CORRUPTION Syndromes of Corruption

The international setting 19
or uneven economic liberalization. The state and politics are, often
as not, seen as parts of the problem, rather than as essential elements
of development and reform (Weingast, 1993; Schneider, 1998).
Governing is reduced to public management functions while complex
questions of democracy and justice are to be addressed through
technically sound ‘‘good governance’’ rather than politics. There is little
attempt to differentiate among corruption problems, either between
or within societies; instead, much research seeks to explain variations
in whole countries’ scores on one-dimensional corruption indices.
There are thus few variations in suggested reforms, and little
guidance as to which remedies should be applied first, later, or not
at all.
Some of these limitations could be seen in anti-corruption strategy
statements issued in the late 1990s by major international
organizations. The United States Agency for International
Development, in its 1998 USAID Handbook for Fighting Corruption,
presented good case studies of Hong Kong, Mexico, and Tanzania
(USAID, 1998: 21–39), and offered a useful overview of anti-corruption
measures (ibid.: 8–15). But while the document acknowledged the
need for flexible responses and discussed social as well as institutional
causes, there was little systematic comparison of cases. The World
Bank strategy document ‘‘Helping Countries Combat Corruption’’
offered a range of good-governance measures and advocated continued
economic liberalization, but treated anti-corruption reform in very
general terms and did not differentiate among types of cases (World
Bank, 1997: chs. 2–6). The UNDP discussion paper ‘‘Corruption and
Good Governance’’ proposed attacking the ‘‘micro’’ logic of bribery
(UNDP, 1997: 52–59) but did not extend the analysis to other
varieties of corruption; proposed reforms again dealt mostly with
improved law enforcement and public management (ibid.: ch. 3).
The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development
(OECD), in Corruption and Integrity Improvement Initiatives in
Developing Countries (1998), discussed some conceptual issues but
did not distinguish systematically among types of cases. Emphasis
was on political will at top levels, law enforcement, institutional
reform and technical skills, mobilizing civil society, and economic liberalization
(OECD, 1998). The Year 2000 Sourcebook of Transparency
International (TI) acknowledged four types of bribery (Transparency
International, 2000: 16–17), but beyond a mention of extortion did
not explore other sorts of corruption. Indeed, at one point it asserts
that ‘‘corruption in China ... is really no different from that in
Europe’’ (ibid.: 15–16).