How best to govern society and promote cooperation is a centuries-old debate: is cooperation best maintained by a central authority, or is it better handled by more decentralized forms of governance? Using mathematical models, we show that when some actors can bribe a powerful centralized authority, they can completely undermine cooperation in society. Counterintuitively, a weaker centralized authority is more effective because it allows peer punishment to restore cooperation in the presence of corruption. Our results help explain why citizen participation is a fundamental necessity for policing the commons.
Scientific writings:
S. Abdallah, R. Sayed, I. Rahwan, B. LeVeck, M. Cebrian, A. Rutherford, J. Fowler (2014). Corruption Drives the Emergence of Civil Society. Journal of the Royal Society Interface. 11(93).
Selected Media: Anti-Corruption Research Network (part of Transparency International)