CORRUPTION Syndromes of Corruption

184 Syndromes of Corruption
Market societies, and among cases as well, reforms originating in affluent
market democracies are likely to be irrelevant at best. Even though those
advanced countries have had periods of more intense and disruptive
corruption in their history, their reform ideas tend to emphasize the
remedies that keep corruption moderate to low, not necessarily those
that brought it under control in the first place. Their ‘‘best practices’’
seem more likely to be the results of sustained democratic and economic
development than ways of launching it – particularly where Official
Moguls (or, for that matter, Oligarchs) are strong. The move to multiparty
elections in Kenya and Indonesia in the absence of necessary
foundations seems to have intensified corruption. International aid can
become just another revenue stream for entrenched political leaders.
Businesses are more critical of corruption than in decades past, but
many still choose to adapt to the realities of Official Mogul countries.
Recommendations to build up civil society seem futile in places where
ordinary citizens lead lives marked by deprivation, insecurity, oppression,
and isolation. Calls for ‘‘political will’’ in countries whose leaders rule
with impunity look increasingly like a bad joke.
At the same time we cannot simply write off the worst cases (nor has
anyone proposed to do so). Many Official Mogul countries are large
societies, strategically important in economic, democratic, and security
terms. Corrupt regimes in some of these countries provide safe havens for
terror groups, drug networks, and the illegal global traffic in arms, contraband
– and human beings. Their futures will affect the emerging global
system in profound ways. A bit of historical perspective is helpful too:
few might have bet much on the prospects of controlling corruption in
seventeenth- and nineteenth-century Britain or the nineteenth-century
United States; similarly, as recently as the early 1980s Korea would
not have seemed a likely candidate for democratization.
Change can come, at times from surprising directions, and it can
unfold quickly. Positive trends may emerge in the form of halfway measures,
or even come disguised as bad news. China has not attained rule of
law, but rule by law may be a necessary if not sufficient step toward a
system of specified, limited official powers. Building a new national
political machine in Indonesia to take the place of Golkar would require
some kinds of corruption but could impose enough order to avoid others
far worse. Further, the limited effects of stepped-up investigations and
prosecutions in China – particularly those culminating in capital punishment
– suggests that thinking about corruption as a law-enforcement
problem (a luxury appropriate in Influence Market societies, but not
where Moguls make their own law) is too narrow a scope, either for
analysis or reform. Similarly, institution-building should be thought of