Unintended Consequences, the Common Good and Cell Phones in Africa

I just read a fascinating article: “Mobile Phone Diffusion and Corruption in Africa” by Catie Snow Bailard, published in the journal Political Communication in 2009. The author looked at data from 12 countries from the period 1999 to 2006. She found that there was a relationship between the number of people in a country who had access to cell phones and the country’s level of perceived corruption: The greater the level of cell phone penetration, the lower the level of perceived corruption. In a second study, she analysed the degree of mobile phone signal coverage across 13 provinces in Namibia. Again, greater levels of cell phone coverage were associated with lower levels of perceived corruption.

(You might wonder why the author chose to examine “perceived” rather than actual levels of corruption. Corruption is a difficult concept to define, let alone to measure. For one thing, corruption is culturally variable. What is considered a bribe in one place might be seen as a necessary cost of business in another. Secondly, the often private nature of corrupt behaviour can make it difficult to detect. Counting the number of prosecutions for corruption in a given place might tell you nothing more than the quality of the prosecutors. For these reasons and others, social scientists rely on indirect means of getting information about corruption. Transparency International’s Corruptions Perceptions Index is one that is widely used.)

It is easy to understand that improved telephone coverage and greater ease of communication at a distance would improve the lives of Africans. But why would it contribute to lower levels of corruption? Bailard offers some plausible explanations. First, corruption thrives in conditions of secrecy, and opportunities for corruption increase in cases of information asymmetry – when one group of people has greater access to information than another group. Cell phones decentralize information. As more people come to own cell phones (or have access to them) information becomes more readily available. Bailard refers to another study that found that the simple act of posting a newspaper advertisement stating that aid was meant to be dispersed to certain schools significantly reduced the amount of aid lost through misappropriation. (That study, “Fighting corruption to improve schooling: Evidence from a newspaper campaign in Uganda” by R. Reinikka and J. Svensson, was published in the Journal of European Economic Association in 2005).

Another reason why cell phone use may decrease corruption is that they make it easier for ordinary citizens to fight corruption. It becomes relatively easy to contact reformers, government officials, or the news media. It is plausible that individuals contemplating corrupt behaviour will weigh their potential gain against the likelihood of getting caught and being punished. In a climate where exposure and punishment is likely, people who may have been tempted to increase their wealth through corrupt means will think twice. (I made a similar point about insider trading in an earlier post.)

The connections between cell phones and reduced corruption in Africa strikes me as a wonderful example of an unintended consequence. No one involved in the business of providing mobile phones to Africa did so with the aim of reducing corruption. Rather, they saw a good business opportunity and hoped to make a profit. The reduced levels of corruption were a good consequence, but one that nobody intended or even foresaw. When I have taught ethics in the past, many students are very readily convinced by the view that good acts are those that have the best consequences. Indeed, many find this view obviously true. The problem, though, is that the line from an act to its consequences is not always straight or apparent. There are countless examples of good-willed individuals who thought that their actions would produce beneficial results only to be dismayed by the actual outcome. This is the problem of unintended consequences, and it is a powerful reason to act with caution, especially when our actions will effect others. It is good to be reminded that unintended consequences can be positive as well as negative, and that neutral acts can bring about beneficial results.

Another point – we often assume that when people act in their own interest, the benefits they reap will be strictly individual as well. But happily this isn’t always the case. Here, many individuals acquired cell phones for their own purposes and improved their lives. Yet out of their individual actions emerged the collective good of reduced corruption.