BRIBERY IN CLASSICAL ATHENS Kellam ... - Historia Antigua

Conover Bribery in Classical Athens Chapter One
associated with bribery, transacting in bribes—i.e. violating social norms—requires an
enormous amount of trust. Typically, high-risk transactions are conducted through
previously existing social relations, as the social relations themselves act to diffuse the
risk associated with the transaction. 11 Where there are no previous social relations to
guide transactors, local norms can guarantee the security of the transaction: where bribes
are expected, there is little risk that they will be punished. 12 The majority of bribe
transactions is thus conducted between actors who are either already linked through some
social network or who can rely on prevailing institutional norms to know that the
transaction is safe. This confines the giving and taking of bribes predominantly to well-
defined networks of actors; people are either ‘in’ the network, or they are ‘out’ of it. 13
Conflicting social frames arise when ‘insiders’ view the actions in terms of one
frame, ‘outsiders’ another. On the one hand, bribe-giver and bribe-taker (the insiders)
regularly frame the bribe and the service for which it is purportedly exchanged as distinct
media for negotiating, contesting, and constituting a local relationship amongst
themselves. As such, bribe and service can readily be framed as reciprocal gifts, not as
quid pro quo compensation 14 ; often, too, they are understood as part of a longer sequence
11
DiMaggio and Louch (1998), and, on bribery, Humphrey (1991), Ledeneva (1998, 2008), Lambsdorff
(2002), Uslaner (2004), Pardo (2004b).
12
Graeff (2005).
13
Pardo (2004b)’s study of Italian corruption demonstrates this point well in illustrating how low-level
corruption requiring relatively little trust was conducted among individuals outside of any network whereas
high-level corruption, requiring much higher levels of trust, was conducted via networks. Of course, in the
case of prevailing local norms, simply entering into the correct institutional context—e.g. interacting with
the appropriate governmental office, widely known to demand bribes—can be all it takes to become an
‘insider’: see further Humphrey (1991) on outsider distinctions involving bribery. Ledeneva (1998: 39-
42) differentiates bribery from blat (personal influence) by the presence or absence of networks, but she
takes too narrow an understanding of bribery as entailing the use of money (qua cash). Instead, I would
point out that the currency of blat networks can appear to be bribes to outsiders. In this sense, blat and
bribery on Ledeneva’s definition are gradations of a range of collaborative activity that can be termed
‘bribery’ on my definition.
14
Indeed, when there is frequent reciprocal giving within a relationship, the particular ‘bribe’ and service
may be thought by insiders as completely unrelated to each other. Note how the reverse is usually the case
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