Corrupt...moi?

Let me say to start with that I do not think that way we should make big decisions  is by sending hefty bribes to other people's bank accounts. We do not yet know that this is what happened at FIFA. And I am not entirely sure that I count the host nation of the next world cup as a big decision (but I see why those who think it is, think that).

But I guess that I am with most people I know in believing that directly paying to influence a decision isn't on.

That said I am surprised by the confidence of David Cameron et al, who appear to be confident about how you define corruption, and where it starts and stops, and at the cause and effect. The idea that corruption is the cancer of the modern world and that it causes failed states to be failed states may be true; but it could also be possible that those states which are not part of the first world club get pushed into corruption as their only means of getting on. That is the cause and effect, Mr Cameron, are reversed.

My colleague Christopher Kelly wrote about some of these issues in his book Ruling the Later Roman Empire , a well known period of "corruption". I am probably crudifying the argument horribly, but he was suggesting that money was one way of rationing central services that might also be rationed by patronage or by "who you know". Most of the old elite thought that "who you know" was a less corrupt system, but actually cash for services was more democratising. It's worth a read.

Right now, it seems obvious that there are all kinds of ways in which the boundaries between bribery and generosity blur. I have no idea how we entertain FIFA officials when they come to the UK. My hunch would be that they get put in very nice hotels, and get nice opps to go to the theatre or Wimbledon or whatever. Bribery or hospitality?

Every anthropologist for the last 100 years has known, and told us, that gifts are never straight gifts. When I give my colleague or child or greengrocer a Christmas present, or when my students send to me, it is not of course just instrumental (and it's a million miles from what people are claiming that FIFA have been involved in); it comes with generosity and thanks and affection. But it is not NOT instrumental either.

So where do you go from there? Well, you can go down the BBC route and have everyone declare who has given them what and parade it on the website (though quite what good it does anyone for the world to know that the controller of BBCX had a Fortnum's hamper from a grateful production company that s/he shared with the newsroom, heaven only knows).

Or we can all grow up a bit and think about the less tangible, but more important, aspects of probity. I remember many years ago an admissions tutor at an old Oxbridge College telling me that he not infrequently got cases of wine sent by hopeful mums and dads. So what did he do?

He enjoyed them, and it made not a blind bit of difference to his decision. I believe him, it's trust. And it's the best way to stop "corruption".