"There was a certain wealthy man, a prominent citizen, who was about to sponsor a public entertainment," the Moon strated a story when she appeared, after greeting with Basmalah and Salaam. "He invited anyone who had some novelty to perform, promising to pay them a fee. Professional performers came to compete for public acclaim, and among them was a clown who was well known for his sophisticated sense of humour. He said that he had a type of spectacle that had never been performed in any theatre before. The rumour spread throughout the city, sparking the public’s interest. Theatre seats that had recently been left empty were now not enough for the gathering crowd. After the clown came out by himself on the stage, with no equipment and no assistants, a hush of anticipation silenced the spectators. Then the clown suddenly lowered his head towards his chest and imitated the sound of a little pig. The sound was so true to life that the audience maintained that there must be a real little pig concealed under his cloak and they demanded that it be shaken out. But when the cloak was shaken out, it proved to be empty, so they lavished the clown with praise and he left the stage to resounding applause. A country bumpkin saw what had happened and said, ‘By gosh, I can do better than that!’ He immediately promised that he would do the same thing, only better, the following day. The crowd grew still larger and favouritism had already swayed their perception; you could tell that they had not come to watch the performance so much as to make fun of it. The two men came out onto the stage. The clown squealed as he had done the day before, provoking the audience’s applause and shouts of approval. Now it was the turn of the country bumpkin, who pretended to conceal a little pig beneath his clothes—and this time there really was a hidden pig, although of course the audience had not found anything under the clown’s cloak at the previous performance. The man then pulled the ear of the real pig that was hidden in his clothes, producing an authentic squeal of pain. The audience shouted that the clown had given a far more realistic performance and they were prepared to drive the country bumpkin off the stage. But he then pulled the actual pig from inside his cloak and showed it to the audience, denouncing their gross error with incontrovertible evidence. ‘Here you go!’ he said. ‘This little pig proves what kind of judges you are!’ This story is best known as ‘Parmeno’s pig’
Phaedrus, who told this story, commented, 'In ev’ry age, in each profession, men err the most by prepossession, but when the thing is clearly shown, is fairly urged, and fully known, we soon applaud what we deride, and penitence succeeds to pride.'
In their groundless favouritism, people often make mistakes; they stand behind a judgement made in error until the actual fact of the matter later compels them to regret their choice.
Sociologist William Sumner in his Folkways (1906) posited that humans are a species that join together in groups by their very nature (in-grup favoritism). Ethnocentrism is the technical name for this view of things in which one’s own group is the center of everything, and all others are scaled and rated with reference to it. Folkways correspond to it to cover both the inner and the outer relation. Each group nourishes its own pride and vanity, boasts itself superior, exalts its own divinities, and looks with contempt on outsiders.
Each group thinks its own folkways the only right ones, and if it observes that other groups have other folkways, these excite its scorn. Opprobrious epithets are derived from these differences.
Sumner proposed several illustrations. The Jews divided all mankind into themselves and Gentiles. They were the 'chosen people.' The Greeks and Romans called all outsiders 'barbarians.' In Euripides’ tragedy of Iphigenza in Aulis Iphigenia says that it is fitting that Greeks should rule over barbarians, but not contrariwise, because Greeks are free, and barbarians are slaves.
In 1896, the Chinese minister of education and his counselors edited a manual in which this statement occurs, 'How grand and glorious is the Empire of China, the middle kingdom! She is the largest and richest in the world. The grandest men in the world have all come from the middle empire.'
In all the literature of all the states equivalent statements occur, although they are not so naively expressed. In Russian books and newspapers the civilizing mission of Russia is talked about, just as, in the books and journals of France, Germany, and the United States, the civilizing mission of those countries is assumed and referred to as well understood. Each state now regards itself as the leader of civilization, the best, the freest, and the wisest, and all others as inferior. Within a few years our own man-on-the-curbstone has learned to class all foreigners of the Latin peoples as 'dagos,' and ' dago' has become an epithet of contempt. These are all cases of ethnocentrism.
Patriotism, says Sumner, is a sentiment which belongs to modern states. It stands in antithesis to the medieval notion of catholicity. Patriotism is loyalty to the civic group to which one belongs by birth or other group bond. It is a sentiment of fellowship and coéperation in all the hopes, work, and suffering of the group. Medieval catholicity would have made all Christians an in-group and would have set them in hostility to all Mohammedans [meaning Muslims, this diction has been proven to be not quite right in many Islamic scholarly literatures] and other non-Christians.
For the modern man, according Sumner, patriotism has become one of the first of duties and one of the noblest of sentiments. It is what he owes to the state for what the state does for him, and the state is, for the modern man, a cluster of civic institutions from which he draws security and conditions of welfare. The masses are always patriotic. For them the old ethnocentric jealousy, vanity, truculency, and ambition are the strongest elements in patriotism. Such sentiments are easily awakened in a crowd. They are sure to be popular. Wider knowledge always proves that they are not based on facts. That we are good and others are bad is never true.
That patriotism, says Sumner, may degenerate into a vice is shown by the invention of a name for the vice: chauvinism. It is a name for boastful and truculent group self-assertion. It overrules personal judgment and character, and puts the whole group at the mercy of the clique which is ruling at the moment. It produces the dominance of watchwords and phrases which take the place of reason and conscience in determining conduct. The patriotic bias is a recognized perversion of thought and judgment against which our education should guard us,
More broaded favoritism mentioned by Judy Nadler and Miriam Schulman that probably the biggest dilemma presented by favoritism is that, under various other names, few people see it as a problem. Connections, networking, family-almost everyone has drawn on these sources of support in job hunting in the private spherre. Basically favoritism is just what it sounds like; it's favoring a person not because he or she is doing the best job but rather because of some extraneous feature-membership in a favored group, personal likes and dislikes, etc. Favoritism can be demonstrated in hiring, honoring, or awarding contracts. A related idea is patronage, giving public service jobs to those who may have helped elect the person who has the power of appointment.
Favoritism has always been a complaint in government service. Nadler and Schulman give an example, in 2002, a survey from the federal government's Office of Personnel Management found that only 36.1 percent of federal workers thought promotions in their work units were based on merit. (Government Executive Magazine, 'Playing Favorites,' by Brian Friel, October 2004). They believed that connections, partisanship, and other factors played a role.
Furthermore, Nadler and Schulman say that Cronyism is a more specific form of favoritism, referring to partiality towards friends and associates. As the old saying goes, 'It's not what you know but who you know,' Cronyism occurs within a network of insiders-the 'good ol' boys,' who confer favors on one another.
Sarah Smierciak in her study Cronyism and Elite Capture in Egypt (2022), tell us that according to Amr Adly (2011), cronyism is the abuse of state power in issuing laws, decrees and regulations that would allocate public assets or ensure favored market positions to a politically selected few. Adly posits that close-knit networks of cronyism and corruption evolved around the acquisition of public assets, pointing specifically to land, natural resources, and state-owned companies up for privatization.
Patrick Newman, when he tells us about Cronyism (2021), says that cronyism occurs when the government passes policies to benefit special-interest politicians, bureaucrats, businesses, and other groups at the expense of the general public. Examples include a central bank’s selective credit expansion, discriminatory taxes and regulations, business subsidies, territorial acquisitions and other foreign policy maneuvers, and new constitutions. The rewards of cronyism take the form of monetary gains, particularly increased incomes and profits for individuals and businesses, or psychic gains from greater power and authority. The government’s claim that it passed legislation to enhance the public welfare is only a thin veneer for privileges and redistribution.
Special-interest legislation is inherent in the very nature of government. On the free market, the network of voluntary exchanges, all activity is based on individual liberty and results in mutually beneficial outcomes. The competitive profit and loss mechanism incentivizes individuals to produce goods and services that consumers desire. However, the government, the legitimated monopoly of power, lacks this mechanism and produces outcomes that are harmful to society. The incentive structure is different: unlike the Invisible Hand of the market, individuals that control the coercive Visible Hand are encouraged to pass legislation that benefits them at the expense of others. The stronger the government, the more lucrative the rewards. To control the government machinery is to control the levers of cronyism.
Peter Schweizer in his 'Throw Them All Out' (2011) put it this way, 'In the 'Audacity of Hope' Barack Obama tells a story about visiting Los Angeles in 2000: His credit card was declined by a rental car company. It was a "very dry period" for his law firm, and he was devoting most of his energy to his work as a state senator. Then suddenly a wealthy political donor named Robert Blackwell agreed to pay him a $112,000 legal retainer over a fourteen-month period.
But here's what Obama failed to note in his book, and what came to light only later, thanks to investigative reporting: State Senator Obama subsequently helped Blackwell's table tennis company receive $320,000 in Illinois tourism grants to subsidize a state Ping-Pong tournament.
Giving specific access and benefits to those who help you get elected (or get rich through investments) is a time-tested American tradition. You can make a business of government service by helping friends who help you. Politicians have always tried to provide favors in the form of tax breaks, regulatory exemptions, and constituent services to a select group of financial friends. Politicians regularly get special provisions inserted in the tax code to help friends in certain industries. Or they try to get them access to particularly powerful bureaucrats. But the best form of payoff and patronage for rich friends and supporters? Give them billions of dollars in taxpayer cash.
When William 'Boss' Tweed ran the Tammany Hall political machine in New York City in the nineteenth century, he forced potential candidates to put up cash to win nomination (and then certain election) to office. Once the electees arrived, they would enrich themselves, but they also funneled money back to Tammany Hall. It was more than just crony capitalism; it was also a system of rigged elections. What brought Tweed down, however, was classic cronyism. He began to construct a courthouse in lower Manhattan in 1861, siphoning off several times its value in government contracts. Finally, a New York Times investigative series pointed out so much blatant graft—one Tweed crony was paid so much for just two days of work that he became known as 'the Prince of Plasterers'—that charges were brought, and Tweed was jailed after milking the courthouse for a decade (construction would not be completed until 1880).
It would take a large team of investigative reporters, says Schweizer, to untangle every example of cronyism. Crony capitalism is good for those on the inside. And it is lousy for everyone else. But it does provide a hybrid-powered vehicle to sustain a large base of rich campaign contributors with taxpayer money.
Imagine for a minute that you are a corporate executive and you start using your company's assets to 'invest' in projects that in turn benefit you directly. What would happen? You would be risking possible criminal charges for the misuse of those assets. But if it's taxpayer money? Suddenly it becomes legal. Even acceptable. And for the billionaire who is looking to get a big return on his investment, there are few returns that can be higher than those resulting from campaign contributions. After all, how else can you turn half a million dollars from yourself and your friends into hundreds of millions of dollars after a single election? Not surprisingly, many of those are raising money again. As a jobs program—the stated purpose—these billions in grants and loans were a failure. But as a method for transferring billions in taxpayer funds to friends, cronies, and supporters, they worked perfectly. Politicians continue to enrich themselves, their families, their friends, and their supporters through the practice of cronyism. Montesquieu wrote in The Spirit of the Laws, 'Commerce is the profession of equals.' But not in an era of crony capitalism, where politicians increasingly call the shots and where better access is often more important than a better idea or better business plan. Business has often resembled a meritocracy: the entrepreneur with the best idea, the best product, the best business strategy, wins. People vote with their purchases to select winners and losers. And investors looking to help a budding company will make their evaluation on the merits. Cronyism is the antithesis of a meritocracy.
As we have seen, added Schweizer, disclosure requirements are not sufficient to stop cronyism. What about trusts? Many members of Congress put their assets in so-called blind trusts, and thereby appear to be above suspicion. Yet such trusts don't work either. Despite the name, blind trusts are far too often not, well, blind. And they are not dumb either. They also establish policies to protect against cronyism.
Back to Nadler and Schulman, they say that a chronic form of favoritism is Nepotism. Nepotism is an even narrower form of favoritism. Coming from the Italian word for nephew, it covers favoritism to members of the family. Both nepotism and cronyism are often at work when political parties recruit candidates for public office.
Editor Robert G. Jones in Nepotism in Organizations (2012), define nepotism (variously) as a set of psychological and social processes associated with observed phenomena with respect to family membership (broadly defined) in and around organizations. Nepotism can be defined in terms of both observed phenomena and potential underlying social and psychological processes. The Oxford English Dictionary (2011) lists four definitions for the term, all of which are derived from the word nepos and the practice by early Christian bishops of conferring status on their nephews. The first definition is: 'a. The showing of special favour or unfair preference to a relative in conferring a position, job, privilege, etc.; spec. such favour or preference shown to an illegitimate son by a pope or other high-ranking ecclesiastic.' The 'obsolete' definition under this heading is 'b. In extended use: unfair preferment of or favouritism shown to friends, protégés, or others within a person’s sphere of influence. Also (occasionally), the exploitation for one’s personal advantage of one’s influential status.' Ironically, it is this latter, supposedly obsolete definition that appears to be the common use of the term, at least by reference to anti-nepotism policies that deal with more than just the relationship between managers and their nephews.
There are several other general definitions of nepotism. A putatively traditional definition is 'the bestowal of patronage by reason of relationship regardless of merit'. Bellow’s (2003) initial definition of nepotism is 'favoritism based on kinship'. But he also defines a 'new nepotism,' which involves deliberate occupational choice by offspring. Jones and colleagues go further, suggesting that nepotism be defined by distinguishing 'nepotism as a hiring decision based solely on family ties (kinship)' versus a career choice 'that leads to hiring based on merit.' Stout, Levesque, and Jones (2007) encompass both this deliberate career choice and meritorious hiring of family members, but further broaden the definition in terms of familial coercion. The obvious conclusion here is that the common definition of nepotism based on observer perceptions of favoritism actually belies several underlying processes.
Arthur Gutman mentions that Anti-nepotism policies in America, the Code of Federal Regulations defines relative as follows, 'Relative means father, mother, son, daughter, brother, sister, uncle, aunt, first cousin, nephew, niece, husband, wife, father-in-law, mother-in-law, son-in-law, daughter-in-law, brother-in-law, sister-in-law, stepfather, stepmother, stepson, stepdaughter, stepbrother, stepsister, half brother, or half sister.' Additionally, some employers extend this definition to unrelated significant others of existing employees.
Thomas J. Gradel and and Dick Simpson in their 'Corrupt Illionis: Patronage, Cronyism, and Criminality (2015), mention about several aspects of political machines in Chicago and Illinois. They are built on loyalty and around patronage precinct workers to deliver the votes necessary to get party candidates elected. The winning candidates then control the government and distribute the spoils of patronage jobs and city contracts and hand out city services as political favors to voters who vote for the party slate of candidates.
Machine politics, accroding to Gradel and Simpson, with its patronage, favoritism, nepotism, cronyism, and inflated contracts, fuels the continuing culture of corruption.
Gradel dan Simpson present three classifications of corruption from Rasma Karklins' work (2005) on corruption in former Soviet countries, created a general typology of corruption: first, everyday interactions between officials and citizens (such as bribery for licenses, permits, zoning changes, and to pass inspections). Second, interactions within public institutions (such as patronage, nepotism, and favoritism). Third, influence over political institutions (such as personal fiefdoms, clout, secret power networks, and misuse of power).
Machine politics has evolved over the last century and a half. Patronage, nepotism, cronyism, abuse of power, and criminal activity flourish, sometimes for decades, in numerous town halls, police stations, and special-purpose government agencies in the suburbs.
So, what then is the relationship between Favoritism, Cronyism, and Nepotism? Their relationships are fine, but, as Nadler and Schulman tell us, that favoritism, cronyism, and nepotism all interfere with fairness because they give undue advantage to someone who does not necessarily merit this treatment. One of the most basic themes in ethics is fairness, stated this way by Artistotle, 'Equals should be treated equally and unequals unequally.'
In the public sphere, favoritism, cronyism, and nepotism also undermine the common good. When someone is granted a position because of connections rather than because he or she has the best credentials and experience, the service that person renders to the public may be inferior.
Phaedrus analogized this in a poem,
Mons parturibat, gemitus immanes ciens,
[A mountain was in labour, uttering immense groans,]
eratque in terris maxima expectatio.
[and on earth there was very great expectation.]
At ille murem peperit. Hoc scriptum est tibi,
[But it gave birth to a mouse. This has been written for you,]
qui, magna cum minaris, extricas nihil.
[who, though you threaten great things, accomplish nothing.]
Also, because favoritism is often covert (few elected officials are foolish enough to show open partiality to friends, and family), this practice undercuts the transparency that should be part of governmental hiring and contracting processes.
So what's the problem? The first issue, according Nadler and Schulman, is competence. For cabinet level positions, an executive will probably be drawn to experienced, qualified candidates, but historically, the lower down the ladder, the more likely for someone's brother-in-law to be slipped into a job for which he is not qualified. Also, the appearance of favoritism weakens morale in government service, not to mention public faith in the integrity of government.
Reasonable people will differ about the appointment of friends and family in high-level positions, but public officials should be aware that such choices can give the appearance of unfairness.
Public officials should also note that dilemmas involving favoritism extend beyond hiring and contracting practices to the more general problem of influence. Golfing partners, people who come over for Sunday dinner, members of the same congregation all are likely to exert a greater influence over an official than a stranger might. Council members, mayors, and legislators must make special efforts to ensure that they hear all sides of an issue rather than just relying on the views of the people they know. Further, many conscientious lawmakers have discovered that they must change their patterns of socializing when their work involves many decisions affecting friends and associates. At the least, they may choose to recuse themselves from votes where social relationships may exert undue influence.'"
"And Allah knows best."
It's time to go, the Moon then took her leave by chanting,
So close, no matter how far
Couldn't be much more from the heart
Forever trusting who we are
And nothing else matters
Never opened myself this way
Life is ours, we live it our way
All these words, I don't just say
And nothing else matters *)
Citations & References:
- Gaius Julius Phaedrus, The Fables, fl. 1st century AD, Delphi Classics
- William Graham Sumner, Folkways, 1906, Ginn and Company
- Thomas J. Gradel and and Dick Simpson, Corrupt Illionis: Patronage, Cronyism, and Criminality, 2015, University of Illionis Press
- Sarah Smierciak, Cronyism and Elite Capture in Egypt, 2022, Routledge
- Peter Schweizer, Throw Them All Out, 2011, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
- Patrick Newman, Cronyism, 2021, Mises Institute
- Robert G. Jones [ed.], Nepotism in Organizations, 2012, Routledge
- Judy Nadler and Miriam Schulman, Favoritism, Cronyism, and Nepotism, 2015, Markkula Center
*) "Nothing Else Matters" written by James Alan Hetfield & Lars Ulrich
