CORRUPTION Syndromes of Corruption

58 Syndromes of Corruption
they can take it. Corruption is both a cause of this economic situation,
discouraging investment and long-term partnerships, and an effect as well,
as political and economic interests scramble to protect their gains.
Group 4 (‘‘Official Moguls’’), judged by statistical indicators, shares
many characteristics with Group 3: poverty and black markets are extensive,
corruption controls are ineffective, and government is ineffective.
Countries in this group are distinctive, however, in the impunity enjoyed
by political elites. Leaders in this group face less political competition,
fewer political constraints, and far less effective demands for accountability
than those elsewhere. Despite an overall trend in democratic
directions civil liberties and political rights are still weakest, government
intervention in the economy the most frequent, the quality of these
interventions rated the lowest (suggesting that they are most likely to be
abusive), and political and regime stability the shakiest, of all four groups.
Foreign direct investment is nearly non-existent and dependence upon
primary exports is great. Politically connected individuals who seek
wealth corruptly will likely encounter few obstacles; international aid
and such investment as does enter a country can be skimmed by top
figures or diverted to more secure banks and markets elsewhere. For the
rest of society there seem to be few economic alternatives.
Too much should not be made of these results. Cluster results, a scatter
plot, and mean values on development indicators cannot tell us about the
presence or absence of a particular kind of corruption. Moreover, corruption
is not the sole cause of any of these contrasts: Group 4 countries, for
example, are poor in part because of corruption, but they have the
corruption they do in part because they are poor, and both connections
are shaped by other factors. The statistical indicators suggest some surprises
too, such as the extent of black markets in Group 2 and the weak
state of rights and liberties in Group 3. Still, these indicators offer more
evidence that the difference among these countries, in corruption terms,
is not just a matter of having less or more of it. The idea of four qualitatively
different syndromes of corruption reflecting contrasting experiences
of political and economic development clearly merits further
testing against case-study evidence.
Conclusion
In the next four chapters I turn to that sort of evidence, using cases from
three countries in each group to put the projected corruption syndromes
to a detailed test. The expectation is not that we will find identical
patterns of corruption among all countries in a grouping, nor that any
one country will exhibit corruption of just one variety. Rather, we are