BUSINESS AND HUMAN RIGHTS / Šturma, Mozetic (eds)

institutional relations, rescuing lessons from Lucretius, in his book De Rerum Natura , quoting him: If among the primitive was the famine that brought death, now, on the contrary, it is the abundance that destroys us.In those days, men often took venom out of ignorance. Now, better educated, they poison each other. 17 We use Lucretius’s arguments only to exalt the complexity of these relations – in fact, as Giannetti does – and not professing the determinist-cultural perspectives of some analysts of the subject 18 in the sense that there existed countries which by their traditions and historical experiences would be more susceptible to corruption than others; we have argued that corruption is a multifaceted phenomenon that has the most diverse causes and determinants, all complementary to one another. 19 In any case, criminal laws, for example, are not the only or most important legal tools to combat corruption, and most contemporary states – as well as private sector companies – have adopted corporate ethics policies and more specific regulations to deal with corruption, thereby restricting the possibilities of abuse or improper influence of or under public authorities. In fact, as Philip B. Heymann cautions, corruption is not only a problem of governments, but also a private sector, which is secretly receiving private benefits to a decision that is supposed to be made in the interests of others . In this sense, a buying agent for a corporation may also be corrupt by demanding kickbacks to influence his purchasing decisions . 20 In other 17 GIANNETTI, E.: Private Vices, Public Benefits? Ethics in the wealth of nations. São Paulo: Companhia das Letras, 2007, p.31. The author adds that: The root of the problem, in the Epicurean view, is that the growth of wealth, the organization of political life in the State and the use of money have transformed the character of men, that is, they have left us with the blue fly of an ambition without limits. These discussions will permeate the reflection of a significant part of modern political philosophy, as in Rousseau, Locke, Hobbes, Machiavelli. We deal with this in the book LEAL, R. G.: Theory of the State: citizenship and political power in modernity. Porto Alegre: Bookstore of the Lawyer, 2002. 18 As in the works of: (i) HARRISON, L. E.; HUNTINGTON, S.: Culture Matters: How Values Shape Human Progress . Nueva York: Basic Books, 2000 (can be accessed at: https://ia800505.us.archive. org/19/items/CultureMattersHowValuesShapeHumanProgress/Culture%20Matters%20How%20 Values%20Shape%20Human%20Progress.pdf ); (ii) TREISMAN, D.: The Causes of Corruption: A Cross-National Study. In Journal of Public Economics , 76 (3), pp. 399-457, 2000, accessed through the site: https://www.amherst.edu/media/view/131389/original/Treisman2000.pdf, on 03/03/2017. The authors LIPSET, S.M. and SALMAN, G.: Corruption, Culture, and Markets. In HARRISON, L. E.; HUNTINGTON, S. Culture Matters: How Values Shape Human Progress . Op. Cit., Even claim that countries with a predominantly Protestant population would be less prone to corruption, different from countries with a larger Catholic population, where relationships of personal friendship and loyalty would weigh more for purposes of corruptive acts. 19 See our LEAL, R. G.: Corruptive Pathologies in the relations between State, Public Administration and Society. Santa Cruz do Sul: Edunisc, 2013. See also the enlargement of the concept of corruption given by the text of NYE, Joseph Samuel. Corruption and Political Development: A Cost-Benefit Analysis. In The American Political Science Review , Vol. 61, no. 2 (Jun., 1967), p. 419: Corruption is behavior which deviates from the formal duties of a public role because of private-relation (personal, close family, private clique) pecuniary or status gains; or violates rules against the exercise of certain types of private-effect. This includes such behavior as bribery (use of a reward to pervert the judgment of a person in a position of trust); nepotism (bestowal of patronage by reason of ascriptive relationship rather than merit); and misappropriation (illegal appropriation of public resources for private-use) . 20 HEYMANN, P. B.: Democracy and Corruption. In Fordham International Law Journal . Volume 20, Issue 2, 1997, p.325. The author also warns that: Corruption is certainly not a problem solely of democracies.

242