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Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

Critical Perspectives on Accounting

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/cpa

2 The [1_TD$IF]subject of corruption

3 Q1 [TD$FIRSNAME]John[TD$FIRSNAME.] [TD$SURNAME]Roberts[TD$SURNAME.]
4 The University of Sydney Business School, Australia

A R T I C L E I N F O [3_TD$IF]A B S T R A C T

Article history: This paper develops an analysis of corruption as the complement to processes of
Received 9 September 2014 subjection. In this way the paper offers a way to make sense of how processes of
Accepted 22 November 2014 inscription and audit which are designed to prevent corruption, nevertheless also continue
Available online xxx
to make corruption possible. The paper draws on both Foucault and Lacans account of the
formation of the subject to explore the mad attractions of corruption. The analysis
Mots cles:
suggests that the attraction of corruption lies not only in the private material advantage it
Corruption
offers but also in the enjoyment and excitement that arises, both from the exercise of
Interet public
Ethique quasi-sovereign power within hierarchies, and from transgression of the very rules that
hierarchy is formally constituted to enforce. The phantasies of omnipotence and absolute
Palabras clave: autonomy that animate corrupt subjectivity are further reinforced by subordinates who
Corrupcion are too eager to win the recognition of the powerful, or at least too paranoid to overtly
Interes publico challenge their corrupt conduct. Far from the exception that advertises the norm,
Etica
corruption can be seen as a norm of the conduct of the powerful, masked by the theatre of
[4_TD$IF]Keywords: due process.
Corruption 2015 Published by Elsevier Ltd.
Public interest
Ethics

5
6 Q2 1. Introduction

7 Q3 [5_TD$IF]
The article that is the basis of this special issue has a very specic point of focus government procurement processes
8 which are argued to be particularly vulnerable to corruption as a consequence of their unique features and participants.
9 Q4 Corruption is itself dened as the illegitimate use of public or communal resources for private gain. In the context of
10 government procurement, it is argued that the tax-payer or public are not proximate in social space and hence difcult to
11 imagine, making those involved in procurement activities feel less accountable to these amorphous others. To the effects
12 of this ethical distance are then added the interestedness of the three main sets of participants; business people,
13 bureaucrats and elected politicians. Business people have incentives to purchase political inuence to achieve favourable
14 policy outcomes. Politicians are themselves dependent on resource inows to fund their own survival and success, whilst it is
15 part of the role of government bureaucrats to act at the discretion of their political bosses. Inuence in the form of lobbying
16 or consultation is a legitimate part of these relationships but can easily then step beyond the boundaries of the established
17 rules of the game and become corrupt. Finally, such is the nature of procured goods and services that market prices are often
18 difcult to determine, making procurement a space where corruption is both more likely and more difcult to detect.
19 Both pre- and post contract phases of the procurement processes offer clear opportunities for corruption. Pre-contract
20 there can be all sorts of opportunities to rig the bidding processes through inuencing who will be invited into the process,

E-mail address: [2_TD$IF]john.roberts@sydney.edu.au.

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cpa.2015.01.010
1045-2354/ 2015 Published by Elsevier Ltd.

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21 and the terms on which the contract will be awarded. These terms can then be framed such as to allow subsequent cost
22 ination without the protection of competition, or indeed the application of proper audit and approval processes. The
23 prevention of corruption then depends upon the quality of both internal control and auditing processes as these might serve
24 either to prevent or discover potentially corrupt activities. The focus of [6_TD$IF]Preventing corruption within government
25 procurement: constructing the disciplined and ethical subject is on the written inscriptions upon which such controls and
26 audit processes must necessarily depend.
27 It seems entirely appropriate that the particular contribution of accounting academics should be to explore the
28 potential for accounting artefacts and techniques internal controls and the audit trails that they make possible to offer
29 a severe constraint or remedy to corruption. The paper focuses on form based practices, and in particular on getting the
30 forms right, as ways both to make corruption more difcult, and/or to retrospectively identify its perpetrators. The
31 dominant narrative that the authors wish to tell is a story of hope about the corruption-busting potentials of the well
32 designed form. Here the paper draws both upon the work of Foucault as well as Deleuze to explore how forms and
33 associated inspection practices work to inhibit or reveal corruption. However, the argument developed in the paper offers
34 a rather split appraisal of the potentials of such luminous arrangements. On the one hand, the authors pursue the strong
35 argument that the practices pertaining to the forms including the activities involved in gathering the information,
36 lling in the form, and the subsequent use of archival traces[7_TD$IF]. . . are constitutive, if successful, in the construction of
37 Q5 disciplined and ethical procurement participants (2015, p. x). Against this the authors develop a whole range of parallel
38 arguments which point in the opposite direction; to the ways that the forms and audit processes invariably leave all sorts
39 of spaces of discretion that allow the corrupt to conceal their actions behind the veil of apparently transparent formal
40 processes (Neu, Everett, & Sharman, 2013). From this perspective the well designed form has a perverse character; it
41 makes corruption more possible by virtue of the assurance it offers others of a process that can be trusted ([8_TD$IF]Stolowy,
42 Messner, Jeanjean, & Baker, 2013[9_TD$IF]).
43 In the paper that follows I want to further explore this split framing of the problem and remedy to corruption. The peculiar
44 problem of corruption lies in the coincidence of the pursuit of private gain within all the privileges and resources of public
45 ofce. The corrupt individual or group is then more typically enabled rather than constrained by their intimate knowledge of
46 the procedures to which they are nominally subject. Happily I have little direct experience of corruption but a few examples
47 drawn from the work of doctoral students will perhaps be enough to illustrate the inextricably doubled nature of corruption
48 in which processes designed to protect the public interest are mobilised by the corrupt for their private purposes.
49 The rst scene is drawn from research on SMEs in Angola and involved a visit by the economic police to the premises
50 of an entrepreneur running a soft drinks business. Their inspection of his premises revealed a slight leak in the air
51 conditioning unit but this infringement of health and safety regulations provided the police with an excuse to ne the
52 entrepreneur. The unspoken alternative was for there to be an immediate and direct cash payment to the ofcers involved.
53 In this example the duties of public ofce and its powers were being mobilised to serve private interests. For the
54 entrepreneur the decision was either to face the inconvenience of challenging the ne through the courts or pay up and
55 have them leave. In this instance the entrepreneur chose to pay; thereby opening himself to future regular visits and
56 payments and making him complicit in this web of petty corruption. A second example is drawn from Russia in the 1990s
57 and a joint venture between a Western company and a group of oligarchs. The knowledge of the latter of the intricacies of
58 Russian bankruptcy law, together with the pliability of the court appointed receiver, allowed the oligarchs rst to strip out
59 the assets of the venture and then offer to cooperate with the victim in a new joint venture. The latter offered the Western
60 partner the now obvious protections of the oligarchs networks of inuence, whilst also potentially shielding the oligarchs
61 to some degree from political interference by the Kremlin. Again public and private interests and means were here
62 thoroughly intermingled such that it was practically impossible to use public process to curb private interests. Finally, in a
63 study of University governance in a developed country context the powers of public ofce were seen to be being used to
64 advance the private interests of mateship amongst a group of colleagues. Such processes were completely invisible apart
65 from the coincidental movements of this group into positions of relative power and inuence both within the University
66 and beyond. Yet again it was precisely individuals intimate knowledge of procedures and rules that could be used to effect
67 their construction of this network of private interests; private and public interests were again indistinguishable and served
68 only to complement each other.
69 To my mind, it is this interweaving of public and private interests, their inseparability and entanglement, which renders
70 somewhat naive the hope that the authors invest in the power of well designed forms and procedures effectively to counter
71 the potentials for corruption. At the same time, however, I believe that in their focus on processes of subjection Neu [10_TD$IF]et al offer
72 a potentially very valuable and fruitful avenue through which to better understand both corruption itself and the challenges
73 which it represents.

74 [1_TD$IF]2. From discipline to ethical subjectivity

75 As a starting point for exploring the subject of corruption it is rst necessary to unpick Neu et al[12_TD$IF].s elision of the
76 disciplined and ethical subject. Foucaults work on discipline points only to the ways in which he who is subject to a eld of
77 visibility, and who knows it, [13_TD$IF]such as that created by forms and inspection processes, comes to play both roles in a power
78 relationship. Discipline, in this sense, involves self-discipline as the power relationship is internalised. Arguably, however,
79 such processes at best presage the more complete view of subjection which [14_TD$IF]Foucault later offered.

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80 There are two meanings of the word subject: subject to someone else by control and dependence, and tied to his own
81 identity by a conscience or self-knowledge. Both meanings suggest a form of power which subjugates and makes
82 subject to (1982, p. 212).

83 [15_TD$IF]Whilst discipline remains heavily dependent on external surveillance to be effective, full subjection retains this external
84 aspect but is complemented, and to some degree rendered obsolete, by an internalisation of its demands in the form of an ethical
85 ideal. Subjection proper then becomes an internalised conscience or self knowledge against which and in relation to which I
86 come to judge and appraise myself and my own conduct. Subjection is arguably only completed in this transformation of an
87 external power relation into the authority of conscience. A parallel development can be observed in Foucaults treatment of
88 ethics. It perhaps starts merely as a rather mechanical process of normalisation but evolves in his later work into a more self
89 conscious cultivation or care of the self in relation to any prevailing normative order. As Butler describes this:-
90 Whereas in his earlier work, he treats the subject as an effect of discourse, in his later writings he nuances and renes
91 his position as follows: The subject forms itself in relation to a set of codes, prescriptions, or norms and does so in ways
92 that not only (a) reveal self-constitution to be a kind of poiesis but (b) establish self making as part of the broader
93 operation of critique (Butler, [16_TD$IF]2005:17).

94 Arguably, if the defence against corruption is to be rendered robust, it must on occasions include an ability to distance
95 oneself and act against the corrupt norms of a wider organisational culture.
96 In the remainder of this paper I rst elaborate further on Foucaults view of subjection, and what I believe is the
97 complementary view of such processes offered by Lacan. I then seek to offer a sketch of different subject positions in relation
98 to corruption. I begin by outlining a view of the subjectivity that characterises corruption itself rst through the eyes of the
99 corrupt and corrupting, and then through the eyes of those who nd themselves somehow subject to corruption. It is only in
100 relation to this possibly more substantial sense of the distortions of corrupt and corrupting subjectivity that one can then
101 gain clear sight of the challenges associated with establishing the conditions for the disciplined and ethical subjectivity that
102 Neu et al[17_TD$IF]. offer as an ideal.

103 3. Processes of subjection Foucault and Lacan

104 Oddly, the potentials for corruption are already assumed in what is arguably the dominant conceptualisation of social
105 relations that informs accounting research agency theory. Here the self interested opportunism (corruption) of the agent is
106 taken as a dening and natural feature of human agency, and it is assumed that the threats these represent to the sovereign
107 interests of the principal can only be countered either through external monitoring of the agent, and/or through incentives or
108 sanctions that alter the agents calculation of their self interest. Signicantly, there is not even the potential of something like
109 ethics in agency thinking; of the potential for agency to be self constraining by virtue of being tied to an identity by conscience or
110 self knowledge. In this respect theories of subjection, offer a powerful theoretical corrective to agency thinking, for the private
111 and sovereign interests of the principal are themselves subsumed and secured only within a broader legal framing of property
112 and employment rights which agency theory forgets in its entirely instrumental conceptualisation of human nature (Roberts &
113 Ng, 2012). Subjection in this respect acts, or at least has the potential to act, as the unacknowledged supplement and support to
114 agency costs in the ways in which both agent and principal are both also subject to the Law (Butler, 1997).
115 We can begin to approach the subjectivity of corruption through Foucault himself, and the use he made of a narrative that
116 Q6 was later popularised by the playwright Alan Bennett in The Madness of King George. Foucault (2008) quotes from Pinels
117 account of the treatment of King George an account that was itself drawn from that of the Kings doctor, Willis. When King
118 George falls into a mania, his cure is affected through the Kings isolation in a padded room, and his being informed that he is
119 no longer sovereign, but that he must henceforth be obedient and submissive. Two of the Kings old pages are charged with
120 looking after his needs, but also with convincing him that he is entirely subordinate to them and must now obey them. The
121 King repeatedly rages against this treatment and on occasions in a ery delerium daubs the doctor with lth and
122 excrement something that Foucault reads as a sign of his impotence and defeat. Such outbursts are met with the patient
123 cleaning of the Kings body and clothes and, after some months, produce a sound cure without relapse. Foucault sees these
124 processes as a sort of reverse coronation in which it is quite clearly shown that it involves placing the king in a situation of
125 complete subordination, with the doctor as the effective agent of this dethronement in telling him that he is no longer
126 sovereign. Subjection in this example is to insist that even the will of the King must be subjugated. The example is extreme
127 but illuminating; as Sovereign, the king cannot be mad since, as the very source of the Law, his own conduct is always an
128 exception and beyond its reach (Agamben, 1998).
129 For [18_TD$IF]Foucault this scene exemplies not a contest between sovereign powers but rather the transition from a sovereign
130 power to a different power:
131 [19_TD$IF]In place of this beheaded and dethroned power, an anonymous, multiple, pale and colurless power is installed which
132 is basically what I will call disciplinary power, in which the body and very person of the dethroned king, who must be
133 rendered docile and submissive by this new power (2006: 22).
134 [20_TD$IF]For Foucault this moment of confrontation and subordination of the will of a real sovereign draws its signicance from the
135 ways in which it is archetypal of the emergence of a new form of moral treatment of madness dened as a confrontation

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136 between the omnipotence of those who might believe that they are king and a psychiatric power which justies itself as
137 power in the name of reality itself. Under this new form of treatment of madness the subjugation of the patient to the will of
138 the psychiatrist was reinforced through all the disciplinary practices of the asylum, including the deprivation of freedom and
139 the requirement placed on patients that they confess to the truth of their own madness. Such new forms of psychiatric
140 power, Foucault suggests, then served as the model for the subsequent diffusion of such disciplinary regimes into the
141 hospital, and school.
142 In these lectures Foucault rhetorically raises the question as to whether disciplinary power has triumphed over sovereign
143 power, or merely coexists alongside sovereign power. He suggests that forms of the power of sovereignty can still be found
144 in contemporary society and points to the family as a sort of cell of the same type as the power of sovereignty [21_TD$IF](2006:79).
145 Such a possibility seems to be conrmed through accounts of the formation of the subject within family structures. Whilst
146 dramatised in the narrative of the madness of King George, psychoanalytic accounts of development tell of a similar struggle
147 over subjection; one however that takes place for all of us within family life. In the Lacanian schema of such development
148 subjection is only fully realised in the transition from what he calls the Imaginary to the Symbolic (Lacan, 1976).
149 If we are lucky, as infants we will have all known an entirely illusory moment in which we believed ourselves to be at the
150 absolute centre of the universe; the Imaginary is the term Lacan uses to denote our identication with such an idealised and
151 omnipotent image of the self. One can imagine why we might ght to retain, or nd again in adult life, such a moment of self-
152 perfection. Our rst sense of self, Lacan suggests, is realised only through the childs identication with (literally nding of
153 the self in) the ephemeral substance of his or her mirror image; an identication supported by the approving gaze of
154 the mother (Fink, 1997). This body image serves as a centre around which and in relation to which experience can begin to be
155 organised, and as such it founds the possibility of future agency and reection; self can begin to be differentiated from other,
156 past from the present and future. However, for Lacan, this moment of recognition is also a moment of mis-recognition or
157 meconnaissance which grasps at an idealised image of the self as both autonomous and substantial. Such processes of mis-
158 recognition then have their correlate in relationships with others where the gaze has a similar power to capture; I am prone
159 to seek, nd and lose myself in the gaze of the other in an attempt to secure their existence conrming recognition
160 (see Roberts (2005) for a much fuller account of these processes). In this respect one can suggest that the madness of King
161 George lay in his complete identication with the autonomy and omnipotence of Kingship; with only his subsequent
162 complete subjection to the will of others serving to give him some minimal distance from this such that he could enact the
163 role of king without fully believing in it. One can also contemplate the risks and challenges that were involved at the time for
164 both his doctor, Willis, and his pages in having to suspend their belief in, and desire for, the recognition of his Majesty, in
165 order to enact his subjugation to their will, and [2_TD$IF]realise his subjection.
166 For Lacan, subjection is only fully [23_TD$IF]realised in the later transition from the Imaginary to what he terms the Symbolic with
167 the failed tantrum and the entry of the child into language as its markers. The resolution of the Oedipus complex is precisely
168 what effects this transition, and it is occasioned by the intrusion of a third party Lacan talks here of the Symbolic Father [24_TD$IF]
169 into the mother child dyad. Freud invoked the myth of Oedipus to point to the (unconscious) desire that this intrusion
170 provokes; the desire to get rid of the third as a way to retain the exclusive relation with the mother. But he also pointed to this
171 aggressive rivalry with the father as the founding root of conscience; the Oedipus complex, he suggested, is only resolved
172 through an identication with the father (ego-ideal), and the consequent turning of the aggression originally directed at
173 the father back upon self (super-ego) in the ways in which I berate myself for failing to live up to this ideal guilt. In this
174 psychoanalytic account, then, this necessary moment of subjection consists in being displaced from a world which is
175 seemingly ordered around my (sovereign) demands of it, into a world where I am myself subject to the will of others. It is a
176 transition that confronts my omnipotence with the reality of my dependence on others and my vulnerability, and establishes
177 reality precisely as that which I do not want.

178 [25_TD$IF]4. The subject of corruption

179 Viewed as a transition from the Imaginary to the Symbolic subjection looks like a solution to corruption; the omnipotent
180 illusion of a complete autonomy is displaced by a subjection to power that is both external and, through identication, an
181 internalised ideal against which I judge myself. However, what must also be observed about these processes of the formation
182 of the speaking subject is that the move from the Imaginary to the Symbolic is never complete. The entry of the child into
183 language does not erase but merely renders largely unconscious the earlier dynamics of the Imaginary particularly the
184 dynamic in which our narcissism leaves us prone to search for, nd and lose ourselves in the gaze of others. These, I will
185 suggest, are an important part of the explanation of how corruption lives on as the shadow side of disciplinary regimes. But
186 there is also a more direct tie between the formation of the speaking subject and corruption which points to its hidden
187 attraction. For Lacan, it is only our subjection to the Law that founds desire as the unending quest for the lost/impossible
188 jouissance (Stavrakakis, [26_TD$IF]1999:42). In other words, it is prohibition that founds my desire, (something is rendered desirable
189 by the very fact of its prohibition) and I can (falsely) believe that only the Law stands between me and the fullment that it
190 forbids. This then makes transgression into a potential source of enjoyment. As [27_TD$IF]Glynos (2008:682) puts it, transgression is a
191 way to steal back what the Other has supposedly stolen, supported by the thought that he or she is transgressing the
192 Others law and ideals, enjoying them behind the Others back. From this perspective, the appeal of corruption extends
193 beyond any instrumental calculus of private interests; corruption is a source of excitement and enjoyment in its own right

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194 precisely because it is prohibited. Corruption offers a thrilling moment of omnipotence, made more exciting by the way that I
195 am doing it right under the nose of the Law.
196 Both Foucaults account of the subjection of King George, and Lacans more detailed psychoanalytic account of such
197 processes in the normal course of development, point to the potential of our seeking to understand corruption in the wider
198 context of these processes of subjection. In contrast to agency theory, which merely repeats the assumptions of a sovereign
199 view of power in the assumed struggle between agent and principal, Foucaults account of subjection points to the capacity of
200 disciplinary regimes to shape the conduct of conduct. Thus Neu et al[28_TD$IF]., following Foucault, are right to point to the potential
201 of dull administrative routines, endlessly repeated, to produce over time a self disciplined and ethical subjectivity. In
202 relation to corruption they look to the routines and rules around form lling and inspection to effectively contain, or
203 retrospectively confront, the conduct of those who might otherwise use, or seek to use, the resources of their public ofce for
204 their sovereign private interests. The luminous arrangements that they allow mark and advertise an abstract public purpose
205 which, ideally, is then internalised as an ethical ideal against which ofcials judge and constrain their own and others
206 conduct. From this perspective corruption can be viewed as a failure of such processes of subjection; as a loss or imagined
207 escape from the gaze of the Law. However, even if the anonymous, multiple, pale and colourless power of discipline can be
208 realised through the well designed forms and audit routines in which Neu et al[29_TD$IF]. place their hope, in practice, these routines
209 can also be infused and subverted by the narcissistic dramas of the Imaginary. The awkward conclusion to be drawn from the
210 Lacanian account of such processes is that corruption, or at least the attractiveness of corruption, will always accompany
211 subjection. This is because corruption achieves much of its attraction from the enjoyment that is derived precisely from
212 transgressing the rules to which I am subject, and/or (even more enjoyably) to which I continue to subject others.
213 Foucaults (1992) account of the mechanisms of disciplinary power points to the subjective effects of visibility and the
214 processes of homogenisation, comparison, differentiation, hierachization and exclusion that this allows; processes which
215 serve simultaneously to normalize and individualize. It seems to me that it is in relation to the operation of hierarchy that
216 disciplinary power remains most vulnerable to the impulse for corruption. For those of us who never achieve high ofce in
217 adult life, such is the pervasiveness of disciplinary routines and the visibility that secures these, that this may well be enough
218 to keep us rmly in our place as subjects, even if we might secretly contemplate the pleasures of transgression. However,
219 despite the diffusion of disciplinary power, arguably its grip is more fragile and potentially more uncertain in relation to
220 those who are close to or at the top of the hierarchies of accountability and visibility through which they are enforced. For
221 these individuals there is both more opportunity and more likelihood that their quasi-sovereign command of [30_TD$IF]organisational
222 resources and others will allow actual transgression. For some at least power is pursued, albeit unconsciously, precisely as a
223 route back to the omnipotence and autonomy of the Imaginary; it is these that drives their blind ambition. For others,
224 the adult experience of quasi-sovereign power is enough to reanimate similar fantasies. It is in this way that power has the
225 potential to corrupt and absolute power to corrupt absolutely.
226 What the above account of the founding processes of subjection possibly serves to make clearer is the slight but hugely
227 consequential difference between subjection and its corrupt complement. To slip from one subjective space to the other
228 requires only the loosening of the grip of the tie of conscience as the internalised presence of the Law, and/or a complete
229 identication with ones formal position which treats the rights and privileges of role as if they were a personal property.
230 That such a slippage is a slippage back into a position of imagined autonomy/omnipotence offers some explanation
231 of studies of corruption which suggest that the corrupt are prone to believe in their own rationalisations of their action
232 and underestimate the likelihood of their conduct coming to light (Anand, Ashforth, & Joshi, 2004[31_TD$IF]; Fleming &
233 Zyglidopoulos, 2009).
234 But such a slippage is also encouraged and enabled by the conduct of those who are subordinate to those with quasi-
235 sovereign power. As I have argued elsewhere (Roberts, 2009), routine processes of hierarchical accountability in
236 organisations, acquire much of their emotional force through the dynamics of recognition that they mobilise. Transference is
237 the tendency that we each have to project into adult authority relations the emotional signicances and conicts of our early
238 relationships with powerful parental gures. Part of what makes corruption more possible or more likely is the way in which,
239 as subordinate, I am keen to fashion myself in the image of what I believe the boss wants me to be. Here the routines of
240 hierarchical accountability, whilst securing my own subjection, positively encourage the anticipatory [32_TD$IF]internalisation of the
241 desire of the powerful. Kets de Vries (1988) talks here of how the powerful can be seduced by the mirror transferences of
242 those who surround them; of how, in search of their existence conrming recognition, as well as material career interests,
243 subordinates or advisors are prone to offer back to those with power a attering and [3_TD$IF]idealised image of themselves. Such
244 projections can not only reinforce the [3_TD$IF]idealised self image of those in positions of power, but also create powerful obstacles to
245 subordinates actively challenging the corrupt conduct of their boss. My narcissistic concern to secure the good opinion of a
246 superior may simply make me blind to their corruption I am preoccupied only with pleasing power [34_TD$IF] or, through
247 identication, may lead me to take the conduct of the corrupt as a normative ideal for my own conduct (Anand et al., 2004).
248 Even without such subjectively motivated collusion, the reality of hierarchical power differences can work against any
249 challenge to corruption by subordinates. Paranoia is one part of this an imagination that power is threatening and against
250 you. Distrust creeps in weakening ones ability to take the world at face value; looking unusually for hidden motives and
251 malign intent in too many places. But then too there is something like despair. Corruption, especially as the suspicion grows
252 that this is endemic or systemic, robs me of a place of refuge; a good to which I can turn, a Law to which all are subject that
253 will offer protection and remedy. Power is known to have turned bad and yet retains its command of resources. The
254 invisibility of corruption then serves to individualise in a way that is possibly even more intense than that which Foucault

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255 points to as an effect of disciplinary regimes. Thus corruption typically involves something like a whole theatre of
256 appearances; public smiles and private threats which ensure that I cannot be certain of who else is privy to this [24_TD$IF] if others are
257 party to the corruption or have also been deceived. Others also have their own interests to look the other way and collude,
258 whilst claiming complete ignorance if they are challenged.
259 To lose something like a benign image of power the term legitimacy fails completely to convey this is to be exposed in
260 a way that is deeply uncomfortable; it a sort of parody of Levinas assignation of responsibility for my vulnerable neighbour
261 ([35_TD$IF]Shearer, 2002). Rather than encounter the vulnerable other I encounter another who would show me my vulnerability to
262 their exercise of power; another who is without ethics or virtue or even the semblance of fellow feeling; the sociopath
263 dressed in the clothes of strong leadership. Corruption then, if we are willing to face it, possibly robs us of the assumption
264 that power is good and will protect us.

265 [36_TD$IF]5. Concluding thoughts

266 Taking my lead from Neu et al[12_TD$IF].s discussion of the remedies of corruption in disciplinary processes of subjection, in the
267 above I have sought to sketch the outlines of an analysis of the subjectivity of corruption. Preventing Corruption in Government
268 Procurement left me puzzled not because of the potential for well designed forms to produce a disciplined and ethical
269 subjectivity, but because despite their optimism, in their paper Neu et al. repeatedly return to the counter-thought that
270 corruption itself might still be possible within such processes. What emerges from the above analysis of processes of
271 subjection is the conclusion that corruption will always be the complement to subjection.
272 The hope of the corrupt, of course, is that their conduct will remain invisible behind the appearances of due process and
273 inspection; that it will be impossible to disentangle their deceit from their legitimate exercise of authority. The discipline of
274 due process that is fully inscribed on well designed forms, and the traces this creates for subsequent audit, at least leaves the
275 outcome uncertain, and thereby forces a certain caution and discretion on the corrupt. Subjection and corruption, however,
276 are clearly not opposites or mutually exclusive. Rather corruption is better viewed as a sort of mirror image of subjection a
277 contemptuous parody perhaps. The two images are almost identical; both involve the exercise of power, both have the
278 power to normalise and individualise, and yet corruption, unlike subjection, is emptied of the substance of ethics; the will of
279 the Other no longer has internal force. Instead the corrupt have, in effect, slipped back into the illusions of a ruthless
280 autonomy. The corrupt are spoilt in the way that we might speak of a child being spoilt, except that he or she now has at their
281 adult disposal all the resources of an organisation through which others can be enrolled in the web of their private interests,
282 or at least rendered silent.
283 Finally, we must insist on something like the madness of the corrupt, and their own need for subjection as a cure of this.
284 The infantile phantasies of omnipotence/dominance which are the genesis of corruption are properly seen as nothing more
285 than a defence against an unbearable anxiety associated with the reality of a childs vulnerability and complete dependence
286 (Klein, 1988). Importantly, the reality of the formally powerful in [37_TD$IF]organisations is often similarly characterised by an intense
287 dependence on others to realise the objectives against which they themselves are judged. In a mature leader such
288 dependence and its associated anxieties can perhaps be consciously recognised and openly acknowledged. In contrast, the
289 premise of adult corruption is the complete denial of such dependence; a denial evidenced by the tendency of some who
290 come to occupy positions of power to project their own weakness and vulnerability onto subordinate others who are then
291 viewed with contempt and attacked.
292 The Neu et al[38_TD$IF]. paper, in its rather split and doubled way both of advancing the possibility of form based subjection and, at
293 the same time, pointing to how such processes are so easily subverted, has served to stimulate a rather unwelcome set of
294 thoughts. Corruption, by its very denition, implies the possibility of a pure form of power in contrast to which it is merely an
295 aberration or distortion (a corruption). One might wish to cling to such an idealised view of corruption as the mere exception
296 to legitimate rule. One might hope that a thorough subjection, realised by far more than forms, might in principle secure such
297 purity. But then we know that we want precisely what subjection prohibits such that corruption is the inevitable companion
298 of all attempts to abolish it. The awkward thought that the subject of corruption raises then and perhaps it is this that we do
299 not wish to acknowledge - is the possibility that corruption is the norm and effective subjection the exception.

300 Q7 Uncited references

301 Foucault [39_TD$IF](1979) and Neu, Everett, and Sharman (2014).

302 References

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309 Foucault, M. (1979). Discipline and punish. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books.
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Please cite this article in press as: Roberts, J. The [1_TD$IF]subject of corruption. Crit Perspect Account (2015), http://dx.doi.org/
10.1016/j.cpa.2015.01.010