Who controls the controller? A dynamical model of corruption

Abstract

The aim of this article is to give at least a partial answer to the question made in the title. Several works analyze the evolution of the corruption in different societies. Most of such papers show the necessity of several controls displayed by a central authority to deter the expansion of the corruption. However there is not much literature that addresses the issue of who controls the controller. This article aims to approach an answer to this question. Indeed, as it is well known, in democratic societies an important role should be played by citizens. We show that politically active citizens can prevent the spread of corruption. More precisely, we introduce a game between government and officials where both can choose between a corrupt or honest behavior. Citizens have a political influence that results in the prospects of a corrupt and a non-corrupt government be re-elected or not. This results in an index of intolerance to corruption. We build an evolutionary version of the game by means of the replicator dynamics and we analyze and fully characterize the possible trajectories of the system according to the index of intolerance to corruption and other relevant quantities of the model.