BRIBERY IN CLASSICAL ATHENS Kellam ... - Historia Antigua

Conover Bribery in Classical Athens Chapter One
sections that follow, with a relational approach we can directly obtain how and why
normative assessments change across social contexts. 23
Two caveats before moving on to how this relational approach can be applied to
Athens. Perhaps the most controversial difference between my own approach and the
standard view of bribery is that I am taking bribery to be a social frame for understanding
actions, not a class of actions per se. In this sense I am defining bribery by its outcome
(normative violation) rather than assuming its outcome by focusing on intent (corrupting
payments). When I claim that a particular transaction was an instance of bribery, I am
saying, merely, that one could construct a narrative of events such that A paid (or
promised to pay) B to do C, and that either C or this payment (or both) constituted a
violation of some norm. This is only a narrative frame. It does not establish any fact of
the matter; I think, and doubtless most scholars would agree, that normally it is
23 Although this will play little role in my analysis here, it should be noted that a third advantage to a
relational approach to bribery is that it allows us to be more precise about the relationship between bribery
and other forms of corrupt activity, specifically extortion and conflicts of interest. I do not focus on either
extortion or conflict of interest largely because the former seems to have been rare at Athens—except under
the Thirty, on which see Chapter Three—and the latter was simply a non-issue, as the Athenians were
concerned not that officials might take gifts, but that they might take gifts from the wrong source: e.g. Plat.
Leg. 955c8, Hyp. 4.24-5, pace Humphreys (1978b). Contemporary scholars frequently confess difficulty
in distinguishing among these three concepts. When something is given to a politician, is it a ‘gift’
(without any specific strings attached) that thereby creates a conflict of interest, or is it a ‘bribe’ (with
specific strings attached)? When a bureaucrat must be given an inducement to do her job, is this bribery
(meaning the bribe was voluntarily initiated on both sides) or extortion (meaning the payment was
expected, not voluntarily given)?
Our relational approach would point out that these distinctions stem from differences in framing:
bribery (compensation), extortion (entitlement), and conflict of interest (gift) fundamentally differ in terms
of perceived transaction context. Moreover, and this is the crucial advantage gleaned from our relational
model, to the extent that differences in transaction context are shaped by the social relationship of the
transactors, these differences stem, in part, from the patterns of social relationships that configure them.
We simply would not expect a gift between relative strangers, just as we would not expect direct exchange
between close friends. This is one reason why there is often a difference between how participants (who
might be close friends) and observers understand a particular transaction. Finally, a relational model allows
for shades of distinctions between these categories: surely there is a difference—different causes, different
effects, and different meanings—between explicit extortion and when a citizen thinks a bureaucrat is
extorting money, while the bureaucrat views the money as a bribe. Rather than having to call such a
situation either bribery or extortion, a relational view helpfully explains how and why there might be
different understandings of the events. With a relational approach, we can thus gain tremendous insight
into when and where we might expect bribery, extortion, and conflicts of interest to arise.
38