FILSAFAT KORUPSI - Direktori File UPI

3. Corruption and Presidentialism In this section I will discuss the evolution of theories about corruption,
departing from a broad perception of corruption as a moral degradation of constitutional democracy to a
more
17). Scott Mainwaring, Presidentialism in Latin America, 25 LATIN AMERICAN RESEARCH REVIEW
157, 169 (1990).
18). Andrei Shleifer and Robert W. Vishny, Corruption, 108 THEQUARTERLY JOURNAL OF
ECONOMICS 599, 605 (1993).
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technical concept related to the behavior of individual public officials. Under this narrower concept,
political corruption can be understood as the behavior of public officials which deviate from the public
interest to serve private ends.19). I will discuss how this technical approach to corruption, and the theories
related to it, approach the issue of presidential supremacy. As an alternative approach, I will propose the
argument that institutional reforms should focus not only on reducing corruption based on models of
individual behavior. They should be primarily concerned with fighting perception of corruption, as
identified with perception of unfairness and lack of legitimacy of public institutions. This would lead to a
structural approach to political corruption, not focused on individual behavior of public officers but on the
distribution of political and economic power in society. To analyze the relation between presidentialism
and corruption is not to analyze the individual behavior of the president. It is to analyze the behavior
of a power structure represented by the president.
3.1. Realist Theories of Corruption
During the Cold War, it was apparently contradictory for democratic western countries to
give economic and military support to dictatorships that were corrupt and extremely violent, such
as Latin American ones.20).
One way to solve this contradiction was to consider corruption not as an impediment for democratization
and economic development, but as a necessary burden of modernization. The argument was that, first,
modernization transforms the values of society, conflicting modern and traditional norms; second,
modernization requires the separation of public and private, transforming behaviors that were previously
considered normal into digressions; and, third, modernization creates new sources of wealth and power. For
such
19). See Samuel P. Huntington, P OLITICAL ORDER IN CHANGING SOCIETIES 59 (YALE UNIVERSITY
PRESS , 1968)
reasons, corruption would be natural to the process of economic and political modernization.21)
Complimentary to this approach was the idea that corruption would be important to spur
economic development, once it would be more efficient for international investors to corrupt
local official to reduce expenses with ―red tape‖ than follow the instable and inefficient rules of
developing countries.22).
These realist views about corruption where later articulated in the form of cost-benefit
Analysis.23). consolidating the departure from a moralistic concept of corruption to a more
disenchanted, realistic, and skeptical perspective, much better adapted to the demands of the
Cold War. On the one hand, the benefits would be the financing of political parties, the
reduction of expenses with ―red tape‖, and the initial concentration of capital for investment in
the hands of corrupt entrepreneurs.24). On the other hand, the costs were considered to be the
misallocation and waste of resources; the outflow of money from corruption to the international
financial system; instability because of scandals; and the gradual loss of legitimacy of
governments and political institutions. At the time, it was understood that the corruption of top
level officials would be beneficial to economic development and political modernization. After
the Watergate scandal, when it was found that corruption in developing countries could also
spread to developed countries, such views became unsustainable, creating a demand for a more
technical approach to corruption.
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