CORRUPTION Syndromes of Corruption

The international setting 21
the bribery model well. In some corrupt exchanges, such as patronage
and nepotism, considerable time may elapse between receiving the quid
and repaying the quo, and the exchange may be conditioned by many
factors other than immediate gain (Johnston, 1979). In practice quid and
quo may be difficult to link and compare. In other cases, such as ‘‘constituent
service’’ by legislators, illicit activities may be all but impossible to
distinguish from legitimate ones, and corruption may lie not in an
exchange but in cumulative effects upon the quality of political processes
(Thompson, 1995; Moroff, 2002). Still other varieties – corruptionviolence
linkages, electoral fraud, embezzlement, or using official resources
for under-the-table business – are not exchanges at all. Political corruption
is generally underemphasized compared to bureaucratic varieties.
Other problems are evident at the level of corruption control. The
political risks of confronting corruption and the collective-action problems
inherent in mobilizing citizens to fight it (Johnston and
Kpundeh, 2002) are too often reduced to calls for ‘‘political will.’’ Most
consensus reforms amount to recommendations that developing societies
emulate laws and institutions found in advanced societies; countermeasures
are generally seen as ends in themselves, with little attention paid to
how they originated and won support in societies where they are now in
place. Stronger fiscal and managerial controls, greater transparency and
accountability, monitoring by an independent judiciary and free news
media, greater competition in politics and the economy, and a stronger
civil society – to name some frequent recommendations – do help check
corruption in many societies. But they did not emerge from nowhere;
often, in fact, they were the results of democratization and political contention,
and were devised by groups seeking to protect themselves rather
than as plans for ‘‘good governance’’ in society at large. To be effective
they require continued support from significant interests in society and
legitimacy with respect to basic social values. Where anti-corruption
forces are new such social support may be weak, or may need time to
gather strength. Reforms, even when technically sound, can do more
harm than good if they lack key resources and social backing: as we
shall see, the premature implementation of competitive elections during
the 1990s arguably made corruption more rapacious in Kenya and
Indonesia.
The analytical and policy trends outlined here extend across a range of
institutions and interests, and for each statement I have made there are of
course exceptions. Moreover, there are signs of change: by the late 1990s
the value of institutions for sustaining and restraining liberalized economic
and political processes was once again widely acknowledged, after
fifteen years during which economic liberalization stood nearly alone at