Difference between revisions of "L'argent du carburant (Sub-Saharan Africa)"

Providing quantitative estimates for the amounts paid in bribes and ''carburant'' is not such a difficult task for ethnographers. Estimates given by respondents – both officials and intermediaries – for typical amounts paid can easily be crosschecked. Such respondents often talk candidly because they are keen to ‘explain’ what corruption is and the extent to which such payments compensate for the weak salaries of civil servants. For example, in Cameroon in the 1990s, officials’ wages were reduced by 75 per cent as part of ‘structural adjustment plans’, which understandably gave rise to a feeling of entitlement to informal payments as a means of fair compensation.

Providing quantitative estimates for the amounts paid in bribes and ''carburant'' is not such a difficult task for ethnographers. Estimates given by respondents – both officials and intermediaries – for typical amounts paid can easily be crosschecked. Such respondents often talk candidly because they are keen to ‘explain’ what corruption is and the extent to which such payments compensate for the weak salaries of civil servants. For example, in Cameroon in the 1990s, officials’ wages were reduced by 75 per cent as part of ‘structural adjustment plans’, which understandably gave rise to a feeling of entitlement to informal payments as a means of fair compensation.

Another difficulty in defining practices as ‘legitimate’ or ‘corrupt’ is that official procedures are always permeated by unofficial practices. An example of this official-unofficial dynamic arising from ''l'argent du carburant'' is the ‘protocol’, a formal but local institutional agreement between the administration and the private sector. Aware that the issuing of documents or the fulfilment of minor administrative action gave rise to intentional bottlenecks and payments of money, customs officials concluded ‘protocols’ with their private sector customers: an agreement defining the sum to be paid according to the action performed or the document provided. The amounts are collected together from forwarding agents or hauliers and divided among customs officers according to a fixed transparent scale. The managers of these enterprises preferred a protocol to a confrontational relationship with the customs officers. Moreover, the managers never actually knew whether their representatives gave the entire sum to the customs officer or kept part for themselves; thus the firms’ relationship with their forwarding agents could also potentially have been upset had they tried to clamp down on informal payments. A ‘protocol’, on the other hand, provides them with transparency.

Another difficulty in defining practices as ‘legitimate’ or ‘corrupt’ is that official procedures are always permeated by unofficial practices. An example of this official-unofficial dynamic arising from ''l'argent du carburant'' is the ‘protocol’, a formal but local institutional agreement between the administration and the private sector. Aware that the issuing of documents or the fulfilment of minor administrative action gave rise to intentional bottlenecks and payments of money, customs officials concluded ‘protocols’ with their private sector customers: an agreement defining the sum to be paid according to the action performed or the document provided. The amounts are collected together from forwarding agents or hauliers and divided among customs officers according to a fixed transparent scale. The managers of these enterprises preferred a protocol to a confrontational relationship with the customs officers. Moreover, the managers never actually knew whether their representatives gave the entire sum to the customs officer or kept part for themselves; thus the firms’ relationship with their forwarding agents could also potentially have been upset had they tried to clamp down on informal payments. A ‘protocol’, on the other hand, provides them with transparency.