Reply to the Comment: Observed Differences in Corruption between Asia and Africa: The Industrial Organization of Corruption and Its Cure

Abstract

I was given the opportunity to read Dr. Moloney’s revised comments. I add three observations, but I see no reason to change either the paper or my original reply. First, her opinion that my “observation flows from the World Bank’s 1997 World Development Report” is not true. The paper was based on direct real world observations not reading the WDR or other reports. The main ideas of the paper were developed before (see the quote from Winnicott below). The second is that the 'talking cure’ works best with motivated participants. If there is no motivation to end corruption, efforts at cure will fail. The paper has a lengthy discussion of the merits and demerits of the intellectual approaches combined with punishment, and of the ‘talking cure’. The latter is difficult and slow in comparison to the results-oriented approaches (which invariably lead to failure and unintended consequences). Often, erroneously, giving intellectual instructions and naming projection “analysis” are preferred to study and real analysis that enable emotional communications to set change in motion. Third, unlike Dr. Moloney claims, the paper’s theory about corruption is well and correctly conceptualized and does not fade in to Barbra Streisand lyrics.