Paradigm Shifts To Fix Problems Of Fixing

There are calls for serious paradigm shifts involving many presuppositions about fixing and fixers. This is important to lay down the context for the effective adoption and implementation of all the recommendations that this study will offer. The shifts in paradigmatic presuppositions include the following:

1. Fixing is inseparable from bureaucratic corruption. There is a need to elevate the level of discourse and debate about fixing as direct variable of bureaucratic corruption and its inherent impact to the government in particular and the transacting public in general. Fixers do not view fixing as a harmful, corrupt and corruptible behavior. This is very common among insider and professional fixers.

2. Insider fixing is the key to solving the problem of fixing. The burden of reform needs to focus on insider fixers, the government officials and employees, who act as the network hubs of professional fixers. Most of the institutional reforms are geared towards eradicating the professional fixers. But these professional fixers exist and persist because their connections to the insider fixers. In order to cut the connections, the reforms should shift to the operations of the insider fixers. It is important to realize that without the support and protection of the insider fixers, it is easy to stamp out the activities of the professional fixer.

3. Bureaucratic reforms greatly help fix the problem of fixing. The entire bureaucratic environment provides a breeding ground for fixers. The eradication of fixing continues to depend greatly on the extent of improving the bureaucratic systems, including those that curb stationary banditry among government officials and employees.

4. Fixing is primarily a house-keeping problem. Professional fixers proliferate because of their connections with the insider fixers in government agencies. In order to stop the activities of professional fixers, what is needed is a serious house-cleaning of government offices. Reforms and improvements in the bureaucratic systems need to be pursued and supported vigorously.

5. Fixing is a serious moral issue. In relation to elevating the discourse, there is also a need to link fixing to deontological and teleological issues of morality apart from the bureaucratic improvements. Fixers hold the consequentialist morality that provides a selective justification of fixing. For fixers, as long as they just do facilitation without falsification, fixing is acceptable. But because of externality and reverse causality, fixing is by nature anomalous and by purpose aimed at gaining more than facilitating. Facilitation is used as a cover to earn pecuniary and non-pecuniary gains.