Why the traffic officer had no choice but to take the bribe and why you need to know about the Social Norms Accelerator Program

In this personal account, CJL Blog Editor Catherine Garson describes her social norms learning journey and explains why she highly recommends the upcoming Social Norms Accelerator Program.

Corruption is as much about the unwritten rules that demand this behavior as it is about the written rules that are meant to prevent it. I haven’t always understood this. 

I come from South Africa, a country where corruption has gone so deep that it has been described as a textbook case of ‘state capture’. Like many, I thought this dizzying hollowing out of state institutions through cadre deployment and the rigged awarding of lucrative government tenders was just about venality and greed: the powerful abusing the system because a lot is never enough. 

A social norms lightbulb moment 

When I started as the Editor of this blog, I was given a curated list of CJL’s research (including this excellent glossary) to get me up to speed. I came across example after example of corrupt behavior being driven by the unwritten rules that drive behavior––aka: social norms. This one made the light come on: A traffic officer, with several colleagues watching, solicits a bribe to quash a fine for a traffic infringement. The peers don’t react. On the contrary, the officer was expected to solicit the bribe. In fact, if the officer hadn’t taken advantage of the opportunity, they would have suffered varying degrees of negative professional consequences and social isolation. The officers expect each other to get as much out of their job as they can and this pressure trumps everything else. The power of unwritten rules seems obvious now but from my instinctive ‘bad-actor’ view of corruption, it didn’t then. 

"If corruption persists despite legal and institutional reforms, the explanation lies elsewhere. The decision to explore social norms was not theoretical abstraction but an empirical necessity."

Since then, I have become aware of the importance of conducting a sound analysis to identify what is driving and enabling corrupt practices rather than running with your own assumptions. I now have a much better sense of how social norms are particularly important in contexts where corruption is endemic; of how different social norms can compete with and reinforce each other––like gender norms and faith norms; and how changing social norms should be a primary objective for addressing corruption effectively.  

I’m far from alone in my evolution to embrace the powerful role of social norms to drive corrupt behavior as well as integrity: as Colette Ashton, a former technical advisor to South Africa’s National Anti-Corruption Advisory Council (NACAC) mused: ‘I have seen corrupt organizations and I have seen healthy organizations. In the latter, leadership creates an environment where employees can speak truth to power––and expect to be safe and to be heard. In these organizations social norms enable good corporate governance.’ 

Introducing the Social Norms Accelerator Program

I have come to believe that everyone working on any form of accountable governance initiative should understand social norms. And so I was pleased to offer feedback on a new initiative to catalyse greater know-how on implementing social norms change: Besa Global’s Social Norms Accelerator. 

Briefly, the Accelerator is a nine-month hybrid learning opportunity for small teams put forward by their organizations to gain key capacity to bring home to their institution. The Accelerator is a carefully conceptualized program for experienced individuals to learn, apply and adapt their work, with individualized coaching in real-time.

Our first information session is:

Monday, July 6 at 9:00am EST / 1:00pm GMT

Subscribe to our newsletter for registration details

In my opinion, there are several attractive features in this program:

#1: Designed to help practitioners unpack their assumptions and conduct more accurate analyses, which, in turn, will improve a program’s impact 

The thinking behind this was made clear by Diana Chigas, a lead facilitator in the Accelerator: ‘If you don't get the analysis right, your programs are not going to address things that actually make a difference.…. It’s about the informal networks and how they operate. Social norms is one way of keeping them together and keeping certain kinds of rules of the game. If you don't understand what those are and what the rules of the game under which they operate are, then you're in trouble.’ 

CJL’s work from Nigeria, to Uzbekistan, to the West Bank, and Jordan offers vivid examples of this. Practitioners from CJL’s collaboration with Transparency International Madagascar noted: ‘Many corrupt practices are normalized within institutional routines … If corruption persists despite legal and institutional reforms, the explanation lies elsewhere. The decision to explore social norms was not theoretical abstraction but an empirical necessity.' (This last sentence was another lightbulb moment.) 

#2: Meets participants where they’re at: helping them apply a social norms approach at the appropriate level for their organization

If an organization is not working with social norms at all, the Accelerator will provide guidance on how and where to introduce the framework. On the other hand, if social norms are already part of an organization’s anticorruption work and approach, the Program will help participants deepen their work. Equally, if an organization sees it as most relevant in a particular sectoral team while another wishes to engage in it across the organization––both will be possible.

#3: Provides support for identifying how social norms can be integrated into existing programs

A hugely important point is that the program is not about creating standalone ‘social norms programs’. It's more about helping participants (and their organizations) work out where, when, and how to integrate social norms within their existing programming. Neither is it a ‘one size fits all’ aiming to substitute and edge out other approaches. It will involve applying Theory of Change methodology to ask good questions, test assumptions, and assess whether, where and how social norms can improve the effectiveness of organizations’ existing approaches. (Sidebar: I have always thought of the Theory of Change as something complex and highly technical. But seeing how well it works in relation to social norms has demystified it and made me appreciate its helpfulness.) 

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#4: Offers value to both civil society, government institutions, funders and policymakers engaged in anti-corruption 

In the words of Besa’s Executive Director Cheyanne Scharbatke-Church: ‘For anti-corruption commissions and other state institutions in places of scarcity and endemic corruption, the social norm lens offers a more authentic representation of the realities of people advocating for greater accountability. And from a civil society perspective, it will position an organization as having more cutting-edge adaptive tools and possibly improving fundraising potential.’

#5: Offers an efficient way of embedding learning in an organization

Working with identified key professionals within an organization, the Accelerator is designed to develop what Cheyanne calls ‘deployable capacity.’ Participants will determine what that means for their organization, design a strategy to achieve it, and receive coaching through their implementation. Social norms will be on the radar of those who need to know, and they will know who to come to as the need arises. 

#6: Is individualized and affordable 

To ensure that the program is as individualized as possible, it has been designed for a relatively small cohort. With the expectation that some participants will be from resource-constrained organizations, some form of subsidization is being offered. Funding should not be seen as a deterrent. 

I strongly recommend applying (I certainly would if I was eligible!)

For anyone wanting to learn more about social norms and integrate this understanding into their accountable governance programming––for its content, structure, mode of delivery, and the expertise and dynamism of its teachers––this Program could be hard to beat. 

To know more and apply, please visit The Social Norms Accelerator homepage.

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Catherine Garson is an editorial consultant, advanced writing mentor, and communication coach. In all the services she offers, she helps people express themselves and their ideas with clarity and precision. She works with individuals and groups from organizations in the public and private sectors, and academia. Her list of top-notch clients includes international development organizations, think tanks, research institutes, and universities. In a career spanning over thirty years, she has acquired her high-level skills as a communication and language specialist through teaching and tutoring, writing and editing, and translating. Based in Madrid, she speaks Spanish and French. She also spends time in South Africa, her home country.