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Now fruits and vegetables are healthy foods, and diets rich in fruits andvegetables are strongly associated with less cancer. And organic produce isconspicuously more expensive than commercial produce (a point perhaps un-important for well-off parents, but not so to lower income families). Is Wargo’sbook, then, indeed likely to promote better health for children? In the face ofa 10,000 to 1 ratio of natural to man-made pesticides in our diet, it seemspretty unlikely that the overall pesticide intake of children exclusively eatingorganic produce could be in fact anything other than larger than that of childreneating commercial produce. Wargo urges stringent additional constraints onman-made pesticides. But by ignoring the quantitative grounds for doubtsabout this, Wargo leaves it wholly unclear why we should suppose that theeffect would be a net contribution to health.

If this were the Journal of Good Intentions, Wargo’s vigorously writtenbut wholly one-sided argument would warrant a lot of sympathy. Even then,noticing that the book essentially ignores what appears to be a crucial count-erargument—a counter familiar to Wargo himself but unlikely to be familiarto most of his readers—might be deemed more than a quibble. But judged aspolicy analysis (not an unreasonable standard for a review in this journal)Wargo’s book stands as an exemplar of how not to do it. It is surely not asmall matter to see adverse arguments treated as if a kind of selective logicaldemocracy is tolerable, so that weights can be ignored when convenient: oneargument, one vote. Many unkind but not always unwarranted things havebeen asserted about the distortions that can come with zeal for quantitativecost–benefit analysis. Wargo’s book, however, is inadvertently exemplary inshowing why some serious quantitative balancing of costs and benefits isnevertheless indispensable.

HOWARD MARGOLIS is Professor of Public Policy at the Harris School, Univer-sity of Chicago.

REFERENCES

Ames, Bruce N., Margie Profit, and Lois S. Gold (1990), ‘‘Dietary Pesticides (99.99%All Natural),’’ Proceedings of the National Academy of Science 87, pp. 7777–7781.

Susan Rose-Ackerman

The Pursuit of Absolute Integrity: How Corruption Control Makes GovernmentIneffective, by Frank Anechiarico and James B. Jacobs. Chicago: University ofChicago Press, 1996, 274 pp., NPA.

The title of this book is a good deal more inflammatory than its contents.From the title one might think that the authors believe that any anticorruptionpolicy will be worse than the disease. This is not the authors’ position. Theircase study of anticorruption efforts in New York City demonstrates the ineffec-tiveness and costliness of past efforts. The authors, however, are not sanguineabout the impact of corruption on city life, and they argue for a new set ofstrategies to combat it effectively. They conclude that ‘‘corruption can hardlybe legalized or ignored; it must be condemned, investigated, and punished’’(p. 193). Nevertheless, the basic aim of the book is to show how past policies

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in New York City have been not only ineffective but also counterproductive—creating new sets of corrupt incentives.

Anechiarico and Jacobs argue that the goal of absolute integrity is unrealisticand misguided. Policies that aim to achieve complete rectitude are likely toimpose rigid and cumbersome constraints that actually increase, rather thandecrease, corrupt incentives. Anticorruption programs in New York City haveled to increased delay, overcentralization, inadequate authority for managers,defensive management, goal displacement, and poor morale.

The authors’ approach is analogous to the economic analysis of crime wherethe optimal level of deterrence occurs at the point where the marginal benefitsequal the marginal costs. They argue that anticorruption policies whose goalis absolute integrity often have negative effects on public administration. Theyare critical of what they call the ‘‘panoptic’’ approach under which ‘‘the purposeof administrative reform is to deter and prevent corruption via a system ofthorough and efficient observation and surveillance, including accounting,auditing, and layers of oversight’’ (p. 26). According to them, such policiesseldom take into account the negative impact of policies that treat all publicemployees as potential wrongdoers.

The authors’ interest in corruption control began in the mid-1980s with theirwork for the New York State Organized Crime Task Force on corruptionand racketeering in the New York City construction industry. In subsequentinterviews and field research, carried out between 1991 and 1993, they exploredthe impact of anticorruption policies on public administration in New YorkCity.

The book first reviews the way New York City’s personnel system has beenaffected by anticorruption programs. Efforts to reduce the barter of publicsector jobs for political support or payoffs have produced a rigid and unrespon-sive system. Conflict-of-interest and financial disclosure laws appear to beineffective and discourage talented people from taking city jobs. Protectionfor whistleblowers weakens the authority of high-level managers. Next, thestudy considers the investigatory and punishment apparatus. New York Cityhas a special anticorruption agency, the Department of Investigation. Ac-cording to Anechiarico and Jacobs, the department is counterproductive inthat it ‘‘casts a net of suspicion and sometimes fear over the city’s 300,000personnel’’ (p. xviii). They assess the recent proliferation of federal, state, andlocal law enforcement agencies with jurisdiction over corruption and thenstudy contracting and accounting/auditing. The contracting process has be-come unwieldy, and auditing and financial control are taking on some of thefeatures of law enforcement investigations—both trends that the authors de-plore.

The New York City case study provides many telling criticisms of past andongoing policies that were implemented with little concern for their negativeaspects. As an economist, I am very sympathetic with the authors’ call forpolicies that balance the costs and benefits of corruption-fighting policies.Although it may be news to sociologists, criminologists, and law enforcementspecialists, the existence of trade-offs is familiar and conventional among econ-omists. Anechiarico and Jacobs perform a service in bringing this truth to theattention of a broader community.

Recognizing that the efficient level of corruption is not zero does not, how-ever, imply abandoning policies that concern public employment and lawenforcement. The existing programs need reform and should be supplemented

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by structural changes that limit corrupt opportunities, but they should not beentirely abandoned. Indeed, Anechiarico and Jacobs also take that view. Aftertheir extremely critical assessment of New York City’s experience, they do notrecommend abandoning the reform effort. Instead, they propose a more opendiscourse among those who study public administration and better informationfrom surveys of employees and citizens on the operation of the public sector.Especially in the police force a new discourse is needed including ‘‘a hard-headed analysis of the benefits and costs of drug prohibition and an examina-tion of the full array of policy alternatives’’ (p. 197) (which would include,presumably, legalization). As for specific proposals, the authors recommendthat the civil service system emphasize merit recruitment and promotion andmake greater use of positive and negative incentives. They argue that financialdisclosure and conflict-of-interest restraints have gone too far, but they stopshort of recommending the elimination of such requirements. They argue thatwhistleblower laws undermine management authority, but recognize the needfor a grievance mechanism. They propose that the Department of Investigationfocus more on improving government efficiency and effectiveness and less oninvestigating allegations of wrongdoing. The public contracting system shouldbe reformed to emphasize speed and good performance. Anechiarico and Ja-cobs accept the necessity of an effective auditing and accounting system, butargue that the current system should be streamlined and reoriented. The ulti-mate goal is to address the corruption problem ‘‘by reforming the structureand operations of agencies, rather than piling on more rules, laws, and controls’’(p. 201).

Their most radical suggestions, proposed with much enthusiasm but fewspecifics, concern the benefits of decentralization to bring government closerto the citizens. This is a familiar theme in modern reform debates, but Anechiar-ico and Jacobs recognize its limitations. They mention the failures that oc-curred when the school system in New York City was decentralized, and somecommunity school boards misappropriated district funds for personal use.Nevertheless, they stress the value of reforms that make citizens’ preferencesand demands count in the political arena and that increase citizen scrutiny ofpublic agencies.

The argument of The Pursuit of Absolute Integrity is relevant not only forurban reformers in the United States but also for developing and transitionaleconomies seeking to counter entrenched corruption that is undermining eco-nomic growth [Rose-Ackerman, in press]. The book provides many usefullessons for reformers in these countries and cautions them against an overem-phasis on enforcement. Nevertheless, it is not clear how the authors wouldreact to the deeply entrenched corruption in some of these countries. Wouldthey look with tolerance on the extremely weak accountability systems and thehigh levels of political favoritism common in many countries in the developingworld? What would they recommend in Russia where organized crime andthe police often have overlapping membership? Corruption in the former SovietUnion arose from excessive rigidity and red tape, much like some of the areasof New York City government studied by Anechiarico and Jacobs. Present-dayliberalization has, however, gone along with a great deal of corruption andorganized crime influence. The problem is too little clarity and predictabilityin the laws resulting in too much discretion for public officials [Rose-Ackerman,1994]. Similar problems of vague laws and arbitrary exercises of authority arecommon throughout the developing world. Perhaps it would be instructive for

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Anechiarico and Jacobs to study several developing and transitional economicsand to ask themselves what policies they would recommend.

Conversely, anticorruption experts in the United States can learn somethingfrom experiences in developing countries. In several countries survey instru-ments similar to those recommended by Anechiarico and Jacobs are in use[Paul, 1995]. In others, tax and customs services have been reformed throughimprovements in working conditions and in the incentives facing officials [Dia,1996]. Both Hong Kong and Singapore have apparently had positive resultswith anticorruption commissions [Quah, 1993].

Although Anechiarico and Jacobs’s tone is rather intemperate as they takethe reader through their litany of failed programs, their ultimate conclusionsare sensible ones. An effective, professional civil service is necessary as aremonitoring and enforcement, but they are not sufficient. Some supposed re-forms do little or nothing to combat corruption and ultimately undermine theeffectiveness of government. Reforms that improve direct accountability tocitizens and that remove underlying corrupt incentives are likely to be the mostproductive strategies in improving the overall effectiveness of government.

SUSAN ROSE-ACKERMAN is Henry R. Luce Professor of Law and PoliticalScience at Yale University.

REFERENCES

Dia, Mamadou (1996), Africa’s Management in the 1990s and Beyond: Reconciling Indige-nous and Transplanted Institutions (Washington, DC: The World Bank).

Paul, Sam (1995), ‘‘Evaluating Public Services: A Case Study on Bangalore, India,’’in New Directions for Evaluation. American Evaluation Association, No. 67 (Fall),pp. 155–165.

Quah, Jon S. T. (1993), ‘‘Controlling Corruption in City-States: A Comparative Studyof Hong Kong and Singapore,’’ presented at the conference on ‘‘The East AsianMiracle: Economic Growth and Public Policy,’’ Stanford University, Palo Alto, CA,October 25–26.

Rose-Ackerman, Susan (1994), ‘‘Reducing Bribery in the Public Sector,’’ in Duc V. Trang(ed.), Corruption and Democracy (Budapest, Hungary: Institute for Constitutionaland Legislative Policy).

Rose-Ackerman, Susan (in press) ‘‘Corruption and Development,’’ in Joseph Stiglitzand Boris Pleskovic (eds.), Annual World Bank Conference on Development Economics,1997, Washington, DC.

Mark A. R. Kleiman

Snow Job? The War against International Cocaine Trafficking, by Kevin JackRiley. New Brunswick, NJ; Transaction Publishers, 1995, 315 pp., NPA.Drug War Politics: The Price of Denial, by Eva Bertram, Morris Blachman,Kenneth Sharp, and Peter Andreas. Berkeley, CA: University of CaliforniaPress, 1996, 361 pp., NPA.

‘‘Dysfunctional drug policy,’’ Douglas Anglin has remarked, ‘‘is a chronic,relapsing condition.’’ The picture is as familiar (at least to the hardy few whodo academic drug policy analysis) as it is bleak: