CORRUPTION Syndromes of Corruption

Elite Cartels 119
vantage-point of many other societies. Growth in political and economic
participation has been significant yet orderly. But when rapid democratization
and economic liberalization occur in a setting of very weak
institutions, corrupt but durable elite networks are far more difficult to
sustain. In their place we are likely to find pervasive insecurity and an
economically ruinous, even violent scramble: one in which faction leaders
can neither make solid alliances nor gain a decisive advantage, and in
which political and economic gains are continually at risk. That is a good
description of the Oligarchs and Clans syndrome of corruption – the
focus of chapter 6.