Why Anti-corruption Strategies May Backfire
One of the defining attributes of humans is that we are champion cooperators, surpassing levels of cooperation far beyond what is observed in other species across the animal kingdom. Understanding how cooperation is sustained, particularly in anonymous large-scale societies, remains a central question for both evolutionary scientists and policy makers.
Social scientists frequently use behavioural game theory to model cooperation in laboratory settings. These experiments suggest that “institutional punishment” can be used to sustain cooperation in large groups—a set up analogous to the role governments play
