CORRUPTION Syndromes of Corruption

14 Syndromes of Corruption
A parallel argument can be made about markets: some transitional
economies have experienced spectacular, if uneven, success (China
and, more recently, India), or have at least sustained generally positive
trends (Poland, Hungary, Chile, Botswana). But others have endured
periods of chaos (Russia, post-1997 Indonesia), a drift backward toward
illiberal practices (Belarus), or outright failure (Argentina and several
African economies). In Brazil the election of President Lula da Silva
in November, 2002, was widely judged a popular backlash against
economic liberalization and its perceived social consequences. The
Asian economic meltdown of the late 1990s, with its serious damage to
emerging economies that had long been the envy of many other societies,
raised further questions about corruption, markets, and the role of
the state.
Advanced countries have their periods of political and economic difficulty,
and they too experience corruption which, I will argue, is more
serious than most corruption indices seem to suggest. There are poor
democracies, such as India, and wealthy undemocratic societies such as
Kuwait and Singapore. There are third-wave success stories too, such as
Spain, Poland, and Chile. So the connections we will explore in this book
are complicated, and the four syndromes of corruption I will propose are
but a first step toward disentangling them and designing appropriate
policy responses. Still, the optimism of the late 1980s and 1990s has
given way to a more sober appreciation of the challenges of liberalization
and development – and as optimism has cooled, the focus on corruption
has intensified. The United States government, through its Millennium
Challenge Accounts initiative, has made corruption and good government
a priority issue affecting the way major development aid resources
will be distributed and withheld. International anti-corruption
agreements sponsored by the United Nations, the Organization for
Economic Cooperation and Development, and the Organization
of American States reflect similar commitments on an even broader
scale. As we contemplate such initiatives, and as we reassess the effects
of a generation of liberalization and deemphasis of the state, a clear
understanding of the nature and origins of corruption has never been a
higher priority.
Too often in the policy debate, however, corruption has been seen as a
generic problem. Its deeper origins, the ways it is embedded in political
and economic processes, and its role as a symptom of diverse and problematical
relationships between wealth and power, public and private
interests, and state and society, are acknowledged but only poorly understood
in depth. The institutions and norms of affluent market democracies
are posited as the obvious goal of reform; as a result, reform