When extortion is sanitised, rights become negotiable

A recent remark by a government minister—that a mutually agreed or negotiated transaction is not extortion—cannot be seen as a casual misuse of words. Although the minister was talking about the transport sector, the logic could as easily be applied to any other sector, and as such, it can be seen as an attempt to redefine the nature of the state. When official language sanitises extortion or corruption, the rule of law is placed on the negotiating table.

True, at first hearing, such a claim may sound reasonable. If both sides of a “transaction” agree, where is the coercion? This argument borrows the vocabulary of markets but removes the institutional conditions that make markets legitimate. In doing so, it confuses a transaction with a distortion.

Consider an ordinary citizen seeking a passport, a hospital bed, a utility connection, police assistance, or a business licence. The law already grants these as rights, subject to clear rules. But in reality, the process often stalls: a file does not move, a signature does not appear, a bed is suddenly unavailable, or an inspection is delayed. A “mutual understanding” at this juncture, followed by extra payment (read: bribe), could expedite the delivery or resumption of services, but would this be a voluntary exchange?

The service seeker, it should be pointed out, did not enter a negotiation as an equal party. One side of the deal controlled time, approval, and enforcement, while the other faced delay, denial, or exclusion. What is presented as reciprocity is actually a price imposed on vulnerability. Calling such an exchange “mutual” would be analytically no different from calling a ransom a market transaction.

In economics, a voluntary exchange takes place within a framework of rights, rules, and enforceable contracts. A price is legitimate because the state guarantees that access does not depend on personal discretion. A bribe is paid precisely because the rule-based system has been suspended. It is a payment to bypass or manipulate a process that should operate automatically. The critical question here is not whether two individuals agree. The real question is: why would the payment be necessary in the first place?

From the standpoint of political economy, the answer is clear. The official who can delay an approval creates an artificial scarcity and then sells the relief from that scarcity. Nothing is produced here; income is merely transferred. This is the textbook definition of rent-seeking. Once such practices become normal, the structure of the economy changes. Investment flows not to the most efficient firms but to the most connected. Credit is allocated not by risk but by influence. Public projects are valued not for their social return but for their commission potential. Growth slows not because resources are scarce but because institutions are not credible.

The minister’s argument is therefore not only economically flawed but also constitutionally dangerous. It converts rights into commodities.

In a republic, a public office is a source of trust. The citizen pays taxes so that services are delivered impersonally. A bribe or “mutually negotiated” transaction is a second, privatised payment for the same right. To legitimise this as a negotiated exchange is to legitimise the sale of sovereignty in small administrative instalments.

Game theory explains why citizens still participate. They are not choosing between paying and not paying; they are choosing between paying and losing. In a system where officials cannot be credibly punished, and services cannot be obtained by rules, compliance becomes the rational survival strategy. What is described as “mutual” is therefore the behavioural outcome of a coercive structure.

The most damaging effect of such a statement lies in the signal it sends. When a private citizen pays, it is often an act of compulsion within a broken system. When a public official justifies the payment, it becomes an institutional endorsement. It tells the bureaucracy that extraction or extortion is acceptable. It tells citizens that integrity is irrational. It tells investors that formal rules are irrelevant. That is how adverse selection enters governance: the honest withdraw and the connected advance.

Beyond the immediate economic drain, the “negotiation” model inflicts a deeper wound on the social contract. High-performing societies rely on generalised trust, the belief that the system works the same for everyone. When a state official validates bribery as a mutual transaction, they signal the death of this trust. The individual no longer looks to the law for protection but to a patron for a favour. The result is a low-trust trap where the machinery of the state turns only because it is being “greased” by those it was built to serve.

No country has achieved sustained development by redefining corruption as consensual exchange. Rebranding a bribe as a negotiated payment does not change its nature. A tax is legal because it is authorised by law and enters the public treasury. A fee is legal because it is publicly notified and uniformly applied. A bribe is illegal because it converts public authority into private income. No amount of semantic innovation can erase that distinction.

At its core, the minister’s argument asks the country to accept a transformation from a rights-based state to a bargaining-based state. But a state in which citizens must negotiate for what the law guarantees is not a republic. It is a marketplace of power.

A bribe is not defined by the presence of agreement. It is defined by the abuse of public authority. When the powerholder sells what the law requires him to provide, the transaction is neither mutual nor voluntary. It is corruption—economically, institutionally, and constitutionally.

Dr Abdullah A Dewan is professor emeritus of economics at Eastern Michigan University in the US. He can be reached at aadeone@gmail.com.

Views expressed in this article are the author's own. 

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