Review of anti-corruption strategies Rob McCusker - Australian ...

Conclusion
It has been argued that most anti-corruption programs rely on legal and financial institutions such as the
judiciary, police and financial auditors to enforce and strengthen accountability in the public sector. The
assumption here is that more and better enforcement of rules and regulations will reduce corruption. The
problem with such an approach is that in many poor countries the legal and financial institutions are weak
and often corrupt themselves (Svensson 2005).
A more fundamental cause for the relative failure of anti-corruption strategies is that they are ‘more
often limited to rhetoric, and are only rarely sustained’ (Wei 2001: 6). Wei suggests that this is because
some political leaders fear the political risks associated with radical and entrenched reform of corrupt
processes/practices and that the cost of creating significant reforms and achieving essential progress is
often prohibitive.
There remain a number of difficulties with tackling corruption. First, anti-corruption efforts that seek to
establish and appeal to a moral or ethical high ground via education of the corruptors and corruptees
are, some argue, unlikely to succeed. The very mechanisms of government create overriding incentives
for corrupt rather than anti-corrupt activities. Second, this also reduces the deterrence component of
anti-corruption penalties within the criminal law or code of the country concerned. The corrupt individual
arguably considers the prospect of being caught rather than the punishment they might incur in the
unlikely event of interception. Third, it is not unusual to discover corruption and incompetence within
government occupying the same space and this may be exacerbated by systems of allocating influential
government positions on the basis of patronage rather than ability. A corrupt appointment process simply
facilitates further corruption by the post-holders (Cobb & Gonzalez 2005).
Others have expressed doubt about the argument that corruption can be fought through a series of
anti-corruption agencies, the creation of all-encompassing laws and the establishment of codes of ethical
conduct. In many cases it is suggested that these are constituents of a perception of successful anticorruption
efforts which disguise the lack of real progress on the ground (Kaufmann 2005).
It is suggested that a broad based approach must be adopted in relation to anti-corruption strategies
if systematic corruption is to be mitigated. Successful campaigns against corruption have included
measures to reduce the opportunities for and benefits of corruption, to increase the likelihood that it will
be detected and to make it far more likely that a transgressor will be punished. Conversely, difficulties
with anti-corruption strategies have included limits being placed upon power or commitment at senior,
and therefore influential, political and social levels, overly ambitious anti-corruption promises leading to
unrealistic and unachievable expectations and subsequent loss of public confidence, piecemeal and
uncoordinated reforms, failure to establish institutional mechanisms that outlive the reformers, failure
of the government to include and utilise private sector opinion leaders and failure to devise effective
communications programs (Kindra & Stapenhurst 1998).
There are no simple solutions to the problem of corruption but it is important to recognise the
fundamental role that political will and support for reforms at the highest levels of government can play
in bringing about practical results and in raising the credibility of, and public support for, anti-corruption
progress. It has been argued that numerous studies ‘…show that a common sense of corruption is an
absence of strong government institutions, such as the judiciary, the legislature, the office of the auditorgeneral,
the police, the office of the ombudsman and watchdog agencies. The important role that the
media, civil society organisations, and the private sector…can play in the fight against corruption is also
vitally important, and should not be underestimated’ (Aziz 2003).