Paying Bribes for Public Services: A Global Guide to Grass-Roots Corruption

Why do 1.6 billion people annually pay bribes to use basic public services, while more than 5 billion people do not? Why does bribery differ between education, health care, the police and courts? Is the idea that bribery is wrong common to cultures on every continent or a luxury value of prosperous Western countries? This cutting edge Palgrave Pivot answers these questions by drawing on sample surveys of the experience of grass-roots public services world wide. Based on Barometer surveys of more than 250,000 people in 119 countries in Africa, Asia, the European Union, post-Communist Europe, and Latin America, it identifies significant differences in the payment of bribes between countries on every continent and between services and between individuals within each country. The book also offers six practical principles to reduce the scale of bribery that can be applied to public services ranging from education to policing.