Explaining Corruption: Drifting In and Out of Corruption and Techniques of Neutralization

Abstract

Sometimes presented as part of a chapter on social control in text books I have instead dedicated a separate chapter here to the concept of drift and techniques of neutralization that have relevance in explaining corruption. As with control theory (see Chap. 7), Sykes and Matza (1957) sought to explain why people that lived predominantly in slums in the USA had a lack of legitimate economic opportunity and were surrounded by crime yet moved away from delinquency and acts of crime as they matured. Was delinquency a period of transition from adolescence to adulthood, or some temporary aberration? Do we therefore drift in and out of delinquency and crime? If this was the case how did people that mostly, but not always, conform to the law deal with this? Sykes and Matza (1957) explained this by suggesting that conventional social norms consisted of learning excuses or ‘techniques of neutralization’ which permitted violations in certain cases without rejecting conventional behaviour completely. It is this drift and the techniques of neutralization which is the focus of attention here, but where useful I also refer to Dittenhofer (1995) and Zeiltin’s (2001) syndrome of injustice and dissatisfaction.