CORRUPTION Syndromes of Corruption

196 Syndromes of Corruption
Tactics without strategy?
This approach to reform often judges high-corruption countries mostly in
terms of what they appear to lack when compared to affluent market
democracies, rather than in terms of what forces actually are shaping their
corruption problems. Reforms imported from those advanced societies
often follow crime-prevention models in which punishments and (less
frequently) positive incentives are aimed at specific kinds of individual
behavior, or a transparency paradigm that relies upon news media, and
citizens as voters or consumers, to avoid or penalize corruption through
their own choices, regardless of whether people and the press are up to
those tasks. There is nothing wrong with most such ideas, but much less
attention is given to the systemic factors shaping and sustaining corruption
or to the institutional and social foundations any reform model
requires. The increasingly important role of civil society in most reform
models is likewise shaped by the experiences of affluent market democracies,
but in many other countries society is impoverished, fragmented,
intimidated, and anything but civil.
For those reasons anti-corruption measures effective in one context
may be irrelevant or harmful in another. Launching competitive elections
in Kenya and Indonesia before legitimate resources and an effective
judiciary and party system were in place arguably made corruption
worse. Privatizing the Russian economy in the absence of a supporting
institutional framework, and in a political system of dubious capacity, not
only led to more corruption but to particularly devastating forms of it.
Even where the state has some credibility more extensive laws and larger
penalties may merely drive ‘‘amateurs’’ out of the process and leave it to
formidable ‘‘professionals,’’ and may create new corruption opportunities
for those charged with enforcement. At worst, a public push for reform
can be a smokescreen for continued abuses. Indeed, when we look at
corruption as a problem embedded in long-term development difficulties
and imbalances the wonder is not that there is so much of it but rather that
it has ever been brought under control. But that view may also hold
important clues to success if we think of reform not as specific measures
but as a basic development process in its own right.
Systemic responses to systemic problems
The understandable temptation is to bombard corruption with every
good idea that comes to hand. ‘‘Toolkits’’ offer a variety of ‘‘best practices’’,
but how do those reforms succeed, or fail, in a given context, and
when is a society prepared to implement them effectively? Reform