CORRUPTION Syndromes of Corruption

182 Syndromes of Corruption
forms of patronage, and helped maintain the personal rule of the
President. But it also fed upon, and embodied, a system of control that
ended in 1998, and changes since that time may be driving the country in
an Oligarch and Clan direction. President Megawati Soekarnoputri
attempted to rebuild a portion of the old national political machine, but
still lost the 2004 presidential runoff to former General Susilo Bambang
Yudhoyono by a 60 to 37 percent margin. Yudhoyono is able, educated,
and unlike Megawati is actively interested in governing (New York Times,
September 22, 2004). But the fragmentation of politicized state monopolies,
frantic competition among dozens of parties desperate for cash,
chronic violence, weak and corrupt courts and judiciary, and the major
natural resources and economic opportunities at stake in Indonesia might
well remind us of early-1990s Russia. Any such claim is of course
speculative at best, and will require careful continuing study: some
New Order figures, political habits, patterns of bureaucratic corruption,
and military influence remain potent (Cole, 2001: 16–17; Malley, 2003:
143–145).
Conclusion: hopeless cases?
We have come quite some distance from the Influence Market cases that
have done so much to shape international thinking about corruption and
reform. From situations in which private interests seek relatively specific
influence within strong institutions we have arrived at a syndrome in
which powerful state and political officials plunder the economy and
society more or less as they please. This sort of corruption – like the
Oligarchs and Clans syndrome – has devastating implications for democratic
development. Its economic implications are more complex; indeed,
some societies in the Official Moguls group have experienced long
periods of sustained growth while corruption flourished, and in
Indonesia and some of its neighbors growth was part of a national
political settlement that helped corrupt officials stay on top. Perhaps
these countries would have grown even faster with less corruption, but
that is difficult to know. Moguls such as Suharto, development-minded
and willing to use corrupt influence to create commitment mechanisms
for the state and major entrepreneurs, are corrupt monopolists, but their
regimes operate more like coordinated monopolies than the much more
destructive uncoordinated kind (Shleifer and Vishny, 1993; MacIntyre,
2003). Still, such economies would seem less open and adaptive than successful
markets – a possible contributor to the Asian crisis of the late 1990s.
Those sorts of ideas must await further exploration elsewhere. What is
clear though is that simply to say China, Kenya, and Indonesia rank