 2019), the least corrupt country is New Zealand, with a CPI of 89. It is followed by Denmark (CPI of 88) and Finland (85).

The most corrupt countries are Syria (CPI of 14), South Sudan (12) and Somalia (index of 9) occupying the last spot at 180.

How did the Philippines fare? It ranked 111 among 180 countries with a CPI of 34, one notch behind Vietnam (CPI of 35).

Catholicism and corruption

In an almost-decade-old article which appeared in the Irish Times, associate law lecturer and columnist Elaine Byrne wrote: “A positive correlation exists between Catholicism and corruption. Political science literature and academic research suggests that the more Protestant the population, the less corrupt the country. Divergent views on sin and loyalty account for this corpulent assertion.”

Byrne argued that the Catholic Church places much emphasis on the inherent weakness and shortcomings of human beings, their inability to escape sin and the consequent need for the church to be forgiving and protecting. Meanwhile, the egalitarian organization typical of Protestantism believes that individuals are personally responsible for avoiding sin rather than relying upon the institutional forgiveness of the church. Protestant culture is less understanding when lapses from grace occur.

Her findings included the following: 1) The implication therefore is that Protestants are less inclined to commit a sin because they do not have the same faculty of achieving pardon as Catholics do; 2) The separation between church and state tends to be further pronounced in Protestant societies which instead promote an autonomous and vivacious civil society; 3) The more civic a society, the greater the degree of trust by citizens in their political institutions.

Byrne concluded that Protestants are less inclined to commit a sin because they do not have the same faculty of achieving pardon as Catholics do. In fact, she suggested that having 10 percent more Protestants would lead to less corruption.

Byrne’s conclusion finds support in a research paper by Daniel Treisman published in the Journal of Public Economics.

Treisman hypothesized, among other things, that religions may also influence how individuals view their loyalties to family as opposed to other citizens — called “familism” — which, in turn, may affect the level of nepotism. Here in the Philippines, this is a clear case of family dynasties.

He concluded that “long-lived aspects of countries’ cultural or institutional traditions affect the level of perceived corruption more significantly than current state policies. The percentage of Protestants in the population is a robust predictor of lower corruption. The evidence in this paper suggests that this effect works both via Protestantism’s positive impact on economic development and on stable democracy and via some additional pathway. This may have to do with greater tolerance for dissent in Protestant societies — or, by contrast, a more intense and unforgiving moralism. It may also reflect an institutional fact — that Protestant churches often developed in counterpoint rather than in fusion with the state and may thus have stimulated a more autonomous civil society.”

Link: https://www.manilatimes.net/christmas-catholicism-and-corruption/489282/

The higher correlation of Roman Catholicism vis-à-vis Protestantism, with higher levels of corruption is an empirical fact. Not certain or established are the underlying reasons for this empirical finding.

It’s a plausible argument that Protestantism places more emphasis than Roman Catholicism on individual and personal responsibility for moral lapses, so that in Protestantism higher penalties—theological originally, social consequently—are exacted on transgressors, and as a result, Protestants are more strongly motivated to avoid corruption and to behave in a morally upright manner. The English Puritans come to mind.

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THE MEANS-ENDS SCHEMA

[Robert] Merton’s theory implies that corruption is motivated behavior stemming from social pressures that result in norm violations. He emphasizes that all social systems set cultural goals — objectives — that human actors seek to achieve, as well as approved means to gain them (i.e., institutionalized norms). Those seeking to secure the goals by socially approved means are conformists, to use Merton’s formulation. However, social systems also press many who have little access to the opportunity structure — whether because of their race, ethnicity, or from a lack of skills, capital, material, and other human resources — to seek the dominant goals from high income to social recognition. Many achievement markets are inherently organized so as to create a large gap between demand (goals and values) and supply (means). Consequently, many, who recognize early on that they have little access to opportunity, will reject the rules of the game and try to succeed by unconventional (innovative or criminal) means.

…Merton’s theory implies that cultures that stress economic success as an important goal but nevertheless strongly restrict access to opportunities will have higher levels of corruption. This hypothesis finds support in data from the cross-national 1990-1993 World Values Survey, which yield evidence for the hypotheses derived from Merton on the relationship between achievement motivation, as measured by a scale of World Values Survey items, and corruption. The extreme cases conform to the analytic framework. The less affluent countries with high achievement motivation are the most corrupt. For instance, Russia, South Korea, and Turkey have the highest levels of achievement orientation according to the scale. These countries are also among the more corrupt.

Conversely, as anticipated by Merton’s framework, countries that are relatively low on achievement motivation and high on access to appropriate means should have relatively low levels of corruption. Denmark, Sweden, and Norway fit the bill best. Surprisingly, they are the least achievement oriented according to our scale and are also the least corrupt. Presumably, the means-ends strain is weak among them.

…A multiple regression analysis relating the 1990 World Values data to the Corruption Perceptions Index as the dependent variable was undertaken to test the hypothesis. As noted, Merton’s theoretical analysis implies that serious corruption will plague countries with high levels of achievement orientation and low access to means. The actual relationship is reasonably strong and statistically significant at conventional levels. A 1.1 change in a country’s achievement index score (one standard deviation, scaled from 1 to 5) is associated with almost a half-point change in a country’s corruption score. The model’s goodness-of-fit is high, explaining a good deal of the variation in corruption. The linkage between these two variables remains strong when controlling for other key factors.

Many indices of the availability of economic resources and of economic freedom have been developed. We primarily use the 1997 Index of Economic Freedom (IEF) published by the Wall Street Journal and the Heritage Foundation. Scaled from 1 (no freedom) to 5 (totally free), the index purports to measure the degree to which a government supports the free market. It includes several factors: freedom to hold property, freedom to earn a living, freedom to operate a business, freedom to invest one’s earnings, freedom to trade internationally, and freedom to participate in a market economy. In a regression analysis, a 0.75 change (one standard deviation) in the Index of Economic Freedom is associated with almost a one and a half point change in a country’s corruption score.

Like the IEF, per capita income may be an indicator of the availability of economic resources and even of the extent to which the bulk of the population is economically satisfied. Thus the fact that per capita income relates so powerfully to corruption further supports the idea that the availability of institutionalized means to achieve desired ends lowers levels of corruption, reinforcing the validity of Merton’s assumptions. This model, combining the 1997 Index of Economic Freedom and per capita income, explains a good deal of the variance in corruption. Achievement’s relationship to corruption remains robust when controlling for variables that relate to corruption — like per capita income and the percentage Protestant and of British national origin — suggesting that this scale captures an important factor.

AMORAL FAMILISM

The second major cultural framework, one derived from Plato via Banfield, assumes that corruption is in large part an expression of particularism — the felt obligation to help, to give resources to persons to whom one has a personal obligation, to the family above all but also to friends and membership groups. Nepotism is its most visible expression. Loyalty is a particularistic obligation that was very strong in precapitalist, feudal societies. As Weber implied, loyalty and the market are antithetical. The opposite of particularism is universalism, the commitment to treat others according to a similar standard. Market norms express universalism; hence, pure capitalism exhibits and is sustained by such values.

…In trying to understand capitalism’s initial rise in Protestant cultures, [Max] Weber noted that the pre-industrial norms in Catholic societies were communitarian, requiring above all that the society, the family, and the dominant strata help the less fortunate. He believed that these values worked against the emergence of a rationally driven market economy. Conversely, a stress on individualism, concern for self, is more conducive to capital accumulation. Calvinism and Protestant sectarianism fostered such behavior. Sectarians believe that God helps those who help themselves. Weber pointed out that “the great achievement of . . . the ethical and ascetic sects of Protestantism was to shatter the fetters of the sib [the extended family].” [17] As Lawrence Harrison notes, “There is evidence that the extended family is an effective institution for survival but an obstacle to development.” [18] Solidarity with the extended family and hostility to the outsider who is not a member of family, the village, or perhaps the tribe can produce a self-interested culture.

Edward Banfield, studying southern Italy, carried the analysis further with the concept of “amoral familism”: a culture that is deficient in communitarian values but fosters familial ties. He writes: “In a society of amoral familists, no one will further the interest of the group or community except as it is to his private advantage to do so.”“ There is little loyalty to the larger community or acceptance of behavioral norms that require support of others. Hence, familism is amoral, gives rise to corruption, and fosters deviance from norms of universalism and merit. Anything goes that advances the interests of one’s self and family. The Mafia is an extreme example of amoral familism. Banfield, in effect, argues that corruption in southern Italy and comparable traditional societies is an expression of forces similar to those that sustain the Mafia.

The World Values Survey 1990, together with aggregate statistics from the World Bank, provide data that we employ to create a scale of familism. The first item in the scale deals with unqualified respect for parents, measured by the percentage of people who agreed that regardless of the qualities and faults of one’s parents, a person must always love and respect them. The second item is the percentage of people who think that divorce is unjustifiable. The third, from the World Bank, is the mean number of children per woman.

Those nations that score high on this scale tend to be among the more corrupt. Known for their strong familial ties, most Asian nations rank among the more corrupt. On the other hand, Scandinavians are by far the lowest on the familism scale — as noted, these countries are considered the least corrupt. Regression analysis affirms the association. The familism scale and CPI relate strongly. The relationship remains significant when controlling for per capita income. A model that includes the familism scale, the achievement scale, and purchasing power parity explains a great deal of the variation in the CPI.

In short, this analysis affirms the amoral familism thesis. In another model, we added a variable for the percentage of Protestants. Treisman has shown that this measure is powerfully linked to perceptions of corruption. This result suggests that familism is an intervening variable between religion and corruption. In other words, Protestantism reduces corruption, in part because of its association with individualistic, non-familistic relations.

RELIGION, CULTURE, AND CORRUPTION

In the preceding discussion we showed that cultural variables help explain and predict levels of corruption. But what explains culture? Dealing with this complex question is far beyond the limits of this chapter. However, the social science consensus that religion is an important determinant of variations in larger secular cultures offers some helpful suggestions. Countries dominated by Protestants are less corrupt than others. The Protestant religious ethos is more conducive to norm-adhering behavior. Protestants, particularly sectarians, believe that individuals are personally responsible for avoiding sin, whereas other Christian denominations, particularly the Catholic Church, place more emphasis on the inherent weakness of human beings, their inability to escape sin and error, and the need for the church to be forgiving and protecting. The Catholic, Anglican, and Orthodox Churches tend to be more accepting of human weakness because the clergy have the authority to relieve the individual of some sense of responsibility. Given a more tolerant attitude toward the possibility of “sinning,” acceptance of human frailty and of the assumption that no one can be a saint are natural consequences.

The sectarian ethos and the evangelical ethos, on the other hand, are more likely to foster adherence to absolute values, especially with respect to morals. They encourage adherents to press hard to attain and institutionalize virtue and to reduce, if not destroy, the influence of evil people and wicked institutions and practices. Politically, they tend to view social and political dramas as morality plays — battles between God and the devil — with compromise virtually unthinkable.

Protestants have retained important elements of their evangelical origins. Most denominations expect adherence from children of practitioners as a result of a conscious voluntary decision on reaching adulthood. Some require a conversion experience (rebirth) as a sign of sincere faith. Good standing in these groups has been contingent on righteous living in accordance with precepts that are sometimes very concrete. In a number of countries, the more ascetic branches of Protestantism have supported measures to inhibit or limit alcoholic beverages and outlaw gambling. 

[17] Max Weber, The Religion of China (New York: Macmillan, 1951), p. 237.

[18] Lawrence E. Harrison, Underdevelopment Is a State of Mind: The Latin American Case (Cambridge: Center for International Affairs, Harvard University; Lanham, Md.: University Press of America, 1985), p. 7.

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In Culture, Corruption, and Markets, pages 116-121

To be continued