brownelearning

A friend of mine passed along this video of a presentation by Lawrence Lessig, law professor behind the Creative Commons. In this speech he lays out a technical concept of Institutional Corruption (IC) as follows:

Institutional Corruption is an influence that either
(I) I weakens the effectiveness of an institution
or
(II) weakens the public trust of an institution (emph. added).

Additionally, people within an institution are blind to corrupting influences – they are too accustomed to the influence to perceive it – so it takes an outside group to identify cases of corruption.

To exemplify this concept he describes Congress’ relationship with lobbyists and the economy of money and influence between Capitol Hill and K Street. Members of congress claim lobbyists’ gifts don’t buy results (though Lessig shows some convincing research on the effectiveness of these bribes).

Makes sense, non?

But I made this comment in response to his concept of institutional corruption:

It’s useless at best and dangerous at worst.

This concept of CI is useless because all that is necessary for someone to claim IC is a) a statement of purpose for an institution and b) some external force that pushes that institution away from that purpose (i.e. lessons the institution’s effectiveness in fulfilling the purpose). This means that every institution may be classified as corrupted.

This concept of CI is dangerous because it allows anyone to use a powerful term (“corruption”) to describe any institution that is not behaving as they (the accuser) sees fit – so long as they can identify a corrupting influence.

Imagine this definition in the hands of policy makers attempting to force reforms on an institution. With the full credit of Lessig’s new Lab at Harvard’s Edmond J. Safra Foundation Center for Ethics, those in power could declare the institution corrupt.