Administrative Corruption and the Necessity of Confronting It

Unpublished reflective paper, prepared for the Public Administration programme at the Doha Institute for Graduate Studies (April 2022) under the supervision of Dr Abdel Fattah Al-Hashemi. The full text is in Arabic and available from the top of this page.

Opening

The paper begins from a familiar scene: a citizen attends a government office to complete some business and finds queues, an official who works slowly or behaves unethically, transactions deferred without convincing reason, or someone else served first because they are known to the official. Or the reader may be the official — obliged to stay silent about bribery, favouritism and nepotism to satisfy a manager and protect their own position.

Argument

Administrative corruption is a serious pathology afflicting the state's administrative apparatus and public services, from the top of the administrative pyramid to its base. Any disorder in administrative work — whether from an official's poor ethics, disregard for the law, or misuse of public authority — constitutes administrative corruption.

The definition the paper settles on: any administrative act that places private interest above the public interest is corruption.

Structure

The paper is organised into sections covering the definition of administrative corruption, its forms and manifestations, its causes, its effects on the administrative apparatus and public services, and the means of confronting it.